For the 20th episode of Climate Change in the Multiverse, I had the absolute honour of sharing a conversation with alchemist, shapeshifter, and TikTok star Elianne El-Amyouni aka Twitchy Witch!
Elianne and I discuss the mental health effects of the wildfires, depression and ego death, solar consciousness, Jesus and the paradox of suffering under Capitalism, solve et coagula, being a fool for love, the fear that the world is ending, and so much more.
“ I learned to love the exponentially increasing intensity and to appreciate that this is the expansion of my awareness at work. And I chose this path, so I have to be up to the responsibility of it. Which is to accept that it's just going to get deeper.
If we take Christ as our example as solar consciousness on Earth… This person underwent the worst kind of death and rebirth. [Jesus was] crucified. Is there anything worse, is there any better symbol for an existential breakdown, or a dark night of the soul? Is there anything darker than to be crucified by your own people? So that in itself reminds me, if the work is going to be great, then the pain is going to be just as great.
Until you reach a point where you start enjoying the added intensity of [periods of depression, ego deaths, existential crises…], it is going to get worse. Because you are more aware. The same way that if you are someone who doesn't experience a lot of joy, you're also somebody who doesn't suffer too deeply. But the more you are able to experience joy to take in your surroundings — to love — the more you're going to hurt, the more you're going to suffer.”
You can follow Elianne’s work on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter — and join their vibrant community on Discord.
Find this episode and more wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for being here!
Note: During the conversation, I state that 44 new food billionaires emerged during the first year of the pandemic. The correct statistic is 62 food billionaires during the first two years of the pandemic.
Watch the full conversation on YouTube
Transcript
Kelly Tatham: Welcome, listeners. Thank you for being here. I am so excited to share conversation today with Twitchy Witch. Elianne, thank you for being here. I discovered you on Tik Tok I think about a year ago and I've been just so entranced by your teachings of alchemy and tarot and history and religion. And I've learned so much from you. I love watching you and interacting with you. So thank you so much for being here with me today.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Thank you for having me.
Kelly Tatham: So how are you, you're off in -- Are you in Montreal right now? Is there smoke around you?
Elianne El-Amyouni: I'm in Toronto, and the sky has been a nice, consistent gray for the past week, 10 days. I don't even know anymore. I'm losing it.
Kelly Tatham: Wow. Well, I'm not -- I'm down in LA right now. And it's gloomy here too. Like the sun hasn't been out here much either. And for the past couple of months. I've been looking at the weather in Canada and it's warmer in Canada than it is here.
Elianne El-Amyouni: It's awful and I've been waiting for the sun. I have really Vitamin D deficiencies. This cloudiness is not good for my mental health. It does not agree.
Kelly Tatham: For all of us. We need the sun.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Yeah, legit. And fresh air. I'm having a hard time going outside just to get some fresh air and for the last week or so it's just been really smoky. Even going outside it doesn't feel as fresh as usual.
Kelly Tatham: Does that affect your well being or do you feel like, this is so interesting to me with spiritual people and people who are tapped into maybe other sorts of perceptions of the world like, Do you still get like, “Oh no, reality is crumbling...”
Elianne El-Amyouni: Well, I'm not afraid of the world ending like it's gonna end, it's gonna end, whatever. But I am Mediterranean and my body needs sunlight and fresh air. I am used to being outside most of the time. So being inside in this little apartment in a cold country definitely affects my mental health. And this period now has been affecting me in a weird way. I've just been unable to sleep properly. Can't go outside, like, it's just the whole vibe. I also like to put my feet in the grass every day, like, bare feet. And that's also hard to do now because just like I was saying being outside just doesn't feel good.
Kelly Tatham: Yeah. Going outside with like a mask on and then you're taking your shoes off and on the ground. It's just a weird sort of.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Yeah, I mean, you do what you got to do, but like I've been waiting all winter, but for the summer. What is this? I'm taking it very personally.
Kelly Tatham: You're like, excuse me, weather like we had a deal and --
Elianne El-Amyouni: Legit. I made it through the whole winter. You said that, you know, the sun would come out eventually. What gives?
Kelly Tatham: I personally, I can get into catastrophizing a bit looking at the fires in Canada and the smoke that was coming down. I really had to pull myself back from the edge because I've studied a lot of the climate science and I have made peace with the world ending, I have, and it's like how I get through, but then I still get to that place where I'm, like, I'm not okay with that, well, because why would anyone be okay with it? But, you know, I’m re-centering myself, grounding myself, remembering, like, I'm safe right now and me freaking out doesn't make anything better for anybody else.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Right. And, to me, it's a lot of thinking about, say, this being signs of the end of the world — is so similar to just your everyday concept of death. We are going to die. Our world is going to end. Be it in an individual sense or in a collective sense. I've already gone through the whole journey in terms of reconciling with death. So when I start seeing all the conspiracy videos, everyone freaking out, the climate, etcera, I'm like, Oh, yeah, we already did this work. So I'm just gonna keep doing what I'm doing.
Kelly Tatham: That brings up so many thoughts. I mean, Death, Key 13, right. It's my understanding that in the Marseille deck or one of the original decks, there was no name for it, that it was just like this nameless card and then in so many lineages, death is rebirth. It's just the natural cycle of things. But also on a personal note, I just finished co-writing a book for a client partly about immortality, partly about human longevity and the technology that's coming on board and there are researchers out there who believed they figured out how to safeguard the human body from aging how to cure aging, essentially.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Sheesh. Okay, I think I saw something like that like a video of these two men on a podcast, talking about how they could now make you like 20 years younger, like your genes would actually be younger.
Kelly Tatham: Yeah, they're doing that the reverse like skin cells, for example, they figured out how to bring back. They've done it with mice in the lab, like they're speeding up aging, they're slowing down aging, they're halting aging, and so to me, like, I pair that with AI and with climate change, where I'm like, 'kay, some big shift is happening. I don't know where we're going. But I do know that all of these things are happening parallel to each other that seem like, I'm like simultaneously the world is ending and we're going to live forever. So --
Elianne El-Amyouni: It is a confusing world. But I think that, so I read a lot of history. I love history. And what I've noticed is throughout history at every major shift, especially technological shifts and scientific discoveries, everyone always thinks it's the end of the world. Always. That is a recurrent narrative. And we're a lot of what we're saying on Tik Tok and on Instagram and people all over the internet -- a lot of that is almost verbatim what people have said before at every turn and at every age. I don't know such a large part of me is just too skeptical. I guess, too skeptical of this out of the world catastrophe like even nature, we were just talking about nature, and nature teaches us that like even if you have a little plant that's wilting and dying, you can always revive it somehow you bury put it in new soil, you water it, you feed it, you get a little fertilizer, you put it in the right environment, and what you thought was dead just comes back to life like I mean, it's not. It's never, to me at least it's just never so grim. I just don't think that death can overpower life at any point. We talk about the balance and that these two are the opposite ends of each other and it's like a zero sum game. But the fact is, it's not -- it's a positive sum game. If it were a zero sum game, everything would be the same. It would be this maintenance of status quo. But actually, there's always progress. There's always more. There's more people. There's more discoveries, there's expansion, there's more travel, more connections. Life is consistently winning over death, but I think that's what I'm trying to say. Overall.
Kelly Tatham: I love this. I love this and like maybe the death thing -- what we labeled death or what we perceive as death is like it's just a transition into something else.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Exactly. Life's way of dissolving and then reassembling itself in a more expansive way every time actually.
Kelly Tatham: Yeah, and life will out, like it's just gonna keep -- it might not look like when I think about you know, the end of the world when I make peace with that, the so-called "end of the world" right or like what I perceive from my my little human spot where I'm like, my world's going to end one day. But like thinking of all those things that are the all these things that are happening, and I think about the metaphor of the caterpillar into the butterfly and how in that in-between transformational stage, it's total annihilation for that creature. And it comes out completely different but made up of all the same pieces, like it was all in there. And so just accepting that it's just like that it's going to keep going and I might not retain this sense of self or this specific viewpoint of consciousness, but it is going to keep going.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Yeah, that's such a great metaphor, I think for the whole solve et coagula theme right? Like because the caterpillar literally dissolves into the environment it made itself -- made for itself -- and then is reborn as this new thing, this new combination between itself and its environment. Its self and its cocoon. It's insane. It's actually so magical. Like it's simple. But it's so magical.
Kelly Tatham: It's so magical. Yeah. I think of like the Hanged Man for me has come to represent that cocoon phase.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Yes.
Kelly Tatham: But I know different people have different perspectives on that like some more sort of negative oriented or like even I saw, I think it was a Medicine Woman deck that depicted the Hanged Man as Narcissis. I may be incorrect, but I thought that was an interesting way of...
Elianne El-Amyouni: That is interesting. I always I love the Hanged Man is one of my favorite cards. It's so underrated as a card, I think. And it always reminds me of Odin. When I see the Hanged Man. I always think of Odin hanging himself from that tree and just being like, if any of the gods tried to touch me or help me, it will be the end for them. You will leave me alone so that I can transform into the wandering God. Thank you, goodbye.
Kelly Tatham: Maybe that's the narcissistic part where it's like, this is just me and me, doing me. Yeah, but in the in the Thoth deck. Do you call it Thoth or Thoth? What's your pronunciation of that?
Elianne El-Amyouni: I guess Thoth. Yeah. But I've seen people say it's Thoth or it's Thoth but honestly I mean, the you know, the Egyptians who were using the name are not coming back to reprimand me so I'm just gonna read it the way I see it. Keep going.
Kelly Tatham: I love this. I get a little like hyper-fixated on like, oh, I have to get the thing right. And it just like, who cares? I don't know.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Yeah, I think that's the pressure also of our current political, social climate. There's a lot of pressure to Oh, you have to say, right, you have to do it right. And there's always somebody who's going to be offended on behalf of someone else. And at this point, I'm just like, I'm sorry. I'm going to need you to focus on your own struggle, and leave me alone. And if the ancient Egyptians have an issue, they can come to me and my dreams, otherwise I don't know why you're speaking on their behalf. Like, what?
Kelly Tatham: That's a great point, like one of my favorite teachers and philosophers is a man named Bayo Akomolafe. And he encourages mispronunciation. He's like, don't be afraid -- because people will look at his name and they'll be like, how do I and he's like, just try it. It's great. Like maybe that's where the answers are in the place where we're afraid to go and to get wrong. But with the Thoth deck in that depiction of the Hanged Man, he's a martyr. He's got the nails or they have nails upside down in that, you know, perhaps cocoon state or Odin state but with also the nails to this, what looks like a grid. Yeah. And so it makes me think of, even though we're transforming, we're still kind of in this space. We're still in this matrix of this fourfold consciousness, if you will.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Definitely, that's interesting that you bring that up too, because I've been thinking about this a lot in terms of like, we talked about the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual... but when it comes to defining what is the spiritual I've just been asking people over the last couple of weeks because I've been thinking about this, what is the spiritual? It's easy to say what the mental, physical and emotional are but what is the spiritual? What are you saying when you say, the "spiritual," and the more people I asked, the more I realized that there was no pin down definition. No one is actually sure there's no consensus as to what's the spiritual and I have come to a conclusion lately, especially since I've been reading like the gospel of Mary Magdalene and just diving back into hermeticism for book club. I have a feeling that when we say, when we talk about that fourth dimension, that spiritual dimension, I actually think we're talking about the -- a certain alignment between the mental, physical and emotional. It's not actually that the spiritual is a separate category, as much as it is the coming together of the three, if you know what I mean. Like in that alchemical notion of, Out of the third comes the one as the fourth. And I think, to a degree, I think that that's where it's at: knowing how to combine these three different aspects of ourselves in a way that creates a spiritual awareness, a Solar awareness. Yeah, sorry about that rant.
Kelly Tatham: I love that. The rant was perfect. It that makes a lot of sense to me. What's coming to mind is you know, we know there are three dimensions of space. But the fourth dimension, like there's no clarity from physicists that the fourth dimension is time because we actually don't know what time is. Like we understand entropy I think, to an extent, but like, when we talk about the so-called spacetime matrix, and when we, you know, hear people say, like, we're evolving to 5D, and like, usually they're like 3D to 5D and like, Where did 4D go? Like, because no one really knows what 4D is. Because no one really knows what time is. But, you know, if it's those three aspects together, like coming to understand, or to be in balance, to have this experience of linear consciousness, which is what we understand time to be. That makes a lot of sense.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Right? I feel you because like, we like you said, we don't know the fourth dimension. There's not even scientifically what is time, like, what. I mean, I don't know. But in that like in that train of thought, then it also makes sense that gravity and time are somewhat connected or time is somehow some outgrowth of gravity or vice versa, like, I don't know, it's just so fun to think about this.
Kelly Tatham: It's the best. Yeah. And it also can be like discombobulating too. Do you ever have existential crises, like, is that part of your world?
Elianne El-Amyouni: Oh, yes, I will be I would not be myself without my crises. Definitely. My bread and butter.
Kelly Tatham: Do you have, like, what do you do for yourself when you're in that state, or are you just witnessing it?
Elianne El-Amyouni: Well, at this point, I started having psychotic breaks essentially at a very, very young age. So I was about six or seven years old the first time my perception of reality essentially shattered, and it kept happening till I was about 22. And at that point, I had such a breakdown that I just dove into a depression for about three years. And then after that, after, like, 25 or 26, things just started to make better sense or I don't know some level of my ego I had reached at that point had dissolved to the point where an existential crisis became an opportunity to go to Wonderland, essentially, like -- so at this point, I know that space so well. I know once once I start staying up past 2am, like right now, I'm kind of in the midst of an existential crisis right now, especially with this weather, something like that will send me off, but it becomes, I'll just be like, Ah, so we are the monsters are back. I will make some coffee and see what you guys have for me. And usually what I end up doing is writing a lot, watching a lot of things, researching whatever crazy ideas I'm coming up with. And that'll usually send me to create something new or start something new or it's how I started Twitchy, essentially, it was the outcome of an existential crisis. At the end of it, it was like, it was a it's time to tell people about this because you're not the only one. And I was like, Oh, very interesting. Here we are.
Kelly Tatham: How long ago was that?
Elianne El-Amyouni: I would say December 2021 it started and then it kept going to like summer of 2022. And then I started Twitchy around like mid July, early August, something like that --
Kelly Tatham: Of last year?
Elianne El-Amyouni: Last year. Yeah.
Kelly Tatham: Wow. So I think I found you quite at the beginning of, yeah. And I so, you know, because I create on TikTok as well and I started a couple of months before you and I was like working to get so clear on what I was trying to talk about and I arrived at that place and I had this video go viral, and then I had all this attention and like logging into like 1000 new followers and being like, so high on adrenaline that I couldn't sleep, but then I totally like my ego couldn't handle it and I totally like had to shut it off and take a break and I couldn't hold it and watching you, I was like, Wow, she's so clear and you know you had a methodology and everything was in place and I just am so impressed by like your certitude if that's the right word, or just your self actualization in that space.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Thank you. I mean, when you say it like that, it's so crazy because on my end, I was not sure about anything. Same thing happened to me. My video started popping off, and I just couldn't sleep and I just kept like refreshing every time I would refresh, I would have new followers, the count would just rise. Me and my friends spent a whole weekend just watching the numbers rise and I had no I had no idea I just like, had this meltdown like a quick depression, like a six month type of thing. And then I was like, You know what, I'm gonna just start talking about dreams. And I had started a little side business for tarot because it's just so expensive to live in Toronto. I wasn't able to pay rent. And I was trying to promote the little side hustle so that I could make rent and I started talking about tarot, it didn't get much attention. Then I was like okay, I also know dreams. Symbolism is essentially my thing. Just has always been spirituality, symbolism, esotericism. So I went into dreams, and then I remembered the Emerald Tablet. And I was like, Hey, I was watching a movie. I was watching a film. I can't remember what film but there was a trial scene. And the man was like, Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? And I was like, oh, Emerald Tablet, yo, I'm going to talk about this. This is gonna blow their minds. And it did. And then and then from there, I just kept going and people would contact me and like give me advice and be like, Oh you have to find -- this as your niche and you have to do this and you have to do that. Let me help you with your content. Let me help you organize. How do you streamline how do you film I literally to this day, will get an idea, go to my couch, film a video, put the captions on it, cut out all the parts of me breathing so that people stay interested and post it. That's it. That's my whole process. I don't pre film I don't prepare anything like nothing. And people Yeah, like the thing everybody kept, kept giving me all this. You have to do this. You have to do that. And I kept on looking at the account. And like you know what, the numbers are rising. People are booking tarot readings. I am making rent. I'm not going to take anybody's advice. I'm just gonna keep doing what I'm doing and I'm gonna make it chaos and I don't care. Like all of these especially men. There's there was a lot of men who were approaching me to help with structuring -- this is how you do this. And this is how you do that. And this is what people do. And I was like, You know what? It sounds like this is what you do. And it sounds like there's just the structure that somebody set up and everybody just went along with and I would rather just be real. Nobody lives inside of a niche. I cannot contain my interests. I am going to want to talk about religion tomorrow and I don't want to be stopped because that's not my niche. And I did that I made the first like Jesus in the Quran video and then that popped up and every time I would change directions, people would just be down for it. They're like, yeah, we'll go I'll go there with you. Let's go, like, whatever. So Tarot dreams, religion, esotericism history, whatever it is, like, we should be allowed to just reign free and follow our interests and do whatever we want. And I'm so glad it comes off as so assured because like I said, I was just totally just doing whatever came to mind whatever felt natural, doing my best to not listen to the, the critical voice in my head, to listen to the people reaching out because especially when I popped off at first, it was so overwhelming, like you said, just getting all that attention is so weird. And then having all these people reach out. That like just holding yourself back from that in itself is a practice, I think, and I think that that helped me I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I would have been bigger and more successful now if I had gone with all these things I would I was offered but I like the direction that I took because I still am in am in control of my own chaos. Nobody else is, you know telling me what to do or I should or shouldn't do or what the structure is. And this is how. I mean, I don't care like my parents -- my whole society told me what I was supposed to do is have three children by now. Like what um, people are already doing what you're saying that they're doing like why would I make more of that it's just redundant.
Kelly Tatham: Do you have long term goals or even short term goals for the project or is it all being felt out in the moment?
Elianne El-Amyouni: Literally, I'm still at the, Alright, I just want I just need to make sure that my tarot readings of the month are full and that rent is met. That is the main like, if there's a solid objective for every month that is it, just making rent and then everything else is spreading knowledge, helping people sharing insight, challenging people -- that has become a big part like that, at first was not a thing. But then as I started moving into different topics, and getting different kinds of responses from people, especially the hate mail, oh my gosh, that was when I started realizing, Okay, perhaps the larger picture here that I don't totally see is a change of mind. A shift. I know that there's a paradigm shift happening and at this point, I think, perhaps, I have a role in facilitating this shift or easing this shift or helping people embrace the shift. So yeah, challenging people is a big one for me now. And just making you think like ask questions like, Well, why are you so convinced? Who told you all this stuff? Just ask a question, bro, it's nothing wrong. You don't need to find the answer. Just lets your mental space expand. All it takes is a question. Answers to me close the space. Like, this is the end this is the answer. Let's put a pin in it and revisit. No. Like what No, I want to keep I'm going to ask why forever. Just gonna keep keep spiraling out.
Kelly Tatham: You can't pin an idea to across
Elianne El-Amyouni: Legit.
Kelly Tatham: Yeah, and the feedback especially from people who are triggered is so clarifying. Like, it says so much about them and I think the questions too, like, you must get so much insight from the questions people ask you with Tarot, like, I find sometimes you can you could just break it all down based on their question. You don't even need to pick up the cards.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Legit. You just hear what someone has to say and what they're going through and you're like, Yeah, we need to shift your mindset a little bit. You're fine. It's all good. We just need we just need to take this out of the little box that you put it in and just let it roam free. It'll be okay.
Kelly Tatham: Yeah, but we're such emotional beings and we're so attached to our emotional experiences and like there's like, but I feel this way so it must be true.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Legit. Who told you your feelings were smart, bro? Like who told you your ideas were good? It's -- especially for me. It's the people who have the convictions, the beliefs, the like, I will fight to the death. Like seriously, bro, like, you're not going to be here to defend this in within like a few seconds in retrospect, if not a few milliseconds. Are you really going to waste your time defending something, you know, that's eventually going to dissolve once you're gone. Just fun, bro. Like what is happening?
Kelly Tatham: Yeah, I think like, you know, the paradigm shift that you're talking about and the you know, the, the dark night of the soul or the ego death or like even the depression that we go through, like, allowing those things to happen and like feeling those shifts, like allows us to Yeah, just be in a shifting paradigm where so many people are just kind of clinging on to, well, this is what I've been handed and like, and this is what I see maybe or I believe and then it keeps reinforcing itself. And they are unwilling or unable to allow in the discomfort that comes with the shifting perspective.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Yeah, and I'm making fun, but I also can't blame anyone because I can't say that. Especially the first time you do it, especially if you're doing it as an adult. Like I said, I had my worldview shattered my quote unquote Ego Death first ego death when I was very, very young and I was never programmed to think religiously or to think with convictions. My parents were spiritual people. My mentors were spiritual people, even the religious ones. Like the priests, rabbis, shifs that I grew up with, never tried to dog monetize me, they always reminded me to ignore the dogma to think past the dogma to challenge the dogma. So I was already really lucky. And it's still difficult for me, when I have these existential crises. So when I imagine somebody going through this dark night of the soul for the first time as an adult, I mean, it's not it's not easy and it can fuck you up like if you if you can't make it all the way through you can get stuck there. And it can just get worse than it was. So and I've seen that happen, too, like it's risky business, but if you can make it through if you can be honest with yourself, if you can be brave, it's worth it. So worth it. I think.
Kelly Tatham: I agree. Yeah. But I found for myself, I'm like it's gotten worse a bit like the last one I went through was definitely the worst one by far and I was like, No, this is supposed to get easier and then, like, well --
Elianne El-Amyouni: No, it gets worse. For sure. Until you reach a point where you start enjoying the added intensity of it every time. But it is going to get worse. I can tell you that. Because you are more aware. So the same way that if you are someone who doesn't experience a lot of joy, you're also somebody who doesn't suffer too deeply. But the more you are able to experience joy to take in your surroundings, to love -- the more you're going to hurt, the more you're going to suffer. It's part of it. And I think you reach a point like I said, I reached a point where "khalas" I completely broke down. It was after like several times growing up. And that lasted a long time like that depression lasted a long time. It was really bad. Like, I got to a point where like, I couldn't I was just totally dysfunctional, like, I couldn't put together why I needed to brush my teeth in the morning since they were going to be dirty again and I was gonna have to brush them again. Like what kind of fucking cycle is this? I can't live like this. Why am I even alive? What's the point of this? Why don't I end this like, it was a whole thing. It wasn't until after that, that I learned to love the exponentially increasing intensity and to appreciate that this is the expansion of my awareness at work. And I chose this path. So I have to be up to the responsibility of it. Which just to accept it's just going to get deeper. If we're gonna take Christ as our example as this like solar consciousness on Earth? This person underwent the worst kind of death and rebirth. So I mean this person pinned themselves to a cross they were crucified. Is there anything worse, is there a better symbol for an existential breakdown, or a dark night of the soul? Is there anything darker to be crucified by your own people like it's so you know, that in itself reminds me like, you know, in the work -- if the work is going to be great, then the pain is going to be just as great.
Kelly Tatham: I've been thinking about pain and suffering a lot. And the quote that always comes to mind first is from The Prophet. Kahlil Gibran, Pain is the shell -- Pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Yes, I love Gibran.
Kelly Tatham: Oh, and Eckhart Tolle says, "Pain is the price of your freedom." And it's interesting because well, so there's so much swirling. There's also like the second arrow in Buddhism you know, that suggests that pain is the first arrow and then the second arrow, this is choice what we choose to -- the stories we choose to tell about the pain. But I feel like also in Buddhism somewhere they say life is suffering or something along those lines. I don't know if that's kind of misquoted, but thinking about Jesus and the suffering that was, quote unquote, for all of humanity -- what, you know, depending on what ideology you buy into, that that was you know, the sacrifice suffering was the sacrifice to save the world as it were. And yet, in that in the paradigm of Christianity of this notion that the Jesus died for our sins and the heavenly Father, you know, that it's all outside and above and separate from us, and that we must repent for our own sins because Jesus suffered for us within that paradigm, the tension around suffering, and pain is so interesting because capitalism thrives on us being in enough pain that we need to mask our suffering with consumption. And so it's like there's this weird tension going on where like, we're uncomfortable with pain and we're uncomfortable with suffering, and we're trying to avoid it under the paradigm that tells us that suffering was the height of, you know, the spiritual religious experience, and yet, we're operating from this place where we're taught to suppress all of that and it's just all so twisted.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Yeah, the Western world has I think, most of all, a problem with death. And that's what our, that's what the ideology is built itself around: a rejection of death. Capitalism helps you forget the anxiety of non existence. I'm sorry, were you crying about you know, being dead? That's okay. It's a nice little toy once you just play with this distract yourself. It's alright. You're gonna be okay. Don't worry. Just play with this for now. And if you get worried, again, we have more products for that.
Like, nah, we need we need to chill out. I think it's really interesting what you're saying because especially in terms of externalizing the Christ, this has now become something that you have to live up to and appease to and find your way back to and you have to do it without engaging with any kind of darkness. You have to be the ultimate light. Just totally reject anything that is dark or awful, or what we consider evil or different or other or anything that doesn't contribute to our ideal of immortality. It also brings us back to this technology that people are working on for aging and reversing the aging process and making us live longer. I've always felt like the Western world has an issue a big psychological issue with the idea of death. They just do not think that they're going to die. People genuinely on one level just aren't facing that, especially if you're born and raised in a western Catholic environment. Like it's not about the death. It's about the mortality through the man himself. And all the violence of the imagery that you need to focus on so that you never repeat that again, like, I don't know.
And then it gets tied into like this whole image of Jesus being meek and humble and all of this like stuff when in fact, like, Jesus was OG, first of all, and like, this is not like it's just so out, not out of alignment. It's so it's like a half truth. Like, again, in the words of Gibran as well. Like you shouldn't trust half livers. There is no there is no half life though those who only love halfway will only I can says he will only cry half their tears and and express half their laughter and that's not a life that's a half life. And that's what we think are caught in in the West this half life. Just ignore it. Ignore the Abyss because I can deal with it right now. I'll go by myself something pretty and will be okay.
Kelly Tatham: Yes, yes, absolutely. I had a woman named Skeena Rathor on this podcast, and she was from she's Indian lineage. And she was talking to me about going to a funeral of someone she really cared for. And she just wanted to wail and and weep and that was, you know, in her cultural upbringing supported but she was in sort of a WASP-y space and she was with this man's daughters and they were just, you know, and so she did the same thing and she said, you know, she got a headache and she started feeling nauseous and I've had these experiences in my own family with grieving and honoring past ones. And it's not available in those spaces to actually feel deeply and it reminds me of your multiverse theory, and talking about grief being perhaps the energy of our loved ones coming into us once they pass or like we don't know what to do with it. And I'm so interested by that concept of like, well, grief being love all built up with nowhere to go. And to live a half-life because we're afraid of the suffering or we're conditioned to be afraid of the pain. That we don't get to experience the other half. We don't get to experience the full depth of the joy or even the curiosity.
Elianne El-Amyouni: It's demonized, like, even especially, for example, as women, we're concerned we're consistently reminded about our skin, our looks the fact that we're aging, that we're going to lose value when we age, and within that narrative is already baked in the idea, Well, you know, when you cry, you're really messing up your DNA. You're just helping yourself age, stress is not good for your body. You shouldn't be sad. You can be spending days on end crying or grieving over someone that's not going to be good for your skin. You don't want to age more quickly, do you? It's a whole -- and all of that. On top of that all of this new medical psychiatric talk about what happens when you're upset as if being upset or being in grief or being sad is is some kind of demon, some kind of devilish value. But, as above so below, like if I'm not going to be able to be sad if I can't wail for somebody that I love that is the part of me like, What am I even doing? What is going on?
There's something so weird. There's something just so twisted about it. And the conspirator in me wants to believe that it's set up in a way to keep us subservient to keep us "okay" with being numbed. Like in Canada, for example, the fact that they legalized weed and now everybody's kind of on weed. Not that I have anything against weed. But it is a numbing factor. Right? And I mean, the more people you have in a population that aren't feeling anything ,that aren't thinking anything, that are half-baked most of the time and not taking in their surroundings. They're going to be easily told to pay an extra dollar on something every other day. I mean, we bought tomatoes the other day for like $9 or something at Costco. I think like a year ago, they were like $4, the same package. And as I was taking the tomatoes, like picking up groceries and stuff. I looked at it and I was like, wow, like, When did this happen? And how did I not notice? This is how good they are like, and I'm still here and I'm still paying my bills, like what am I going to do but I just feel like it's all connected. Somehow all these very intricate and messed up ways and we just need to like really take our time to pick it all apart.
Kelly Tatham: Yeah, because you know, the truth is in there but it's all messy and like you got to pick apart the threads and the food thing is, oof, I know how many people are stressing right now to pay their bills like it's it's never not been a stress in our in modern society, but like it's heightening and, you know, things took a spike during the pandemic, like the certain type of person, the person who maybe has the least ability to feel grief or the least ability to access the full depth of their humanity decided to capitalize and we're fed this mythology that like, oh, inflation is normal, and things are just going up and like maybe it's harder to -- like, the food chain is breaking a bit so it's harder to get things. And yet then why were there 44 new food billionaires within the first year of the pandemic. Like 44 new people became food billionaires.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Wow. That's insane. I didn't know that.
Kelly Tatham: Yeah. And like, it's -- in Canada, there's, you know, two thirds of the grocery stores are owned by, I don't know, two or three companies. And there's been price fixing going on which they deny but then these companies they also own certain media companies. And so we're not getting clear reporting on what's actually happening and like, you know, the reporting on behalf of the corporations you have to it's but, to your point, like there's just so much noise and we're constantly participating in numbing behaviors that we don't have the ability to focus -- We don't have the ability to go like this is wrong, because most people are just too busy trying to stay alive under capitalism and pay their bills because we're sectioned off from each other. We don't have community to turn to in most places. We're just kind of in our little boxes, just paying, you know, 110% more for tomatoes than we did last year.
Elianne El-Amyouni: It's crazy. Like, I don't know and you know, what frustrates me sometimes is feeling like I can't do anything to stop it. Like you know, like there's nothing I can just up and do to make it all stop or make it all right. I wouldn't even know what to do or where to start. And then the thought of like, well, if you want to break the system, you have to be inside the system. And the even the idea of that disgusts me like I don't want to be inside this fucking system. I just want to be outside raging with a sign. But that doesn't help at the same time. So lots of back and forth in my mind on that. And to your point on community. I think that is the greatest of CyOps of our modern age, the way we've been isolated and the way we seem to think that independence is a virtue, that being single will make you a better partner. How? Like, what? It's like saying that lying on your couch will make you a better athlete. Like, Are you joking? You have to move to be a better athlete. You have to be with people to be good at being with people. You can't get good at being alone and expect yourself to become the best partner of all time. Not to mention like why isn't it talked about that love makes us younger -- daily kisses make us younger. That shit is good for our skin. You don't age when you're being kissed good morning every day. Why are we told these things so what why isn't that ever brought up? There's so much there's so much virtue around being alone when the fact of the matter is if you want to punish someone, you put them in isolation. If someone who's in prison they're put in further isolation for misbehavior, and yet we convince ourselves oh, I need to move away from my parents. I need new friends. These people are holding me back. Blah, blah, blah. I need to be I need to have my own apartment. Like seriously, bro, do you think the industrial complex really needs your support? Does it need does it need more? Do more apartment buildings need to be put up like what is happening here? Why aren't we building communes with people that we get along with? What is happening?
Kelly Tatham: That hits so hard. Yeah, the housing crisis, the dialogue around the house -- like it's not housing crisis, there's enough infrastructure. We're not short on infrastructure. We don't need more infrastructure. It's the infrastructure is distributed unfairly.
Elianne El-Amyouni: It's ridiculous. And people will believe it. People will hear it, consume it. The media outlets are really good at framing things. They're rhetorical masters, so they know how to frame something they know how to make you feel the way they want you to feel. And you can't blame people for being afraid. Their fear is being played on and our fear is the greatest manipulative factor that we move in.
Kelly Tatham: Yeah, well, absolutely. Absolutely. The news media is such a double edged sword because we want to stay engaged and to an extent we need to be aware of what's going on. And yet the framing around the way the news is delivered, you know, 90% of the time 95% -- Well, you can't deliver any news without bias essentially, unless you're just listing facts, but even then, like there's there's still bias because it still from a point of view, and --
Elianne El-Amyouni: I always have to remember like when I see an article, and it catches my eye and it does something to my heart, you know, because the the headlines are always crazy. I have to stop take a breath, remind myself, Okay, before everything else, what this website wants is clicks because it wants to survive and it makes money off my click. It will say whatever it needs to say to get me to click on it. I need to remember that I cannot freak out and as soon as I see a crazy headline I have to calm down, click on the thing, see what's going on and use my discernment to see like, what is rhetorically just trying to pull me in and keep me on the page for views and clicks and money. And what is actually the info and then I'll have to go and pick out the things that I think are relevant or that I can discern, I have to go and do another search on these specific things till you get to the very bottom of it and you realize that only about 2% of that original crazy ass article was worth anything of your time. So yeah, like one sentence will be on point. Everything else will just be filler, just getting you to stay on the website so that they can keep the magazine going.
Kelly Tatham: Yeah. And keep you in that place of, not full numbness, but a little bit numb and a little bit needing to suppress so you're just going to buy more straight
Elianne El-Amyouni: And afraid. Fear, I think the biggest thing that is played on in our world today. You can get any you can get somebody to do anything out of fear. I learned that from 1984. You can -- I believe in the human spirit. But there are places that fear can take you that can break your soul at the end. At the end of that book. Winston it was his name or Wilson, he denies his love. He denies his freedom. He burns his journals. The book ends with him being just a good member of society, him and his girlfriend. They're just numbers in the system they've been raw dogged down until they're just one of the others and all that spirit and information and revolution. That spirit that we saw throughout the whole book is just totally sawed down because they play on their greatest fears. Wilson's greatest fear is rats. And they literally put a helmet cage of rats on his head to get him to break his own spirit. And that kills me. Especially that that ending it just when I read it the first time it blew my mind like wow. Wow, that could happen. They could do that.
Kelly Tatham: Yeah, do you remember how old you were when you read it? For the first time?
Elianne El-Amyouni: I think I was like 15 or 16 I guess by then. So I've been an avid reader my whole life. I started reading very, very young. Long story short, I was kind of born with a hip with broken hip. So I couldn't move I was in a cast for the first year of my life. And I was already like writing very early because that's all I could play with. I had a box. I existed in a box for the first year of my life and my parents would just give me papers and pens to play with. So I wasn't like eating things and crawling around and being held like other kids. I was just sitting observing and scribbling. So I started reading very very early. And by like 13, 14 I was already like I said I had : a number of like breakdown psychotic breaks. And I was already reading a lot of philosophy in my early teens. So when I read 1984 and my parents are very political because they're Lebanese and Lebanese people in general are just very politically aware like geopolitics. And I think actually, in most, if not all, post-colonial countries, there is a different kind of awareness for global geopolitics than there is in the West. Because we just consistently live with the effects of colonial policies and the International decisions of Western countries and more powerful countries, richer countries. So I was already in a in a mindset and a space where I had some knowledge about meal era and some political history and some philosophy. So reading 1984 was like, figuring out that for me at the time, I was such an outcast that I became afraid that my own outcast spirits could actually be taken from me if I drank the Kool Aid, or if anyone knew my weaknesses or my fears, that could be capitalized on that could be that could be used against me to the point that it would kill who I was. So yeah, that was long answer to how old are you?
Kelly Tatham: What a powerful revelation to have at that age. But it sounds like you were set up from day one to have this broad, analytical or just like this observance of the world.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Yeah, yeah, observance is, I think, a big theme in my life for as long as I can remember.
Kelly Tatham: What's there something specific that triggered your first existential crisis at six?
Elianne El-Amyouni: To be honest, I don't know. It's came -- It happened after I had a dream. So I had this dream that there was this, I was on a journey with my two best friends this little black girl and this Lebanese boy. They're only friends at the time and we were driving a car on this open plane, and we kept on stopping at these different points. And at the end, where we were going was towards the light, and the light was painfully blinding -- painfully. I couldn't look at it. And it wasn't always there. But they couldn't see it, but they knew or they believed me when I told them that the light was there and I was in pain. So they would cover me like we would stop on the road and they would cover me so I wouldn't have to look at the light. When all that they saw was a donkey on the top of the hill. And so the whole dream was just us journeying towards this painfully blinding light that at the very end was a unicorn. We eventually reached it and it was this spectacular white unicorn. It was so beautiful. And we stopped someplace and one of my the black girl, Amma, she jumped into a pond and I could see in the pond, these monsters and all these mythical creatures and I was so scared. They were all swimming around her feet and she was like, come in, come into the water. And I was like, You know what, I'm just gonna go take a nap in the car and I'll wait for you and we'll see what happens. So there were a couple spots where we would stop and I would be afraid but then I would either sleep it off or I would like force myself to stand and stare at the thing. And we reach it and there was this unicorn and it was great. But after I woke up from this dream, I was convinced that I was dead. And that didn't go away. That was it and I told my parents I told my dad I told the rabbi, his name was Mr. White, and my priest, Mr. Maximus, and they were like trying to reassure me like this is a good thing. Like, you know, the priest told me that this was a Jesus image that this was Christ image that Christ came on a donkey that I was meeting Christ. And I was like, I know I met him and I'm dead. Don't you understand? I'm fucking dead. Like, what? Don't you understand? I'm not really here. You're probably not even here. I don't even know how to explain it. But I was 1,000% convinced that we were all moving within the realm of my own death. And I could not escape the feeling for a while. And that's when like, I started reading more philosophical stuff. My dad got me this collection of philosophies explained for kids -- Spinoza and Schopenhauer and all these different philosophers, and that started to calm me down a little bit. And then it would come back, and like you said, it would come back more intensely and just, it kept going. It kept repeating itself.
Kelly Tatham: Whoa. Wow. And then you went on to study Jungian dream analysis and post secondary and gee, I wonder why.
Elianne El-Amyouni: I was drawn to symbolism and esotericism because by then, by the time I got to college, I was in a kind of a more judgy mindset at that point, trying to figure out who I was and comparing myself to everyone and you know, not liking anybody, not enjoying anyone's company. And I thought, when I discovered the occult and esotericism, I was like, Aha, these people know what I'm talking about. These people have the answers. Four, five years down the line, most of them are just bullshit men, like, you know, very misogynistic, trying to make some money, creating a hype for themselves. A lot of it turned out to just be wishy washy stuff, but not to say that there isn't any wisdom in these teachings, obviously, but I think this was the period that my discernment really started to develop. When I because I dived in thinking that this is it. This is going to be the answer. This is where I'm going to find out really what's wrong with me and why this keeps happening and what the message is. But I didn't find out. I just found out that there are no answers, and that a lot of these men really don't like women. For some reason, like there was a period where I had a bit of a crisis of like, Am I not allowed to be doing this because I'm a woman? Because none of them are women. And every time they talk about things, they talk about it in the paradigm of man, what a man does, and even the philosophers I would read would have opinions on women. And I remember reading, I don't remember who it was, but he was talking about how a woman like, woman is this like empty vessel and that's why she always needs to be pretty and that's why she needs to take care of this outside vessel of hers because that is essentially what creates the urge, the desire for man to become a man to be the hero. Like, as if my role is to make myself the best kind of trophy so that you can be the best kind of hero, but in my mind, like I'm the fucking hero. What do you mean? I don't want the trophy. I just want to be the hero. So where do I stand? Because I don't feel empty at all. At all. I can -- I've consumed you, sir, and everyone who became before you and everyone who came after you, after you were long gone. So tell me, Am I still an empty vessel? Do things just like run through me? Do they just what? I don't understand. So yeah, that was also part of it.
Kelly Tatham: Well, it's pretty present in the world. It was making me think of, well, it made me think of, you know, we're talking about just how everyone's capitalizing on our desire not to feel pain and how like New Age thought and spirituality is such a big part of that and there's just so much like, you know, you maybe you get excited about one teacher and then you learn a bit about them or you see a bit more about how they're preaching and it's like, oh, right, they're just trying to sell something or they're just trying to get me hooked into needing them so I continue to need them. But it made me think of I spent some time in a kundalini yoga community, Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan. And you know, his that specific lineage that he brought over and claimed there was like this Golden Chain of teachers and it turns out he was just making it all up or like he'd co-opted all these different other things and but one of the teachings was, "Man is a reflection of woman." And so they've kind of gone the other direction of like, you know, they're like, Oh, we can we can capitalize on these women. So we're going to tell them that they're all powerful, that they're 16 times more powerful than men. That was like the specific number they had a lot of specific numbers and sort of angles and ideas and that's something that struck me for a while because I was like, Well, yes, women are more powerful than men have, you know? Of course. Well, and then if you look at like, if you think of, you know, I think of Isis and Osiris and Horus like the the you know, the Divine Feminine being this like, primordial fabric. And I'm like, is this true, but that's something that kind of gets me caught up in relationship where I start putting all the blame on myself because I'm like, Oh, he's just this reflection of like, I have to be better so he can be better which is just this just hidden misogyny is just twisted around misogyny and a different like box like...
Elianne El-Amyouni: Legit. And so many new age spiritualists don't realize that what they're doing is refurbishing Catholicism. Like that's all this is like at this point. We're just refurbished and creating new dogma. And like you said capitalizing on the fact that women have been disempowered, so let's just make them feel more empowered and go from there. But I don't think that one exists without the other or one can arise without the other. For example, in The Kybalion, the way that they break it down, is that woman or the feminine energy is the active creative process. But the active creative process alone is absolute chaos. Obviously, the masculine in the activation the direction, this consistent, like push in a way in a certain to a certain way to a certain place or in a certain direction or the expansion according to a certain equation, let's say. We need to have both and even when you speak of the ancient gods, like Ashera was the consort of L, right, and mother of Baal or young. Now, Ashera is the mother of the gods, but L is the father of men, the creator of men. There is no earth or existence without the Gods creation of men, or the Goddesses birthing of the gods. Those are together if there was just a world of Gods if there was just Ashera aand she was the one on top and there was nothing else than we wouldn't be here. There'd be no there'd be no humans. And if it was just someone creating humans, like there wouldn't be anyone to create the humans like there's this necessary completion factor and we've externalized it to become man / woman. But it's not because these Aslam these terms are so arbitrary masculine and feminine. What does that even mean? There's no masculine or feminine there are these two yin yang energies that dance within each and every one of us. If I want to get a project done, if I'm the most talented person in the world, and I don't have any willpower, I'll never get anything done. I'll just have ideas and I'll lie down on the couch and do nothing. That's me and just absolute feminine energy creative energy. At the same time, I could have all the willpower in the world and zero talent. And I'm gonna end up just being another number in a company, a cog pushing a button for a machine and I won't be creative I'll just be on autopilot doing what I'm supposed to do totally in my masculine. So, like, where? How can we even say like, what? What gives us the idea that we can say one is better than the other or one is greater and more powerful like they don't even exist without each other. How are you going to walk forward with just your right leg? Like what is supposed to hold the weight while your right leg swings forward? How do those exists without each other? How do you have a one sided coin? Is it a coin? Can you have a coin with two heads? Or with just a head? Like? Is the head better than the tail is the left foot better than the right foot? Like what? What are we doing? Who's teaching us this logic and how have we been convinced by it?
Kelly Tatham: It's like -- It makes me think of those the futures female shirts. Yes, we we've been so oppressed, that the overcorrect, just take us way in the opposite direction, which is the same thing in just a different costume. And we want this equilibrium we want this balance but so many of us are in overcorrect and all the noises coming in and we're just trying to survive and it's like, well, yes of course, women like -- men suck or whatever the ideology is that that comes out of it that then triggers the people who are other holding the other polarity and we're just like triggering polarities and then like, Hi. How do we get to the middle part?
Elianne El-Amyouni: We've been so deeply programmed to demonize there always has to be another or we're not comfortable. We demonize the feminine. If we're going to uplift the feminine we have to demonize the masculine. Why do we have to demonize? Why do we have to demonize anything? What? Why can these not be complementary things? Why can't they be complementary energy states of being? We need to be able to dance with ourselves with each other. And it's like you said it's this overcorrection because and that's understandable as well because yes, there has been a lot of oppression for a long time, but like we need some grace. At this point. We're not going to get anywhere, we're going to end up in a similar place that we did with just different faces to the oppressor, and the demon will have a new name, but there will be a demon. There's always something we need to lock up or hide away or demonize, and it's frustrating, but I think we're getting better like, I've been talking to people like for example, you like you're one person I'm one person and yes, we're only two people. But that's just I think that's as much as it takes just one person at a time. Being able to be comfortable with all sides of existence, being able to recognize that we are prone to othering and that will always be played on by people, influencers, corporations, countries, government, anything, our capacity to be afraid of what we don't know and what is different than us is always going to be played on always going to be pushing us into this NPC autopilot mode that don't need. We really don't.
Kelly Tatham: I learned about the term NPC not too long ago, someone was talking about it on Tiktok and I was like, What does NPC mean? Non player character, you're just the background in someone else's story and or, you know, maybe you don't have autonomy, you're just kind of like moving through the -- And, I agree, I think it's getting better. I know it's getting better. I mean, I have conversations with people all the time. And I see it I witness it in myself and those around me, like big shifts of perspective and it's like, whoa, like, one day we're talking about this and you didn't see things that when the next day you're like advocating like to me for this thing. And that's so exciting. It just invites for me so much curiosity, like the fear is present with the curiosity because I'm like, great, everything's changing but then all the world is also changing so fast and like, it's we seem so powerless when we look at the corporate structures and like politics, for example. Like it's just, it feels so deeply embedded and then the methodology which we use to protest often reifies those systems and then it's like, well, what's left? Alchemy.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Literally, just like, and that's a journey in itself, right? Accepting that everything is okay even in all of its turmoil, even in all of this corruption and all of this manipulation and all these people suffering and all the stuff going on, to be able to come to a place and say, It's okay. It's a reflection of me. And I'm going to go inward and see what inner child am I starving? What? What corruption? Am I internalizing? What part of me am I allowing to dominate the other parts? What am I allowing myself to believe that doesn't actually serve me as a human being and doesn't bring anything to anyone's life that's valuable. That in itself is its own journey, because there is a lot going on and it's hard not to get caught up in the anxiety of it all. But there's also this really great power in being able to say it's okay. It's okay, I'm gonna do my part. And my part is taking all of this and seeing how it exists within me and cleaning it up. That's my responsibility. And hopefully other people see that and they feel compelled to do the same.
Kelly Tatham: Yes. Because if we're following the impulse of believing that we can change and fix everything it's just a form of martyrdom and narcissism, you know, perpetuating that, which I think are kind of the polarities of our time, maybe of the Piscean age, although I hate that terminology. But you know, I think about the Jesus-Trump paradigm. Because like, I don't think Jesus was actually like, I don't think Jesus was a martyr. I think that was the story that was placed upon him because that serve the state. And I find it so interesting that the Major Arcana are Trump cards like, Have you ever thought about like the correlation?
Elianne El-Amyouni: Yes, definitely. Like whoa, what? Yeah, this energy. Do I really have to incorporate -- I've had that crisis, like, do I have to incorporate that energy? And the voice is always like, Elianne. Don't test me. Okay, sorry. I'll be less judgmental.
Kelly Tatham: My friend. Sorry. No, my my friend who's not into esoteric things, but is getting a PhD in Sociology was talking about Trump's ISIS, like referring to like people on the right and I was like Trump's ISIS... I have a very different correlation for both of those words.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Yeah. I, honestly, I mean, I'm not American. Right. So but from the outside, I felt like Trump was so appropriate for his time. I don't think America could have had a better president than Trump when it had Trump because honestly, America is reaching a point where it wants to deny the fact that this is what it looks like to the world. You need to look yourself in the fucking face. This is what you look like. Welcome to your own shadow. Essentially. We're seeing another aspect of it today, this half-baked, 1000 year old dude falling asleep on podiums, mumbling his words. Like that's just another aspect of the shadow. These people represent who we are as a collective that's worth looking at. And I always like to, especially on Twitter, like after 2am on Twitter, I'm on right wing Twitter, right wing America Twitter, because I watch people fight in comments over things like gender identity, trans people, Joe Biden, the Middle East, whatever the fuck and you look these conversations and you can see that no one is trying to reconcile. No one is trying to understand the other. No one is trying to create any dissolution of the barrier between them. It's all attack. It's all just contributing to the divide feeding into the programming. It's really interesting. Really interesting. I think Trump was a great symbol of all of that. He's just this very loud, very obnoxious, very disgusting, don't give a fuck, I am going to be an entertainer more so than a politician while behind the scenes we essentially dismantle everything that makes this place a democracy. And people just ate it up. They ate it up. All you saw on the news was oh my god, Trump called somebody a faggot. Do I? Who cares? Like are you joking? What? Trump is rude to a Asian press woman journalist. Of course he's going to be rude to an Asian journalist. He's fucking rude to his mother. Probably. What are you talking about? How is this news? How is it a headline? Like, what is going on?
Kelly Tatham: Because the clickbait like you were talking about, that's you know, and that's why he became president is because it fed the news cycle. Like, personally I don't think he would have been president without his performance on reality television and without the news media obsession about him, like if, but I mean, it's all baked in, right? You can't really escape any of that, but like, because that's what he represented. He's the pinnacle of that
Elianne El-Amyouni: Corporate America. The industrial complex. And he really like inceptioned himself into presidency. Like when I look back, when I'm watching old sitcoms from the 90s and the early 2000s. I realized that there is not an American show that doesn't mention this man, one of his towers, one of his hotels. He is all over the place. He lives in the American subconscious -- easy -- if not the global subconscious, because all of us are consuming American culture at this point. Yeah, he's everywhere. Man's inceptioned his way to the top.
Kelly Tatham: Well, you know, what's really interesting. There's this BBC documentary called Hypernormalization aand they took that terminology from I think it came up, in Russia in the 70s around when things were going very poorly, but the government kept saying, everything's great. Everything's great. Everything's great and tricking people into normalize to worsening realities. And in that documentary, they look at the 1970s as this turning point for the economy of when things shifted on the planet and government and politics became destabilized, and the power got handed over to the banks. And that's like, you can even look at like the climate change graph at that uptick from the 1970s and the exponential growth that's happened since then, and Trump was there and they address him in the documentary like the buying and selling of real estate, and it's just, he was there like pulling threads and making things happen and like literally destabilizing the planet. And that's where it's led. Now maybe he's going to prison. We don't know.
Elianne El-Amyouni: I don't even know if men like that can go to prison. Do people like that have prisons? This what you said those so interesting because it reminded me of Hunter Thompson's novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. And the whole novel is essentially saying what you're saying, symbolically right, because all he's doing is running around on Benzedrine and having -- it's this full on psychological novel of him seeing through the fabric of reality and realizing that the American Dream is dead. It's totally corrupted, that capitalism is running rampant. Everything is disgusting, violent, everything just always falling apart. The whole novel is just everything as it's disintegrating and he's trying to deal with it as a journalist. and it was written up and published in the early 70s. And that was Hunter Thompson's whole spiel. That's why he invented gonzo journalism to try and reflect this corrupt disgusting state of the bourgeoisie and the capitalist class. I think he's started the style with his article on the Kentucky Derby and he's just talking about all the different people that are there going around talking to them, seeing what they think and these people are so disconnected from reality it's dystopic, honestly. Oh, yes. Really interesting. If you haven't read that book, I definitely suggest you read it because you would love it. Yes, pretty much a book trying to say what you just said.
Kelly Tatham: Yeah, I get so excited by finding patterns and like finding other little tidbits, like in the research where you go, like, oh, and then you keep finding the the same thing and it's just like, Oh, that was a turning point that was a linchpin. I look to the 15th century, which is where the Tarot can be traced back to like before the 15th century, we don't know. And what else happened in the 15th century was the invention and the proliferation of the printing press, which completely changed the world. And the Doctrine of Discovery like the the paperwork from the Catholic Church that encouraged and allowed colonizers to go to the west and take, steal the land. And to me, it's just I started looking at the tarot as sort of this map for understanding that specific structure that like colonial Catholic paradigm and especially with the pairing of understanding that how the written word you know, like the word versus the image and how like the overabundance of that triggers more of the left brain the patriarchal the linear type thinking paired with all of that, and I go, okay, like, we can understand these things intellectually that feels so out of our grasp. And I get so excited especially about the Minors because not so many people talk about the minors in tarot, like as a, you know, like, can we understand the actual emotional processes that are happening like as we're integrating information and thinking thoughts and like co-creating reality and that was my rant.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Love it. And it made me think about to now that you're talking about like the, the early 15th, early 14th century and tarot. We, it's also like important to remember that Islam was in Europe at this point and the Islamic practice is very magical, alchemically-oriented, very early on. Sufism is as old as Islam itself, some say older and the cards as playing cards first came with the Mamluks in the 11th century, when they first broke into Europe and Spain became Andalusia. So there was this, during this time, Europe was divided among itself, right? All of these different states were fighting each, other all these different Popes trying to get power or whatnot. And it wasn't until the Muslims really crept into Europe and became a part of Europe and Andalusia became the empire that genuinely brought all the knowledge of the world together. It was the Muslims who translated the Greeks, the Germans, the Mesopotamians, they translated everything. They collected all the knowledge of the world and translated it and what the European world did was take the magic and then demonize it. Europe only came together because it was threatened by Islam. They suddenly feel like you know what, you guys we need to stop fighting each other, come together and fight these Baphomet worshipers because this is a problem, like, they are too close. They are too close and the Germans are in bed with them. And this is not okay. Like we need to we need to get our shit together. We need to get our act together. That was literally the the inspiration for Christianity to unify itself for the Christian world to come together and say you know what? We need to just agree or else you know, the Muslims are going to are going to eat this all up. We can't have this. This can't be okay. While also benefiting from all of the magic that came with Islam and that came from the Eastern world. Islam brought Far Eastern religions, it brought Chinese magic, it brought Indian silks and spices, it brought everything. And to this day, to this day, the Arab world remains a thorn in the side of the West to this day, the continent remains uncolonized and it remains just the biggest failure that Western Europe faces and that's why we see things like the war on terror, the war on the terror that we essentially are continuously funding like, are you joking, Bro, are you? Come on. Who is playing to this tune anymore? Like just hallah. It's really interesting to bring all of that together —
Kelly Tatham: It's so fascinating how little we can see the trajectory of Christianity and how it changed since Jesus was crucified, you know, and there's those pinpoints over time like when Constantine first made the political decision to have it be the state religion and then you're saying again in the in the 14th and 15th centuries because like the 1300s, that's medieval, considered medieval time, and I've only just brushed up against the research in that area, but looking at Hugh of St. Victor and his studies of St. Augustine and how like the way that we interacted with knowledge, the way that we interacted with literature changed during that time, the way that we held knowledge changed, and like just to be today in the modern world, I think that we consider so little or question so little how we operate, how we speak, how we think, and how we perceive and interact with the world and like, can't even comprehend how different it was.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Yeah, and we forget how much of what we reject and we think is evil and bad and different, is actually so deeply embedded in the way we move. I know Islamophobes who use playing cards. You play cards, but you're also an Islamophobe. But you don't realize that this little thing that you're playing with, this was made by your enemies. This is your enemies practice. You learned it from them. People who call themselves witches, pagans, etc., who are essentially engaging in medieval Islamic talismanic fun, who also think that Islam is bad and they want to eradicate things like hijab and whatever. Bro, who told you that the hijabis want you to eradicate their hijab? Why do you think that you have some grand righteousness to be the one to decide what's good and what's not, what's freedom and what isn't? And like you said during this during this like 13th to 15th century, things changed the way we like you said consume knowledge, the way we read, the way we think about things changed drastically. They were -- people like St. Augustine, we're very Neoplatonic in thought. And that whole realm of aesthetic thinking is so dangerous because it demonizes what is considered a beast like beastly human, essentially, base, sexual, desire. You shouldn't need to eat. You shouldn't need to have sex. A true hero doesn't have sex. Like, Are you joking, because honestly it feels like a true pervert is somebody who suppresses their sexual desires that just makes you paranoid as fuck and then that's how we get all of this weird ass exegesis that makes absolutely no sense. I was reading some stuff by like the priests and the rabbis who were say, in captivity or practicing their aestheticism and putting it off as like the highest mode of being. These people are paranoid as fuck. Like, I saw this one thing on expounding on the curses of women hood: Women grow their hair long like Lilith; they sit to urinate like beasts, and they served solely as a bolsters for their husbands. And this is divine revelation. This is not a joke. This is not your average book. This is not a blog. This is divine revelation like you will have these and you will take them with you and pass them on to your children vibes.
Not to mention that like Plato -- Plato was convinced that a woman's period was hysteria. That's where the word hysteria comes from, right, from uterus. And the idea was that when a woman was PMSing and having a period, what was happening was her uterus was so angry that it wasn't full of a child, that it would wander around her body taking revenge on all the other organs, which is why it's so important for women to get pregnant as soon as possible to relieve them of this pain. And if you can stay pregnant, that's even better. The more children you can have, the less periods you'll have, the less angry your uterus will be, the less hysteric you will be.
Kelly Tatham: And nothing has changed today, they still want us just consistently pregnant or, you know, they just want to control that. They want to control that. Because they're jealous. They have womb envy.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Legit. Paracelsus tried to to make an oven. He tried to make a homunculus his goal was to birth a homunculus without the help of a woman and he came to the conclusion that all you need, all you really need is a horse belly, some feces and a tube with the right amount of sperm in it. And you could make yourself a homunculus without a woman legit.
Kelly Tatham: Something Janelle Monae said many years ago always stuck with me. She's like, We birthed this world and we can unbirth it. That is the energy I'm taking forward, like --
Elianne El-Amyouni: Honestly all it takes on that subject. All it takes is for women to collectively raise their standards. If we stop having sex with dusties they will be forced to grow. It's really not that complicated. They will do anything to get some if we could just collectively agree to cut them off. We would see a lot of improvement. It wouldn't even take much more than that.
Kelly Tatham: But we all have to collectively agree.
Elianne El-Amyouni: It's always one girl that's going to ruin it for the rest of us, like, Pearl or something
Kelly Tatham: Like, come on, Pearl. We made an agreement. I mean there's you know there's the incels though who but they've collectively. That's a whole other kind of can of worms. But I think you're speaking to like the men who are like close or like you know, the good like, oh, but we're I'm a fool I'm a fool for love I'm a mess --
Elianne El-Amyouni: Me, too. I'm not, you know, I don't hate men. I don't have like a whole, All men are the problem kind of feminist. I think people are the problem in general. But yeah, just I mean for fun, just because I know so many women that are so miserable, more so than men. Like that's just how it happens to be. So far this is the wiring that we've got. This is the way we've developed. It's easier for y'all to fuck us over at this point. It just is. We're good at falling for it. We want to fall for it. I just need somebody telling me I'm beautiful every morning. That's it. That's my heart.
Kelly Tatham: It doesn't take much. Like after many, many years of dating, just going Dutch and just being like, I remember going out for dinner with this guy and he like paid for a nice dinner and a bottle of wine. And I just remember thinking to myself, like Kelly just do not fall in love with the first guy who buys you a nice bottle of wine at dinner like oh my god, and I did. Well I didn't like fall in love but you know I fell enough to get hurt. And I'm like you warned yourself, you knew but like we keep doing it anyways because we're like, oh, but it feels so good. And it's different this time. It's different this time.
Elianne El-Amyouni: I mean, I'm with it. I don't know I can't say I'm against this. I'm also huge on love. It's not -- I don't hold that part of myself back even when I know it's going to hurt. Like we said in the beginning. You know, it's your capacity to love that determines your capacity to suffer. So, what are we going to do? We're just going to just have to ride the wave.
Kelly Tatham: Absolutely. Absolutely. And just, allow like, Rumi says you know you have to keep breaking your heart until it opens. And I feel like, could my heart be any more open? But actually, yes, it could and I continue to experience what I feel like is just like tapping into unconditional love because I believe that love is the fabric and like what we call love through the human experience is like something a little bit different. Like you know, it's that Venus kind of there's different levels to it, but like it's stories, ultimately, that were telling each other about what is the primordial fabric and like any opportunity I have, which often comes through heartbreak to be with that just the unconditional oneness, then I know that's what I'm here for. I know that's what we're all here for.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Yeah, I feel that. Yeah. Beautiful.
Kelly Tatham: Well, that feels like a complete place to to wrap up this wonderful conversation.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Love is the fabric.
Kelly Tatham: Love is the fabric.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Legit.
Kelly Tatham: And women raise your standards notice.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Honestly, everyone, everyone, just people, you know, if you know somebody is being bad to you, like, be aware. Don't ignore every red flag.
Kelly Tatham: Get away from cruel people. And yeah, I think you know... There are some of us who cut and run there are some of us who stay too long. You know, we were all participating in different ways. But I think the goal of all of this, like, to be with the fabric is to love ourselves unconditionally first, and to trust and, I think also this is a big part, to trust that we deserve what we want or that we can access what we want or like, for me there's been so much gaslighting of myself of my needs and desires. But I think in getting -- for me, what highering my standards means is trusting that I that I'm allowed that I can have these things that I desire or -- if that makes sense. That's just what's coming through for me, because it's been a journey.
Elianne El-Amyouni: No, I feel you because I think like yeah, we're being silly about it, but like, it's not even like do this or don't do that as much as like, everything you do, let it be graceful, let it be loving, genuinely loving, like, you know, if you see say a red flag of someone who can date them and love them, do it but like do it with the awareness of that. Don't do it lying to yourself or pretending to yourself or forcing yourself, like give yourself the grace to be as real as possible even when that means loving an aspect of your shadow that's manifest in somebody. Let yourself know that that's what you're doing. It's kind of stoic, you know, like, like, like the stoics tell you to meditate on death. Remember that you're gonna die because over time that is what makes you comfortable with the anxiety of nonexistence. I think it's just the same on every level, to practice the awareness. Practice having the awareness of what we're doing, regardless of whether it's good, bad, painful, harmful, good, whatever. At the end of the day, if you're doing anything you're doing with awareness, intent and intention, it is contributing to your expansion, no matter what any therapist or doctor or person or judgey friend or whatever tells you, you know, even if you're dating the most, you're in the most toxic relationship by everyone's standards. If you are doing that, with intention and awareness, you're actually genuinely there giving yourself the grace to be who you are. It's in my opinion, that one you will naturally leave that situation when you are ready. And two, it will have contributed to your expansion no matter what.
Kelly Tatham: Mm hmm. Yes, being there with full presence and awareness and acceptance. Yeah, thank you for that. And thank you for all of this. This has been such a delight.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Thank you. Yeah, it was great.
Kelly Tatham: And people can find you if they don't already know if they're not already following you, which I'm sure many listeners are but for the new ones, you're on Instagram, you're on Tik Tok, Discord, Twitter, any other spaces where people can find Twitchy Witch.
Elianne El-Amyouni: YouTube.
Kelly Tatham: YouTube? Yes, of course. Of course. That is my, like, last frontier.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Me, too. I'm not very good at YouTube yet, but we're getting there.
Kelly Tatham: Yeah. And Discord you've been enjoying being in that space?
Elianne El-Amyouni: Love. My favorite part of all of this has become the community. It's the best. Yeah, so much stuff going on too now like activities, tarot circles, book club, film club, like there's so much going on in that space now.
Kelly Tatham: That's so exciting. That's so wonderful. Is there anything specific coming up, any events you want to share or --
Elianne El-Amyouni: We have Kybalion on discussion on Monday for Book Club and then we're going to move to start reading the Hermetica and movie night on the 25th. So the Sunday after next week, we're going to watch Midsommar, the Director's Cut. Tarot circle happens. Yeah, it's so cool. It's so much fun. Tarot circle happens every like two or three weeks on Sundays. And it happens almost every other night. So it is always fun stuff. So if you want to connect to the discord, just sign into discord. Just come and be like Hey, what's up?
Kelly Tatham: Amazing what how wonderful to be building community. That's really like, that's it. That's the thing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, well, thank you so much, and I hope that we'll have the opportunity to talk again sometime.
Elianne El-Amyouni: Yeah. Thank you.
Twitchy Witch and Learning to Love the Exponentially Increasing Infinity of Life