Interview with John Michael Greer by Kala Ambrose of Explore Your Spirit October 17th, 2009 http://www.examiner.

com/metaphysical-spirituality-in-national/monsters-an-investigators-guide-tomagical-beings-interview-with-john-michael-greer-part-two Monsters: An Investigators Guide to Magical Beings - Part 2 of 3 (continued from Part One) Kala: Why wolves? Why not rabbits wererabbits, or, you know John: Werebunnies! I can see it now. Well, this is where you get into some really interesting corners of European tradition and folklore. Wolves and bears are animals that tie back into a kind of old European Shamanism. These are totem animals. These are animals that have a lot of connection in mythology. My guessand its a guess with some evidence behind it, but I cant totally prove it is that there was basically a wolf cult in the middle ages. A people who were preserving some of these old Shamanistic traditions, which included the shape shifting traditions and the wolf was their totem, the wolf was their god. The wolf was what they turned into. Now one of the things that Im basing this on is that there are Native American traditions that are very similar. Kala: Like the jaguars, yes. John: Yeah, I know some peopleI have met some people, I should saywho have connections to one of the tribes that has a wolf tradition like that. I have only their word that they actually have shape shifting techniques. They dont show these things off for obvious reasons, and thats their total right, of course, but its, you know, its that kind of thing. If you have this sort of totemic relationship with an animal, youve got that kind of thing, thats one of the options. Other places in the world have other kinds of animals things. You do have this jaguar shape shifting thing from Central America, thats an old tradition. You have a coyote shape shifting a lot of that in Mexico and in the Southwest. If you choose one animal and stick with it its easier. Now it can be problematic, because whats happening, of course, is that your own life energy is going into this form and its coming back into your body. So its going to start affecting you. Its very much traditional bits out of European werewolf lore, the werewolves start looking a little bit more like a wolves, the older they get, the more they do it, because youve got some sort of mixed quality in the energy. Kala: Is that similar to how they say people look like their dogs? John: I suspect thats true. Ive seen it sometimes and I think its just, you know youre around the dog all the time, the dogs on your lap, youre basically swapping energy. Dogs will soak up excess energy and they will pour energy into you. Theyve got this fountain of life force. So, yeah, theres a sort of interchange of energy that happens. Ive seen it happen with a husband and wife, you know, people who have been married for a very long time and the older they get the more they start looking a little like each other. Kala: Yes, thats true. John: Yeah. Nobody is an island, nobody is isolated, nobody is just an individual selfwe all participate in the flow. We all take in whatever were around, which Im not sure if this is always a good thing, giving somebody to spend their time around, so much of the time, you know. Do you really want to look like an office building? Or a computer? Its a good reason to spend time out with nature. Kala: Good point. So lets say on the premise here we have groups that were Shamans and

John: We have groups that were Shamans that practice the wolf tradition. Kala: Yes, and they wanted to incorporate the spirit of the wolf, all the nobility behind it and have that experience and incorporate that into their practice. How does that go from that, which sounds beautiful, to something attacking people? Was this their way of getting back at things and society? John: Good question. One of the things one of the bits of evidence that we do have is that there was definitely such a wolf cult among the Vikings. There was a wolf cult and a bear cult, the bear surfers. We all have this word berserk. Most people dont know what that means. It literally means bear shirt. They were literally wearing bear head shirts as part of this bear cult that they had. Now they developed being Vikings, being warriors they developed in a way that was appropriate for the time, perhaps, but they would literally go crazy. Theyd cut loose, go into this trance state, take on the wolf energy or the bear energy and just wade into the enemies and kill people. As a warrior tradition, it made sense. In any other context its kind of a myth. Certainly nowadays it has no place. So whether these were warrior traditions that just kind of ended up going strange and isolated in the strange little corners of Europe, or whether the traditions themselves ended up going sceptic as sometimes happens, or whether the werewolves were simply being blamed. These people were being burned at the stake as werewolves by the church. A lot of the things that were being said about witches were, shall we say, less than perfectly accurate. Kala: Good point. How many of us have seen a werewolf attack? John: Exactly. I mean, I dont know how many of us have seen a werewolf. Its always possible. Youre out in the woods and you see this gray animal trotting past, in a hurry, from point A to point B and Id go, Wow, was that German shepherd? For all you know it could be a werewolf, especially if youre near the Res. Kala: So werewolves today are out and about with people that still do this to invoke their spirit. John: There are certainly people in the Native American community who are doing this kind of thing. Whether the European traditions survived the burning times and the religious lores of the 15th and 16th century and so on, I have no idea. I have never really encountered anybody who presented any credible evidence of belonging to such a thing. It could still be there in a few little corners of Central Europe or what have you. Its been a rough few centuries, but there are people who still practice tribal cultures elsewhere in the world and its not that difficult to reconstruct the techniques. Again, this is one of those places where a careful reading of 18th and 19th century magical literature can reveal a lot more than people think nowadays. Kala: I agree. I noticed the difference in contemporary literature not just in books but in movies, etc. that whenever they do something about monsters, there seems to be a battle between werewolves and vampires. Its like they dont like each other. Do you have any thoughts about that? John: Its roughly the same sort of thinking that led you might possibly have seen Godzilla vs. King Kong? In fact, one of the bits of Eastern European vampire traditions is that if you are a werewolf when you die, you will likely become a vampire. So in fact, the entire werewolves battling vampires business is purely a creation of modern horror fantasy types who want to come up with an excuse to have vampires and werewolves in the same thing, and why not have them duking it out? Kala: I see, just a face-off. Thats what theyre looking for.

John: Yes, they want a face-off. They want to get two contenders in the ring, you know, Godzilla versus Rodan. Kala: Okay, so no history behind that. John: No history behind this all. Kala: Okay. Lets move on. Lets go to dragons. Are they real? John: Thats probably the single most complicated question youre likely to ask today. The dragons, as we know it in the Western world, okay bat-winged, four-legged, with long scaly neck, fire-breathing, this kind of stuff is a creation of medieval literature. Back behind the literature, back behind Beowulf and the various other dragons of romance and so on you have legends of a very different kind of creature. It is long and sinuous, it has a long neck, it is associated with water, not with fire, and its also kind of spooky. Is it physical? Well, probably not. It is associated with the rain? Yes. Is it something that occasionally people do battle with? Well, yes. What are we talking about here? Well, partly were talking about the Chinese dragon which is a water creature. In China dragons control the rain. In China dragons are eternal, among other things, for the energy that moves through the earth, through the paths that the dragon paths, as theyre called, that Feng Shui masters track and work with. Were also talking with something that everybody listening to us has heard of, which is the Loch Ness monster. Loch Ness has been dredged and dragged and searched by many subs, and youll fill in the blank, how many times, okay? Theres nothing physical in there other than, like, salmon and things, lots of mud, peat, and occasional boats lost by monster searchers. Its also not the only lake in Scotland and Northern Ireland or Ireland, generally that have sightings of this same kind of critter. There were sightings of the same kind of critter across North America. They happen specifically in cold, glacial lakes. Why that should be, I have only speculation, but American water monsters are a fixture in Native American legend and there are plenty of recent sightings. I mean, you got Champ, the one in Lake Champlain. Youve got Ogopogo whos up in Lake Okanagan in British Columbia, and so on and so forth. Are they physically there? Probably not. Were dealing with one of those many unusual things kind of lurking around the world that we think we know. What is it? Heck, if I know, but people see them. Kala: Well, lakes are still water and still water usually holds energy more than running water and the coldness, Im wondering, if that even perhaps holds it even more than hot water. John: Thats the magical tradition. Supposedly 39 Fahrenheit is the temperature which water reaches its maximum ability to hold energy. Kala: So, could that be a spirit? John: It could well be well, that term spirit is one of those, you know, Okay, what does it mean this time? Its an incredibly vague term. We use it to mean any intelligence that doesnt have a body, or that doesnt have a physical body, at least. Kala: Right. John: So in that sense, probably, yes. Is it some kind of nature spirit? Quite possibly. Does the body possibly consist simply of water that sort of flows into a pattern of energy? I dont know. I was sitting on the shore of Lake Union in Seattle one day -- down at a park there and for no reason that I was able to see, this sort of wailing surge of water which came into the little inlet, up fairly near to me, and it just kind of went away. It looked like

the body of something like the Loch Ness monster. It was about ten feet long and about two feet across and it ran lengthwise and it just kind of but it was just water. You could see that it was just sort of a surge of water. I havent the least idea. It definitely had me scratching my head and going, I wonder if... Kala: How did dragons get associated with breathing fire if they started out with water? John: Well, its a really good question. I dont know if anyone has a solid answer for it. The thing that clearly happened with dragons is that these nature spirits, these serpentine water creatures became confused with a lot of other things in travelers tales. Weve got a great story from medieval England about a dragon an actual real live dragon with great nails and nasty teeth, and so on, which the Richard the Lion Hearted brought home from the third crusade. He kept it at the Tower of London for awhile except it got away, and it made its way through Surrey devouring livestock and threatening people. Finally, it was met in single combat by a knight of that area who used his spear to slay it. Now the dragon in question is referred to a dragon by most of the chronicles, but theres one chronicle that calls it a cocodril, that is to say, a crocodile. Theres your dragon. Youve got to admit, a crocodile makes a pretty good dragon. Kala: It does and if you havent seen one you would definitely John: Yeah, its fierce, it has a lot of teeth a fierce reptilian that have a lot of teeth, long tail, you know, hungry, and it does not turn up its nose at a nice tasty human being. As dragons go, thats pretty real. But youve got all of these travelers tales and stories about big snakes and crocodiles, and things, all around, sort of filtering into the medieval European consciousness. My own kind of guess and its just a guess is that the fire-breathing thing comes from spitting cobras. I mean, youve got this thing that spits a poison that produces a burning feeling when it get in your eyes. Kala: Sure. John: Maybe it was that, I dont know. With so much of this monster stuff, its a matter of speculation. Its a matter of you gather the folklore together, you look at it, you think, Maybe it was this, we dont know. Those three words we dont know Ive become convinced that the three scariest words in the English language, because most people will not utter them. You know, Weve got to have an answer, weve got to know what the dragon was and where it came from, either its non-existent or it was actually, some kind of memory of dinosaurs, or what have you. Theres a huge amount of things about this world that we just dont know. Kala: Yes, absolutely. You speak about monsters in your bookI think the word monster, where it comes from... John: Its a very revealing word, because monster comes from the Latin word monstrum, which means that which is shown forth or revealed. It comes from a very magical view of the world in which the world is always showing us things. The world is not just sitting there sort of passively empty, brainless, waiting for us to do stuff with it. Its engaged with us. Its doing things. It is showing us and teaching us things. One of the ways it does this is that it pops up things that are unlikely and unusual, things that catch our attention and make us go, Woah, whats that about? Thats what monsters were in the original sense of the word. Kala: Yes, and monsters is just a term to have us look at that something unknown or perhaps part of ourselves or a fear that we have that we havent

John: A fear that we have, exactly. Its a knowable world thats saying, Hey, there. Wake up. You dont know as much as you think you do. We do not want to hear that wake-up call. So we bar the door against the monster. Kala: John, Ill go with you with the dragon on being a crocodile. I happen to love crocodiles and alligators so that works for me, but I want to talk about mermaids and I love mermaids. So Im hoping youre telling me that they exist. John: Well, mermaids, thats one of the most interesting things -- I cannot justify any claim about mermaids, except for the fact that people keep seeing them, and not just when theyre drunk, and not just lonely sailors, or anything. I mean, as recently as the 50s and 60s, there are well documented, authenticated cases of people going out in an isolated beach in Scotland or something, and theres a mermaid sitting on a rock. She sees them and she goes, Peep then dives into the water and swims away. I mean, how do you respond to something like that? Theres nothing youre going to gain these days by going to the press and saying, Oh, by the way, I was on the beach this morning and saw a mermaid. Theyre going to think youre crazy and yet people keep on seeing it. Now it is very popular among scientists for reasons that baffle meto claim that mermaids dugongsmanatees. Okay, I dont know if youve ever seen a manatee. Kala: Yes, I used to live in Florida. Im very familiar. John: There you go, youve seen manatees. Now, the claim is that sailors whove been at sea for a long time would somehow mistake one of those for a beautiful woman naked from the waist up, with a fish Im sorry. I dont care how long theyve been deprived of female companionship manatees are marvelous creatures, I hope they thrive they are as ugly, I mean certainly, you know I cannot credit the claim. Kala: They call them sea cows for a reason. John: Sea cows, yeah. The name dugong basically kind of sums up my reaction. The only problem is that mermaids are seen. Where they are sighted is in the far North Atlantic, specifically. Manatees dont live outside of tropical water, they never have. I mean, there was a Stellers sea cow but lived in the illusions, but looked even less like a woman. So the whole manatee business one of the things that we have nowadays with the modern debunking industrypeople who literally make a living or at least as part of their living writing books on how this doesnt exist and that doesnt exist and the other thing doesnt exist they are very prone to what UFO researchers call wipes. A wipe is an explanation that doesnt explain anything. Its a bit of shotty logic meant to say, Well, it must have been this. And what this is, is something that sits within the debunkers world view. So you have the people who insist that UFOs must have been swamp gas, but they dont act like swamp gas. Theres no evidence that theres really swamp gas in the area, swamp gas doesnt glow, not usually. It certainly doesnt move at 18,000 miles an hour. But it must have been, because it couldnt have been anything we dont know about. Its the unstated thing. The dugong thing is another example, its a wipe. Its, Lets drop some lets come up with a thought stopper and we can just say and, well, it was a manatee, lets stop looking at it. Mermaids? People keep seeing them. Are they physically real? I dont have the least idea. I have never had the opportunity to come within reach of one and kind of gently poke it and find out if my finger actually contacts scales or something, butnor do I ever expect to have that privilege if I dont live within reach to North Atlantic people see them, and in some ways thats the thing that I wish more attention was paid to. Whatever ones view about what is real, whatever ones philosophy, whatever sort of scientific arguments you want to make, people see strange things. Its a wipe. Its just as much a wipe as the dugong thinking this is Well, anyone who sees something I dont believe in must be lieing.

Kala: Somehow though, we seem to be uncovering more and more animals from jungles that weve never seen before. John: Oh, yeah. The world is a complicated place. Kala: Yes, it is. John: The world is a very complicated and mysterious place. I, personally, suspect that down the road a bit somebody will finally come across a dead sasquatch. All the evidence on the sasquatch at least leads me to think that its basically a large ape and no more supernatural than a gorilla, but it is a large temperate-region ape that happens to still be surviving in the Northwest rainforest. Such a creature could easily live make a very good living up in the Cascade Mountains. Kala: Well, we explore space which I think is wonderful, but weve yet to even fully explore our oceans which are so much of this world. John: We know almost nothing about what goes on in the deep oceans. Kala: Yet science will say that many creatures came from the water and then evolved to a land existence, and so why couldnt there be the possibility of some type of form, like a mermaid that, you know, is still there? Just because we havent encountered them John: Yeah, it could be a physical form. It seems unlikely that something would have essentially a primate upper body structure, and then a fish tail. That would be a very, very unusual thing in evolutionary terms. But, hey, weirder things have happened. Go look at a platypus, which has the snout and feet of a bird and the body of a mammal. Kala: Thats like the is it the centaurs, Im trying to remember that have the body of a horse and John: The centaurs. Kala: Yes. What do you think about those? John: I have no idea. It would be really nice if they were around. It has been argued that they were the response of the ancient Greeks to encounter in cavalry for the first time. I havent the least idea. That I know of, they have not been sighted since the ancient times since very ancient times. So, did they exist at one point? I havent the least idea. Kala: But it could be on the same premise as the mermaid, perhaps. John: It could be. If somebody were to bag a mermaid, then certainly I think that would increase the odds that you could believe that centaurs are real, yes. Kala: Okay. Now, youve lived in Washington State. Ive lived there as well, its beautiful. There are a lot of stories about Faeries up there, and also in your book you talk about the little earth people. Can you describe what those to me are? John: Well, basically, all around the world, you have beliefs in these very small, usually two to three feet tall, dwarf-like creatures who live in mounds, or in hills, or in other kind of out-of-the-way locations, who are very good at messing with human minds and speak a language of their own. Theyre intelligent beings. Exactly how physical they are, again, is a very interesting question. Now the little earths I cant pronounce the word for them, unfortunately, so thats the translation the little earth people are the local ones up in the

South Puget Sound. The Shamans of the Duwamish people have a very close relationship to them when they do they have a ceremonywhen somebodys soul has been lost, the Shamans will go retrieve it in the land of the dead and theyll do this visionary canoe journeyits an amazing thingbut, the first thing theyll do when they formulate this astral canoe to make the journey. As soon as they establish the canoe, with plenty of drumming and chanting to build the thing up, each of the Shamans will call the little earth that he works with. Then there will be this rustling and this sense of movement all around as all little earths show up to help out on the journey, because theyre very helpful creatures. Kala: Beautiful. John: So theyre the ones who paddle the canoe on the way to the land of the dead and , they help out. Without them it wouldnt be possible. Basically every country, every corner of the worlds surface practically has stories about these entities. Thats as true of North America as anywhere else its true of Hawaii, its true of, of course, of everyone else, with the European traditions and there are common features and there are differences locally or place to place. I use the term faery or creatures of faery, just to refer to the lot of them simply because its a good general catch-all, but the amount of complexity, the amount of difference within that very large grab-bag term needs to be remembered, because there are no universal rules in dealing with these entities. Do they exist? Im convinced of it. Have I interacted with things that I believe corresponded to that class of being? Yes. Can I prove it? Nope, but thats true for almost anything you encounter as a practicing occultist. Kala: Yes. John: You know, its difficult to prove. Spirits dont leave fingerprints. Kala: Well, when you have an experience like that its usually so profound and leaves an effect on you. It doesnt really matter whether you prove it to anyone else or not. John: Oh, yes. Its only the debunkers who are insisting, you know, You cant prove that, therefore it doesnt exist. Kala: Its like explaining love. Everyone can tell you a nice story but no one can truly define love. John: Yeah. And nobody can prove that its there. Theres no you cant apply a Litmus test to somebodys lips or something and say, Yep, Id say theres a lot of concentration, 92.4 cupids of love, you know, whatever. The scientific worldview or the scientific method scientific approach to life is really marvelous for the things that it works on. Its a great system and its really the best thing weve come up with species for figuring out details with whats going on with hard matter, but it doesnt cover all of life. It doesnt cover everything that exists. When people forget that, theyre like the little boy who was given a hammer and ran around hitting everything, because when youve got a hammer in your hand everything looks like an nail. Kala: I love science and Im glad that we incorporate science as strongly as we do now in this age, compared to past times when we didnt and things were explained purely just on religious beliefs, that wasnt good either. I really think that if we could have a balance of both ( science and spirituality) that well uncover more of the mysteries and the truth. I think the problem is we have one form of science right now that is based on the subjective and it must have a repeatable result and a lot things in this world are more objective and happen in random patterns. It doesnt mean they dont still happen but its just random. John: Yeah. One of the basic principles of the scientific method is that you have to be able

to control all the variables. To make up something repeatable you control all the variables except one, and then you tweak that variable and see what happens. Well, in the real world most times you cant control all the variables. You just cant do it. Kala: Right. Thats like trying to make someone fall in love. John: Yes, exactly, falling in love. Okay, here we go. Were going to do a field test. Were going to get, say, a hundred identical couples. Well, good luck. It doesnt happen. Once you get past a certain level of complexity repeatability fails because you cant get... (continued on part three) Due to the length of this interview, it is being offered as Part One, Part Two and Part Three. Please continue to the next article: Monsters: An Investigators Guide to Magical Beings Part Three. For more info: On the Explore Your Spirit with Kala Show, Kala Ambrose speaks with authors, artists, explorers and researchers, delving into topics of ancient mysteries, metaphysical explorations and new discoveries from science and spiritual arenas. Transcribed here is the interview Kala conducted with John Michael Greer about his book: Monsters: An Investigators Guide to Magical Beings. *Special Thanks to TaDa Transcripts for providing the transcript of this audio interview. Continue reading on Examiner.com Monsters: An Investigators Guide to Magical Beings interview with John Michael Greer Part Two - National Metaphysical Spirituality | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/metaphysical-spirituality-in-national/monsters-an-investigators-guide-tomagical-beings-interview-with-john-michael-greer-part-two#ixzz1Nt1mpQ3n