Casual Temple

TRANSCRIPT

(Transcript is auto-generated; errors are unintentional.)

00:00:02 Merrily

Welcome to the Casual Temple podcast. This is episode 22 and I'm your host Merrily Duffy at Casual Temple. We're not just casual observers where seekers and explorers. Our mission is to unravel the nature of reality and how connecting to the unseen world of spirit empowers us to know our true selves. Before we begin, please hit that heart-shaped like button and remember to follow and subscribe on your favorite podcast.

00:00:24 Merrily

Platform. Today we're joined by the wonderful Luxa.

00:00:27 Merrily

Luxa Strata is an artist, magician and host of the Lux Occult podcast Luxa shares her journey of hosting the Lux Occult podcast, which explores magic, art, science, and philosophy. Your chaos magic lens, using belief for magical purposes with an aim of making occultism accessible to all. We learned all about her wonderful projects like the Green Mushroom Project project.

00:00:47 Merrily

Ex. Autophilia and the Paranormal collaboration projects, so stay tuned to the Casual Temple podcast for the mundane meets the mystical.

00:00:57

OK.

00:00:57 Merrily

To the Casual Temple, our guest today is Luxa Strata, who is a fascinating artist and magician. Luxa is also the host of the Lux Occult Podcast, where there are discussions of a variety of occult topics exploring the intersections of magic, art, science, and philosophy through chaos, magic lens, the Lexical podcast is also the audio home.

00:01:17 Merrily

For the Green mushroom project.

00:01:19 Merrily

Which is a group endeavor involving collaborative magical efforts exploring the boundaries of magic and intention. Alexa, I'm so happy to have you as a guest here on Casual Temple. Thank you.

00:01:30 Luxa

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here, stoked to talk to you about all this stuff. And yeah, enjoyed speaking with you from my show, the.

00:01:37 Luxa

Other day as.

00:01:38 Luxa

Well, so very.

00:01:39 Merrily

Excited. Yeah. You're a great host. And yeah, I have a lot of fun.

00:01:43 Merrily

And you have just really good insights anyway. I'm just. I'm super jazzed to talk.

00:01:49 Luxa

Right on. Well, I'm stoked to be here.

00:01:52 Merrily

OK. So we'll just kind of dive in and I know when we chatted, you had said that kind of starting the podcast was really sort of kicked off your own sort of spiritual or magical path. So can you kind of talk a little bit about how lexicon kind of did that for you?

00:02:12 Luxa

Yeah, totally. Well, I've been, like, playing around with magic and stuff since I was a kid, but this is really like.

00:02:18 Luxa

One of the first, like huge things that I did with Magic, was kind of starting this podcast. I really wanted to create a space to talk about magic in a cultism the way that I approach it, which is kind of heavily filtered through my own background in science and also some art stuff. And everything is mixed in there and I just I wanted to have a way of meeting people.

00:02:37 Luxa

Similar interests and things like that, and it's also been an interesting way to do some magical experimentation as well. But before I started making this show back in 2020, I'd always.

00:02:49 Luxa

You know, wanted to make podcasts. I've been a long time enthusiast of talk radio shows like Coast to Coast AM and things like that, but I was always incredibly shy and I really wasn't sure I'd be able to get to a place where I feel confident enough talking into microphones and doing this whole thing. I ended up doing a lot of magical work.

00:03:09 Luxa

Grounding what we would call maybe reprogramming or repatterning some of the ways I was thinking about myself. And yes, as you can see, here I am now or.

00:03:18 Luxa

As you can hear.

00:03:20 Luxa

Of making podcasts, I actually have another podcast that I make with my brother called Ad Hoc history, which is really fun, but I like to bring this story up when I talk about the show because I think it's a great example of the type of like personal development and things like that. A magical or spiritual practice can offer.

00:03:36 Luxa

And if you know if people want to use it that way, there's a lot of different ways to to use it, but if that's something that people are interested in doing, you know, doing something that you want to do, but you are afraid to do, or you have boundaries or or whatever barriers are presenting themselves, you know, for me, I was able to work with that in a magical way.

00:03:56 Luxa

And and found a lot of really cool stuff there.

00:04:00 Luxa

So I like to kind of talk about the show as being like a cultism for everyone accessible to people who, you know, even like me might be coming from a little bit more of, like a scientific background or might have some barriers surrounding, like, pursuing a spiritual or magical practice. I think a lot of people have a lot of like.

00:04:20 Luxa

Trauma surrounding spirituality because they are put into, you know.

00:04:25 Luxa

Kind of ritual contexts or other things like and maybe like religious situations where they look really didn't consent to it and it could be a really cool and beautiful experience if you consent to it and you want it is, you know, not maybe so much if you're, you know, have it forced upon you. And so I think a lot of people have some barriers surrounding that stuff as well.

00:04:46 Luxa

So yeah, it's a way to.

00:04:49 Luxa

Have a space to talk about this thing that has been such an important part of my life.

00:04:55 Merrily

Yeah. And it's so great too, and I love how your format is very unique too because you have like 2 guests per episode. And so that's really interesting.

00:05:04 Luxa

I play around with it. You know, I sometimes do have two tests. I sometimes have one, depending on. It's just me making the show, so it kind of depends on. There's a lot of moving parts that I like to, you know, kind of keep it, keep it fresh and stuff and keep everyone guessing and everything. So yeah.

00:05:22 Merrily

So yeah, we didn't chat a little bit about. Yeah, very much when you had shared how you, you were kind of like the podcast was sort of coming into your own is kind of how I was interpreting it and who you are. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I was like yes, because.

00:05:37 Luxa

Yeah, I would not called luxa before I started making the podcast really like that was part of that was, you know, becoming, you know, I had this idea of, like, the person that could make the shows. It wasn't who I was at the time, but I thought, you know, this is what that person would be like. And so yeah.

00:05:55 Merrily

Very magical for sure. Yeah. And then.

00:06:01 Merrily

Yeah. So coming up with the podcast and then also, yeah, same thing of like.

00:06:07 Merrily

Why? Like I I also was a fan of podcasts. I think I started listening to them and like.

00:06:13 Merrily

2005.

00:06:16 Merrily

And the first one I listened to was one called the ghostly or ghostly talk. And they're still around too. But yeah, it's. I was like, got the the poke on the shoulder to do a podcast. Like a couple of years ago. And I was like, I don't know, I don't know. But then got you have been asked for. OK.

00:06:35 Merrily

I'm supposed to do this like. What do I do first? OK, what do I?

00:06:38 Merrily

Do second you know?

00:06:39 Luxa

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:06:41 Luxa

Really. Yeah. There was a lot of synchronous events that came together and yeah, interesting thing. So, yeah, I've I've talked about this on the show a little bit. Just kind of, you know, meeting people and through the meeting, other people and I.

00:06:55 Luxa

Mean that's how.

00:06:56 Luxa

It goes in every.

00:06:56 Luxa

Yeah, yeah, it it all came together very organically.

00:07:01 Luxa

And in a way that felt very magical, which I really appreciate.

00:07:05 Merrily

Cool. That's so great.

00:07:08 Merrily

So with sort of your path, did you have any support or guidance kind of along when you were doing this? Sounds like maybe some of the guests and people in your circle were?

00:07:20

Yeah, I mean, I've had.

00:07:21 Luxa

A lot of support and guidance.

00:07:22 Luxa

I mean, yeah, it's.

00:07:23 Luxa

Almost too much like my family and friends. And I mean the amazing folks at the Mushroom crew are are so awesome. Like like, I've got a lot of great friends over there, got a whole coterie of unseen magical helpers that support me. I've got a personal pantheon of deities and ancestors.

00:07:26 Merrily

Ah yeah.

00:07:41 Luxa

And I mean, I've probably gotten some support from myself in the future too.

00:07:46 Luxa

I don't.

00:07:46 Luxa

Yeah, a lot of help.

00:07:50 Merrily

Oh, I love that you brought up like the support of the your unseen.

00:07:54 Merrily

Your unseen supports and your future self, because that's like.

00:07:59 Merrily

You know, because a lot of people might think that they don't have any support, right? Meaning people here, like in this material plane.

00:08:06 Merrily

Yeah, I love that you.

00:08:08 Merrily

Brought that up.

00:08:09 Luxa

One thing that I started doing a while back when I was thinking about the idea of like time Magic is a simple like meditation in the morning where like I think about, you know, my self existing in all these different times. But I kind of stand in the same place. I know I'm not actually in the same place like.

00:08:26 Luxa

The Earth has moved and we're all.

00:08:28 Luxa

Greening through.

00:08:30 Luxa

Space breakneck speeds all the time, you know, similarly enough. You know, this idea of kind of connecting with the past self and the future self through the present self and sort of like you know, reaching out to the future self for guidance and then also reaching back to the past self to offer its support and guidance and like.

00:08:49 Luxa

You know, forming that relationship with yourself, it's like if I'm gonna do this every day, I can count on myself in the future to be offering myself support. So it's almost like, even if you're sort of a scientific material.

00:09:01 Luxa

Realist, you can still like say, well, that's actually for sure true, because I'm making it happen, which I think is actually a really cool way of doing magic is is making things happen like that. So yeah.

00:09:14 Merrily

Yeah. Oh, that brings up a good point about making things happen, because there's kind of a lot of and you, you know.

00:09:23 Merrily

I know you.

00:09:25 Merrily

Kind of. You're more of sort of chaos magic, so this probably doesn't phase you at all.

00:09:30 Merrily

But there's a lot of like, yeah. Yeah, I figured so. But there is a lot of, like, at least in some of the circle I'm in, where there's, you know, either Western ceremonial magic or stuff like that, you know, and a lot of it, a lot of the things I do not a lot, but some of the things I do are, like, theoretical and like, considered.

00:09:31 Luxa

Very little will.

00:09:49 Merrily

High magic, right?

00:09:51 Merrily

But not everything I do.

00:09:52 Merrily

Is I do do material world stuff. So what is your perspective on doing?

00:09:58 Merrily

Like doing magic that makes changes and maybe even doing magic that makes changes for your material either benefit or something.

00:10:07 Luxa

OK, yeah, this is.

00:10:08 Luxa

A great question. I think it's kind of complex and nuanced and I think that in order to answer, I might have to tease apart some of what I might consider a little bit of like classism and stuff that's inherent in this, this like kind of split between thinking about these things, the idea that like.

00:10:15 Merrily

Ohh sure.

00:10:26 Luxa

At least to to my ear, the idea that, like high magic, is that which we, you know, do in our fancy robes and our fancy expensive, you know, materials for, you know, like. And this is like to to make us more divine, to get us more in touch with, like, this higher divine power, whereas like low magic or sorcery is like.

00:10:46 Luxa

Gross. That's what you have to do. And you have to pay the bills. Like. Yeah, like that's for Poors, I mean. And I'm not saying that that's exactly like what the thinking is there, but like I do think that.

00:10:55 Merrily

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:10:56 Luxa

Like, you know, whatever you're doing, like whether it's making changes to make your, you know, living circumstances more supportable for doing maybe what some people would consider higher work. You know, you have to start somewhere. Like you're always creating changes. And I think that oftentimes, at least from my experience.

00:11:17 Luxa

You know, creating like these things kind of come together, like doing high quote and low quote magic. Oftentimes both result and both inner and outer results in in the world and in yourself like I I think that there's a sort of for me a little bit of.

00:11:36 Luxa

I guess maybe like a little bit of a fallacy in separating those things. I do a lot of what a lot of people wouldn't consider to be like theurgy and high magic and stuff like that. Like I'm very into playing around with like, very old tech and kind of feeling out how it works and then adapting it for my own purposes, like the classic that I've been loving to play around with for the last. I don't know, maybe.

00:11:58 Luxa

Nine months or so is the headless right. This is kind of like one of those classic things that.

00:12:02 Luxa

Everybody and their siblings loved you. Play with so, like, yeah, just sort of. I do a lot of DoD work and stuff like that too, but I also don't think there's anything wrong with, you know, people.

00:12:17 Luxa

Creating like using magic to create the type of situation that they need to support. You know, Maslow's higher, higher things on the pyramid, right? Yeah.

00:12:28 Merrily

Yeah, beautifully explained. Yeah, I like that thinking too. And I like that, you know, nonsensically. But put together like, uh, like, what high magic is? And maybe what?

00:12:39 Luxa

People might think of low magic is very funny. I'm not and I'm not to like not either anybody's perspective. I know that there's a lot of different ways of like approaching.

00:12:42 Merrily

Who has done the group?

00:12:45 Merrily

Ohh for sure.

00:12:48 Luxa

All this stuff, and there's all kinds of magic that like I, you know, I wouldn't. I'm not saying like, I'm into doing all types of magic all the time. Like everybody should be discerning and think it through and make sure that it's what makes sense for you and what feels right for you. And and all of the rest of.

00:13:05 Luxa

It so yes.

00:13:06 Merrily

Ah, so good.

00:13:08 Merrily

And I also like to think too, because I am in my practice, I look at and meditate on the Kabbalah quite a lot, quite a lot. And in the Kabbalah it's very much, you know, they hit it over your head so many times. That catcher, which is the quote UN quote, highest fear, and then malkuth is the, quote, UN quote lowest fear where we're.

00:13:29 Merrily

They're residing in consciously, they're connected, they're very much connected. They're overlapped. So to me, it's like if you're making changes here.

00:13:37 Merrily

It's it's connected to the higher. Exactly what you said. It's just like, yeah.

00:13:41 Luxa

Yeah. I mean, if I'm. I'm, I'm not like.

00:13:45 Luxa

Like, you know, Western Hermeticism version of Cabala scholar at all, or anything. But if I'm not mistaken, it kind of exists on these, like, orders of magnitude. Like, you've got the tree, and then it kind of leads to, like, another tree. That's like, so that makes sense that it would be connected, right, like.

00:14:02 Merrily

So perfect now. So you kind of like laid this wonderful ground work. Can you describe for people who maybe aren't very familiar with what chaos magic is according to your own perspective?

00:14:14 Luxa

Yeah, sure.

00:14:16 Luxa

So it's a highly individualized practice. So preface this by saying that so every class magician is going to have a little bit of a different way of thinking about it and practicing it and all of that stuff. But I will give you a little bit of that in a nutshell, like from my own perspective, this is something that I talk about on my podcast a lot. So if people are interested in learning more in depth, that's something that they.

00:14:37 Luxa

Get into there. There's a lot of nuance to all this.

00:14:41 Luxa

This Curtis started out with like a basic premise of my own, which is like it seems to me that humans have a sort of, like psychological infrastructure that's like set up for spirituality and ritual and things like that. That's kind of like part of.

00:14:55 Luxa

Our secret sauce as creatures, if you will, I think, and it seems like looking at history and all.

00:15:01 Luxa

All the other.

00:15:02 Luxa

Places. This is something that often is Co opted by like authority structures or like con people or.

00:15:09 Luxa

Predators or whatever to to use it for their own means instead of the constructive means that it might otherwise be used for for the individual. So a do-it-yourself approach to spirituality I think can help a person sidestep many of those issues with spirituality in general.

00:15:29 Luxa

So Chaos magic is something that's allowed me to kind of reconcile.

00:15:34 Luxa

Spiritual woo, whatever, and kind of hard scientific ways of knowing and understanding like ways of putting these things together and synthesizing them like into useful tools and other things. So this is the context in which I work. It can look a lot of, you know, very similar to like a lot of.

00:15:55 Luxa

Pattern like eclectic witchcraft practices that we see very commonly where people have kind of taken what works from them from various systems or traditions and created their own like approach, their own kind of. I've heard people say like this is my own personal religion and I'm the only person who practices it and that kind of thing which is red.

00:16:16 Luxa

For chaos magic, some touchstones, like in terms of like praxis, like some people might think about are like Sigil Magic, Hyper sigils, pop culture, magic things along those lines, but definitely not limited to it. I think a lot of chaos magicians.

00:16:32 Luxa

Like to explore a lot of really kind of old traditions just from a chaos magic perspective. So.

00:16:41 Luxa

Where it diverges from a lot of the like eclectic witchcraft practices that I described earlier. Is that chaos magic tends to be informed by a sort of like theoretical framework, which includes things like paradigms and magical models.

00:16:58 Luxa

So in cast magic, we're not ever really making like ontological assertions. If you will or like statements about like what for real is actually going on behind the scenes with magic like in some traditions, they're like oh, no, for real. It's definitely this. God, this God definitely exists, and they do this. And this is like what it is, right and.

00:17:17 Luxa

That's magic.

00:17:18 Luxa

It's like, OK, well, that's a paradigm like this is one way of looking at it. And in order to like, play this game, I'm gonna, you know, enter into this mode of thinking. But I'm also, you know, knowing that this is still a paradigm. This is still a game that I'm playing. I'm not completely investing all the way per say.

00:17:38 Luxa

Unless I'm actually in the moment doing ritual, that's when I'm completely investing, and that's when I'm, you know, using the.

00:17:46 Luxa

That belief, you know, the the idea, that belief being something that can be used in intentional ways for magical purposes is kind of another little kind of key component of a lot of chaos magic practices. So like, rather than having this like fixed state of belief that like, ohh yeah, like this is it for sure. It's just when I'm doing that ritual.

00:18:09 Luxa

Like so, when I'm for instance, like praying to the goddess that I like to work with or whatever, like while I'm in that moment, like I'm really like letting it go, like really kind of surrendering to.

00:18:20 Luxa

That and then after I'm no longer in that, you know, circle, that magical circle or container of ritual, I can step back to my normal, everyday agnosticism about many things in the world.

00:18:35 Luxa

So this is a way that I find really works for me and it it's been something that's been really useful for me and it's also allowed me to gain a lot of different perspectives about a lot of different things. And I think it allowed me to.

00:18:48 Luxa

Gain a lot of empathy and I just understanding about how the world works in general. So yeah, if nothing is true, everything is permitted or because all truths are conditional, there might be infinite possibilities there, right? So hopefully that's lucid enough to be doing.

00:19:07 Merrily

Oh yeah, yeah.

00:19:09 Merrily

That's great.

00:19:11 Merrily

Oh oh, it's making me think ohh cause you're doing So what you said. I I like, you know, I think This is why chaos magic, you know, was so groundbreaking. When it hits years and years ago. But it's still like in very much existence today and probably getting more strong is because of that freedom and.

00:19:31 Merrily

You know people, you know, cause human beings are curious. They want to explore and, you know, figure this out, especially something so important as like your relationship to.

00:19:42 Merrily

You know what the heck you're doing here?

00:19:45 Luxa

Yeah, absolutely.

00:19:47 Merrily

But I did have a question. Since you do you know you interviewed quite a few people have any of your guests kind of influenced you in some way of like how you approach magic? You don't have any names, but just curious. Yeah. I mean, I've been. I don't want to. Like, I don't want to name these.

00:20:05 Luxa

I'm very nervous that I'll accidentally forget somebody and feel like a total ******* because I've spoken to some of people that have been, yeah, I've gotten to meet some people that I've really looked up to and respected and it's.

00:20:08 Merrily

Oh oh, totally.

00:20:17 Luxa

And really, really amazing. And so, yeah, I've definitely had the opportunity to speak to people that have been inspirations to me and who I've, you know, been, like, huge fan girl of and.

00:20:29 Luxa

Stuff like that. So yeah.

00:20:32 Merrily

Cool. OK, so I know one of the main things that you're working on is called the green mushroom.

00:20:40 Merrily

So I'm curious now I have. I feel like when I have these questions I I have them backwards, but so if you can help the guests understand or the guests the audience understand what the green mushroom project is and then kind of what inspired you to get involved and start.

00:20:58 Merrily

Start it.

00:21:00 Luxa

Yeah, absolutely. So I think I'll start out with the sort of biological metaphor that inspired this in order to describe what it is. Yeah. So maybe the questions weren't backwards, but.

00:21:17 Luxa

If we think about the symbiotic relationship, like a relationship where both of the organisms are getting a benefit out of it, a beneficial symbiosis that some types of fungi, the types that produce mushroom, have with some types of.

00:21:32 Luxa

Trees. A lot of these are conifers, but they're not limited to conifers. There's this sort of really interesting thing that happens where the forest is kind of connected underground by this mycelial web that these fungi form, and it allows the trees to kind of communicate with each other and to share resources. And it's not very well understood.

00:21:52 Luxa

Yet, but the more that we learn about it, the more interesting and.

00:21:56 Luxa

It's, you know, complicated it. It looks. So there's this really interesting kind of biological metaphor that I wanted to play with there. So here with the mushroom project, if the magical practitioners are like these trees, the grey mushroom high procedural is like the underground mycelial web, which.

00:22:16 Luxa

Connects us and supports us and allows us to like, you know, share resources and communicate and other interesting magical things. The word hifo.

00:22:26 Luxa

Is from Latin from net, so it means web so so web digital. It's kind of inspired by the linking Sigil that the dcam you came up with a while back. It's a similar type of tech, only this one is for a different thing than the less digital was created for. But yeah.

00:22:46 Luxa

Pretty much inspired by that work and.

00:22:50 Luxa

We started it back in 2020. It's sort of.

00:22:56 Luxa

A large scale on growing.

00:22:59 Luxa

Excuse me? We started back in 2020 as a sort of, like, large scale ongoing group magical working, which is focused on like, as I said, building connections right like the.

00:23:11 Luxa

The Hifo web connects us a lot of this is like fostering creativity, like there's a lot of creative people, a lot of the magic that we do is creative in nature and artistically based and things like that, where a lot of us are very into things like hypersexual's and stuff like that.

00:23:30 Luxa

We wanted to empower individuals to become more agentic through using magic and esoteric technology, kind of like I described earlier with with what I did with my podcast and my name and all that stuff. You know, there's all kinds of things can be done with that stuff and we wanted to have a space where people could, you know, experiment with that stuff.

00:23:50 Luxa

And through this, we also wanted to build solidarity and kind of strengthen our position against hate groups, which is a thing that unfortunately we see sort of in on the rise within occult and new age circles and other places in our society. So this was the case back in 2020, and it's still the case.

00:24:09 Luxa

Now, so yes.

00:24:12 Merrily

Oh, very cool. I love the concept around it and then how it's being implemented and then how you're kind of using that sort of sounds like kind of like combined attention, right. And that's very powerful and magic is the attention and.

00:24:25 Merrily

Focus and especially around things that you know as individuals, we feel like we can't have an effect on like you know, so uh that's so cool.

00:24:35 Luxa

Yeah, one of the one of the things that we do is like every Friday night, we light a candle with the mushroom sigil on it together. And we say the statements project of resistance, which I'd be happy to read for you if you.

00:24:47 Luxa

Would like to hear.

00:24:47 Merrily

It please. OK.

00:24:49 Luxa

Come on. So this is the green Mushroom project statement of resistance, which we do read and then light a candle at midnight Eastern on Friday nights. We usually have it be a green candle.

00:25:00 Luxa

But we're not.

00:25:00 Luxa

Picking that in.

00:25:04 Luxa

Resist by maintaining sovereignty of the self.

00:25:08 Luxa

Resist by maintaining love of the self.

00:25:11 Luxa

Resist by maintaining fierce loyalty to love and pleasure.

00:25:15 Luxa

Resist with acts of radical kindness, focus on the path to better times.

00:25:25 Luxa

I like the sign off. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of our. Amen. Can I get a book? Yeah. So you might have noticed. I know you're into planetary magic. You might have noticed the planetary tie INS here. We're doing this on Friday nights.

00:25:33 Merrily

Yeah, it's. I mean it has like the same energy. That's awesome.

00:25:44 Luxa

We've got love and pleasure as part of it, so we've got a lot of.

00:25:47 Luxa

Fusion energy going on here. We found that to be very helpful for, like, keeping **** chill and also for creative endeavors too. So.

00:25:55 Luxa

It's been going very well.

00:25:56 Merrily

Oh, I like that. Yeah, you associated the Friday energy with creativity cause why not it makes.

00:26:02 Luxa

Sense I've. Yeah, I found it to be a very useful energy for that stuff.

00:26:04 Merrily

OK.

00:26:08 Merrily

You think? Good tip. I love it.

00:26:12 Merrily

Let's see. So, gosh.

00:26:13 Merrily

You have so many, so many things that you're doing the next one that I was.

00:26:18 Merrily

Like I don't know.

00:26:20 Merrily

If I know this one so much, but it's, I think it's on your Patreon, but it's called project specs.

00:26:26 Luxa

Oh yes, actually this is very much related to the green mushroom project, because this is a little this is a thing.

00:26:29 Merrily

It OK.

00:26:31 Luxa

At Frederic Damiana and Guillermo X have.

00:26:36 Luxa

And actually armored some some folks and I were talking about, you know, wanting to do some kind of pop culture political magic. And this was something that emerged as being a really kind of fun and interesting thing to try out. So project specs specs as in, like, spectacles.

00:26:56 Luxa

Sunglasses magic, which is inspired by the 1988 film they live by John Carpenter. So for people who haven't seen this movie, it's a really great, really terrible movie. It's an old 80s action movie. It's.

00:27:16 Luxa

Yeah, there's it's very fun. It is actually in the reason that John Carpenter, as far as I understand it made, it was so that he could talk about Reaganomics in a space where political discourse like wasn't super welcome. So in order to do this political discourse, he made this very cheesy action.

00:27:35 Luxa

And the premise is, is that the main character finds these sunglasses that when he puts them on, he can see that there's been this like alien invasion. And these aliens are kind of like taking over and they've got all this, like, subliminal messaging everywhere. That's kind of like controlling people and enslaving them and stuff and all of a sudden he can see all these.

00:27:55 Luxa

Signs that say like, obey, consume, reproduce like things like that, and so it's this sort of like.

00:28:03 Luxa

Idea of wanting to make our own version of these sunglasses that allow us to see through the subliminal messaging and all kinds of other you know we're we're constantly under onslaught of different.

00:28:18 Luxa

Forces and different parties wanting to influence us wanting us to.

00:28:23 Luxa

You know, just our attention, our money, our vote, whatever it is like. So just having some kind of a filter we thought would be an interesting thing to play.

00:28:31 Merrily

With that sounds so cool.

00:28:34 Luxa

Yeah. And if people are interested we we rode out the the ritual, the simple ritual that you can do to create your own pair of enchanted specs.

00:28:42 Luxa

This is.

00:28:43 Merrily

Oh, awesome.

00:28:46 Merrily

Yeah, that sounds really cool and I love.

00:28:48 Luxa

Yeah, we've been having fun with it.

00:28:49 Merrily

Ohh, it sounds so fun. Uh, what a great idea.

00:28:54 Merrily

And so I know you dropped. I've heard I haven't had another guest on that kind of talked about. Maybe his version of pop culture magic. But can you kind of give a little?

00:29:04 Merrily

Brief on what?

00:29:05 Merrily

That is for the.

00:29:06 Luxa

Sure. Ohh yeah, absolutely. So I think that.

00:29:10 Luxa

I would define pop culture magic as doing magic.

00:29:15 Luxa

That instead of looking to like an archetype that we would find in, say, Greek mythology or the Bible or whatever other like big popular systems, other people like to work with, we would take that from popular culture, a sort of touchstone for this.

00:29:34 Luxa

Would be. I think this was the comic book artist Grant Morrison describing this concept, because this is something that he's written a lot about.

00:29:42 Luxa

But the idea that Aries and Superman have a lot in common and for modern people some modern people might have a much closer connection with Superman and Superman might mean a lot more, might have a lot more power for them than Aries does. So using that same kind of.

00:30:03 Luxa

Energy just through a different like symbolic representation, which would be one way of thinking about that. So I think that for for some people.

00:30:13 Luxa

There can be a lot of inspiration as well in pop culture. I've found a lot of inspiration for things that I thought were cool and wanted to play with magically from reading fantasy novels and the work of Patrick Rothfuss has been an inspiration to me and my magical practice. I think he's. I'm not sure if he's a practitioner, but if.

00:30:33 Luxa

I do think that he has a very keen instinct for magical thought, so it's things like that I would say our pop culture magic as well. But I think yeah, anything that uses pop culture things and elevates it to like a sort of place of.

00:30:43 Merrily

You know.

00:30:53 Luxa

Magical relevance or whatever I I know when people do like pop, you know, popular Saints work or folk Saints work with people like David Bowie or Ruth Bader Ginsburg or folks like that who have had a big influence. So free to call us another one. Yeah.

00:31:02 Merrily

Right.

00:31:12 Merrily

Yeah. I tend to think because you're.

00:31:14 Merrily

For, you know, because I do the planetary magic for things around the sun, I know, like, kind of historically.

00:31:21 Merrily

In the old text, they're like, oh, it's related to the king or whatever I have. I can't but picture just it's Rockstar Energy, you know, like the sun is.

00:31:30 Merrily

Rockstar Energy, so.

00:31:32 Luxa

I feel the same way that I mean, maybe the king is Rockstar Energy. I feel like I maybe the rock star is an easier archetype for me to kind of get in touch with them.

00:31:41 Luxa

I don't know the king is someone who I just want to kick off.

00:31:44 Merrily

The thing exactly. I'm sorry. No way. I wanna stroke exactly.

00:31:48 Luxa

I want to party with.

00:31:49 Merrily

That dude? Yes. So, yeah. And I like, you know, because I think I saw I think.

00:31:59 Merrily

Yeah, I definitely love music and stuff, so that appeals more to me.

00:32:03 Merrily

Like Rock star magic.

00:32:06 Merrily

Let's see. So I knew. So you have this other project called Autophilia.

00:32:13 Merrily

And so I.

00:32:14 Merrily

Could can you describe what that is for us?

00:32:17 Luxa

Yeah, absolutely. So Audiophilia was a sort of collaborative.

00:32:23 Luxa

Audio sigil that I've recently produced. I didn't create it all myself because I had a lot of help from several other ritualists.

00:32:28 Merrily

You can.

00:32:34 Luxa

I can read the kind of little thing that I wrote up to describe it to you. It might be the easiest way to.

00:32:40 Luxa

Go because it's kind of a lot.

00:32:43 Luxa

Alright, here it is sure.

00:32:46 Luxa

After releasing my third album of Ritually produced oral erotica, meaning sound, I wanted to find a way to offer others some of what I'd been able to take away from doing that type of work, so conducting it had been instrumental in allowing me to gain many valuable insights and had been the source of a lot, but not all, of the personal growth that I'd undergone since.

00:33:09 Luxa

Beginning so this is kind of related to some of that identity work that we were talking about earlier too.

00:33:15 Luxa

When I first shared the first track that I made of this leg of my work, this kind of out there audio work in 2020, there was a lot of fear and other emotions associated with breaking the taboo that was going to have to be done in order.

00:33:33 Luxa

To share it.

00:33:34 Luxa

And in order and when that happened like it was a sort of altered state of consciousness, right, it was a.

00:33:40 Luxa

Sort of like nosis if you will. Is. I'm not a huge fan of that term, but it is a popular.

00:33:45 Luxa

Term. So that was a way to describe it. It was a really magically potent endeavor. And there's this idea that, like fear and power, our neighbors. And so if you want to find power, your power.

00:34:00 Luxa

If you start walking in the direction of your fear, that can be helpful. I'm not talking about doing this in like a way that is put yourself in danger or anything like that, but in a way that challenges yourself to like, grow out of your your own bounds.

00:34:14 Merrily

Cool. It's kind of like a.

00:34:16 Merrily

Shadow work, right? Anyway, yeah.

00:34:17 Luxa

Yeah, it's a lot of shadow work. Yeah, a lot of stuff about dissolving shame within this project. We were working with sexual energy and there the.

00:34:29 Luxa

Ritual that I wrote up for everybody involves like.

00:34:32 Luxa

You know, kind of self appreciation and self love and self pleasure and things like that, right? And so it's a lot of like.

00:34:40 Luxa

Facing oneself in a very direct way, like sort of being naked with yourself in a in a way that's more than physical. I guess it could be another way of describing it. So within our culture.

00:34:53 Luxa

The idea that, like basic things like sex are bad and evil is has been something that's been a very effective means of controlling people for a long time. And so I think a lot of us have a lot of stuff just built up around that very simple concept. So just doing a little bit of work surrounding it can be a great way of.

00:35:07 Merrily

Oh yeah.

00:35:14 Luxa

Finding a lot of like personal agency and liberation and stuff like that.

00:35:19 Luxa

So yeah, that was that. What was what that was about. And yeah, it's a.

00:35:25 Luxa

It was a really interesting project. I really appreciate that people were willing to like, do this very out there thing and go on this very strange ride with me to trust me with that work and to send me these audio tracks of themselves conducting these rituals and trust me to put it together in a way that would be respectful and not, I don't know.

00:35:45 Luxa

Do whatever weird, creepy thing people.

00:35:47 Luxa

Dude, you know what?

00:35:47 Merrily

Thought, Oh my gosh.

00:35:48 Luxa

So yeah, it was really like it was really humbling and it really meant a lot to me to be able to like.

00:35:54 Luxa

You know, put this thing together and we're still kind of, I'm honestly still kind of unpacking it. We're going to be having a reflection meeting soon to kind of like, talk over how it went for everybody. So it just came out on Valentine's Day. It's very new and everything. So yeah, people can check it out if they are into listening to very spicy audio stuff.

00:36:07 Merrily

Perfect.

00:36:14 Merrily

Hey, you know, every every once in.

00:36:16 Merrily

A while you know, we kind of.

00:36:17 Luxa

Yeah, I mean, I'm the I'm obviously.

00:36:19 Luxa

A fan I created.

00:36:23 Merrily

Ohh wow and I love that you you put a label.

00:36:26 Merrily

On uh, you know, saying like, shame, right? Because it's sort of this kind of feeling or thing that we do to ourselves that we don't really talk about, you know, and and especially, you know, as as a woman in Western American Society, it's just like.

00:36:46 Merrily

You're constantly, you know, constantly being shamed about all sorts of stuff, and especially that that.

00:36:51 Luxa

You basically can't do *******.

00:36:53 Luxa

You can't. I mean, I'm not trying to be like an ******* though, but that's like if you kind of breakdown.

00:36:53 Merrily

You do anything without.

00:36:57 Merrily

No, it's true.

00:36:59 Luxa

The messages it's like OK.

00:37:00 Luxa

Well, so yeah, I was talking about this with the friend the other day, and she's like, she's like, well, if you can't do anything right, then **** it. Like, do what you wanna do. Just do you do you like for real? Like, that's the only way.

00:37:12 Luxa

Out of that trap. So yeah, yes.

00:37:14 Merrily

Exactly. Uh, so good. Oh, my goodness, that's awesome.

00:37:17 Luxa

OK, yeah. And speaking.

00:37:18 Luxa

About shame like I do want to bring up somebody who is really important to me. Yeah. Brené Brown. A great, great. A lot of great work about shame and thinking about the the difference between shame versus guilt and like, you know, guilt being like, OK, I feel bad about something that I did right. Like, that's something that's like measure.

00:37:35 Merrily

Right.

00:37:36 Luxa

Terrible. But shame being like I feel bad about, like something that I am and like, is that actually true? Or is that just a story you're telling to yourself or whatever, so yeah.

00:37:47 Merrily

Oof, that sounds great. Oh, man, I'm gonna write.

00:37:50 Merrily

That down. Good stuff.

00:37:52 Merrily

So I think you know the.

00:37:54 Merrily

Next sort cash. Yeah, you were just.

00:37:57 Merrily

In all the projects and all the things that's awesome, how would you describe Zodiacal path working?

00:38:04 Luxa

Ohh OK cool. Yes so.

00:38:08 Luxa

Playing around with planetary magic, as I mentioned, I do like to play with, you know, older tech as well as you know, doing sunglass John Carpenter, right? I was, you know, this is a couple years ago now here, but I was, you know, noodling around with some stuff in the Peck of tricks and everything and.

00:38:28 Luxa

Kept seeing these references here and there to one's own nativity having like an effect on how these planetary operations would work. Which absolutely makes sense, right? It's all about circumstances and stuff like that, but there's not, like a lot.

00:38:41 Luxa

Of you know direction about like. OK well, so how do you figure out what that looks like then? Yeah. So, you know, sort of my own personal meditative personal nosis or whatever, like, through this my I would maybe it would be easier to say like, my tutelary spirits or whatever showed.

00:38:48 Merrily

Right.

00:39:00 Luxa

It to me.

00:39:02 Luxa

However, you want to say I came across the idea which was very much inspired by some of my friends who are into Druidry. They do something called Owen Path working where they think about the OEM views OMS are like a magical alphabet.

00:39:18 Luxa

And they think about it as being arranged in a wheel and they kind of do pass. Working around this wheel to explore the different energies of these views, these, these letters from this alphabet. So thinking about it from a similar principle is that I imagined the birth chart is having the same kind of like structure.

00:39:38 Luxa

Right. And I imagine myself, you know, kind of standing there and.

00:39:43 Luxa

Using the birth chart like as a map for approaching where these planetary rulers like live on the map, so hopefully that makes sense. Yeah, yeah.

00:39:55 Luxa

To my mind, this was like a a way of.

00:39:58 Luxa

Making kind of direct contact with these rulers with these energies and sort of forming that relationship.

00:40:06 Luxa

Through the energies which they start.

00:40:09 Luxa

Through the energies which they first, like approach you in which I guess is like the whole.

00:40:15 Luxa

Premise of what the birth chart is as your starting context for working with these energies so.

00:40:22 Luxa

Yeah, through exploring this work I was able to make some interesting kind of direct contacts with some of these rulers and, you know, come up with some interesting like little tidbits and little like flavors that I've been putting into my planetary magic. So.

00:40:39 Luxa

For instance, like after doing this work with, you know Saturn, for instance, like when I do Saturn Saturnian magic, I will do it within my own context of where it lives in Scorpio. So like I'll bring some of that Scorpio vibe to my Saturn magic. When I do work with Mercury, I'll think about Aquarius right, like so.

00:40:59 Luxa

Things like.

00:41:01 Merrily

Ah, cool. Yeah, it's definitely like a a way of approaching and sort of balancing out.

00:41:07 Merrily

Sort of the different energies that are present in your needle chart sounds like.

00:41:10 Luxa

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think we talked about this on my show for one of the reasons I was playing with this.

00:41:15 Luxa

Too is.

00:41:16 Luxa

Because I had a a consultation with a very talented friend of mine, he's a great astrologer and some of the things that he brought up in that were, you know, surprised me actually, how how well he read me.

00:41:32 Luxa

And I really did want to explore, maybe bringing some of those the energies of like the malefics and stuff into like a greater.

00:41:40 Luxa

Harmony with with everything. So yeah, yeah.

00:41:44 Merrily

Well, yeah, working with those malefics in your Natal chart is new.

00:41:49 Merrily

You'll walk in the park sometimes. That's awesome.

00:41:51 Luxa

Yeah, definitely, yeah.

00:41:54 Merrily

Wow. So cool. I'm like, that's a really cool way of approaching your needle chart because like, yeah, I exactly what you were saying is like you, you have all this information about the.

00:42:05 Merrily

Natal travel. You're like, but what do I?

00:42:07 Merrily

I do with it. And so that's a really good way of approaching it.

00:42:13 Luxa

Thank you. Yeah, it's been, it's been cool and I've presented it on it a couple of times and it seems to have been going over well. The people who have played with it have had some interesting things that they've found too. So yeah, it seems like people are at least finding some limited utility in it that makes me.

00:42:31 Merrily

Happy. Yeah. Hey, you know.

00:42:34 Merrily

One person that's.

00:42:35 Luxa

Cool. Yeah, right. And I'll probably, you know, write something up on this pretty soon. Put it out there. Yeah.

00:42:39 Merrily

It's awesome.

00:42:41 Merrily

Yeah. Look forward to that.

00:42:43 Merrily

OK, so the last project that I saw you have, you probably have other ones that I was aware of. You probably have so many, but I saw that you do a paranormal collaboration project.

00:42:58 Merrily

Or at least that's what I saw. What's that about?

00:43:00 Luxa

So this is this is a new thing. A friend of mine flood over from the XV Planus podcast and I are kind of going to be working on a little side project this year, which is looking at like the intersections of.

00:43:19 Luxa

Paranormal practices that he's into, he's very into like ghost chasing and, you know, doing CE5 work like, which is when humans reach out to, you know, extraterrestrials or extra dimensionals or.

00:43:32 Luxa

However, to think about.

00:43:33 Luxa

It and then try to make contact and my perspective is like an occultist.

00:43:39 Luxa

Like thinking about things like evocation and and other things like this and and working together to see like, well where are the intersections in these two communities. These practices like how can we put this together and how can we build, you know, perhaps some useful tools that people could play with.

00:43:56 Luxa

We're doing work along these lines, so really excited about it. The first thing that we put out is a track, which I produce is a magical track, a sound magical track which was inspired by the events at Randall from Air Force Base back in 1980.

00:44:14 Merrily

Ohh yeah.

00:44:16 Merrily

Ohh it's so yes. Ohh that's awesome.

00:44:18 Luxa

So it's very fun. Yeah, it's it's the uh, the audio actually has, like, the the music actually has like, audio of Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt at the time and he's, you know, he's saying.

00:44:31 Luxa

He's like experiencing something very interesting and very weird and.

00:44:36 Luxa

So I I don't want to like be that person, that like skeptic person that everybody hates, cause I have, like, looked into this case and stuff and like after like digging into it pretty well. Like I do think that like it probably like the way that the ball first got rolling was like as a little bit of like a hoax on the part of the.

00:44:57 Luxa

British but after.

00:45:00 Luxa

That you know, there's all these other things that come out of it, and it's been this huge inspiration to the community and there's all this like lore that surrounds it, it it, it really is this fascinating and interesting thing. And to me, like, that's a very interesting magical story. Like, it doesn't like when we're doing magic or like other spiritual practices like sometimes.

00:45:20 Luxa

It starts out by just going through the motions, like when I began doing my deity work, for instance, like it didn't feel like anything like I I began because I wanted to know what it would feel like.

00:45:30 Luxa

To even think that God's giving a thing, you know, I was like, what does that even like? So it started out with me just going through the motions and going through the motions. And then all of a sudden it there was a sort of catching that happened. And it became very real. And I think that that's kind of how these things happen. Like with it, it tells a very interesting.

00:45:51 Luxa

Magical story Rendlesham does because even though it started out as a sort of a prank or hoax or whatever, that doesn't matter like it has a sort of like.

00:46:01 Luxa

Feedback loop effect where it becomes something with emergent properties that has a life of its own. Mm-hmm. And so, yeah, that's kind of like what the track, the track is about Rendlesham. And then the other layer, the esoteric layer of it is about that for me.

00:46:18 Merrily

Wow. Cool. That's interesting.

00:46:19 Luxa

Yeah, people have to check it out. It's on YouTube and I did put some in the music video. I put some of the things that like were supposedly communicated by the time travelers that visited. And so yeah, it's it's very fun. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, it's. It is a fascinating story.

00:46:38 Merrily

There's like like messages like you said, and I, Oh my gosh, it's yes.

00:46:42 Luxa

Ornaments all kinds of things, yes.

00:46:45 Merrily

So yeah, definitely you gotta get you gotta check it out. I gotta check out this. Your paranormal collaboration project on Rendlesham Forest. It sounds super cool.

00:46:54 Luxa

Yeah, and people, if they're interested in like, you know, paranormal investigation and stuff, flood over at the XV Planet Show does a great job of.

00:47:02 Luxa

Like you know.

00:47:04 Luxa

Leading a paranormal investigation team into doing these things and then kind of dissecting it in the podcast so it's very cool. Like it's on the ground work and yeah, I.

00:47:13 Merrily

Love it? Yeah, that sounds cool. I like that sort of analysis. So that sounds really cool. All right, so you know, wow, we talked about.

00:47:24 Merrily

All the millions of projects you do and some of them anyway, but where can folks find you? Find more about you and learn about all the things that you're up to.

00:47:36 Luxa

All right. Well, you can hear me on the Luxor Cult podcast, which is available on most of the places you find podcasts, Spotify, Apple. It's also on YouTube. And uh, yeah, the other places, I think guessing there's more pod being.

00:47:53 Merrily

Yeah, all those guys, yeah.

00:47:56 Luxa

You can find the rest of my work on my link tree. You can find the green mushroom project at greenmushroomproject.com.

00:48:05 Luxa

And you can find me on Instagram at Luxor cult pod and see all the strange things that I like to have.

00:48:13 Merrily

I always find them fascinating. You know, very interesting. So definitely follow the Instagram if you guys are into.

00:48:23 Merrily

The Instagram world.

00:48:24 Luxa

Yeah. If if you like that sort.

00:48:26 Merrily

Of thing. Yeah. If you like that sort of.

00:48:28 Merrily

Thing for sure.

00:48:30 Merrily

So kind of the last thing, what words of wisdom would you like to leave us with?

00:48:42 Luxa

This is sort of a central theme for a lot of my work, so I.

00:48:45 Luxa

Think I'm going to bring.

00:48:46 Luxa

It up here? Yeah, a lot of us are conditioned to look to outside authorities for answers and direction. This kind of starts in, in our education experience for a lot of us. But when it comes to like magic, our own personal, magical, spiritual.

00:49:02 Luxa

There can be a lot said for doing as much work as you can to put yourself in that primary position of authority, no matter what type of fancy hat somebody might be wearing, what books they might have written or read, what clubs they might be a part of, or whatever other way people gain social or other status no matter what.

00:49:22 Luxa

Nobody can tell you how to do your own spirituality, your own magic better than you can discover yourself through actually doing the work.

00:49:31 Luxa

There's a lot of sillier, manipulative people out there making all sorts of claims about all sorts of things, so I encourage everybody listening to always resist by maintaining that.

00:49:42 Luxa

Critical thinking and always looking to yourself to be the ultimate authority in your practice.

00:49:50 Merrily

Reach. That's amazing. Yes, I love it.

00:49:53 Merrily

Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much. Well, everybody, definitely check out looks, EStrata and all her amazing things. Check. Check out the Alexa cult podcast. Yeah, all sorts of inventive, you know, very cool and powering stuff that you do.

00:50:10 Merrily

And I love it.

00:50:11 Luxa

Well, merrily thank you so much for inviting me here and allowing.

00:50:15 Luxa

Me to space.

00:50:16 Luxa

You're off about all this stuff that has bad going.

00:50:19 Luxa

On really, really cool sharing it. And yeah, I appreciate you having me.

00:50:23 Merrily

On it was my pleasure having the wonderful Alex EStrata on the show today. Please check out the show notes to learn more about all the wonderful projects that Lexa is involved with.

00:50:33 Merrily

And definitely check out the lexical podcast. Do you remember to like, follow and subscribe on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform? It really helps us grow. Thank you for listening and being an important part for the casual temple.

#CasualTemplePodcast #LuxaStrata #LuxOccultPodcast #GreenMushroomProject #MagicAndScience #OvercomingBarriers #AccessibleOccultism #SupportSystem #ChaosMagic #PersonalDevelopment #ProjectSpecs #PopCultureMagic #Audiophilia #ZodiacalPathWorking #PersonalMeditativePractice #PlanetaryMagic #ParanormalCollaborationProject #WordsOfWisdom #MerrilyDuffy #CasualTemple

EPISODE 22 - LUXA STRATA

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