Angles of Demons?
Aubrey Marcus, Spiritual Discernment, and Downloads from the "Divine"
Before we dive in, a few announcements:
Next week I am speaking on a panel, Psychedelics in Deathwork: Crossing Thresholds. at the upcoming MAPS Psychedelic Science conference in Denver! Catch me and the powerful women I’ll be sharing the stage with on Friday, June 20th at 9:30 am.
Also, for Colorado friends, I am giving a book talk at the Boulder Bookstore on Tuesday, June 24th, 6:30pm. Stories will be told. Wonder will be shared. Come on by.
And for all paid subscribers, our monthly Mythopoetic Integration circle is happening this Thursday at 11am, PT. If you’d like an opportunity to connect and chart the inner realms with a community of fellow travelers, consider become a paid subscriber.
Looking forward to seeing you there!
Onwards…
During a short, turbulent chapter in my early twenties, I had a vision.
It occurred in the depths of my first profound heartbreak, which was amplified by heavy doses of sleep deprivation, synchronicity, and LSD.
Normal reality seemed as if it was beginning to unravel as I unwittingly dipped my toe into a black, bottomless pool that I can only call psychosis. The reliability of my own thoughts, perceptions, and sense of reality began to crumble apart. I needed help.
I remember sitting in my bedroom, incapacitated with grief. After many months of mind games and deception, a friend told me straight: my first love, whom I began dating at the end of high school and naively continued to date during the first two years of college, had been cheating on me. For a long time.
I was leveled.
Closing my eyes, I sunk into a trance, potentiated by the olympic level of exhaustion I was courting. Suddenly, a luminescent being appeared before me, like a golden, antique Tibetan statue, unquestioningly sentient. Having spent the last two years studying eastern religions at the University of Vermont, I knew immediately that I was beholding the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara.
I felt like this being was communicating with me, blessing me, anointing me. I felt connected to this divine apparition, as if I were invited into some new way of being in the world, which was the way of saints, Buddhas, and mystics. Tears poured down my face as my heart opened to the new reality I was being invited into.
Soon, I found myself in the office of one of my professors, an expert on esoteric Buddhism. On his tweed lapel, he wore a pin, like a tiny yellow road sign with the words “WAKE UP” etched in black letters. I told him about the vision, hoping for some guidance.
His eyes took on a subtle gaze of concern.
“Be careful,” he said coldly. “It might be a demon.”
There’s a story in modern new age, “spiritual,” and psychedelic circles that goes like this: any vision one receives, especially in an altered state of consciousness, is inherently a good thing, and comes from a good place, and means well. Imaginal or “divine” beings are inherently good, and want the best for us. We should trust them, and trust the “downloads” they impart to us. We should guide our life according to these “divine” messages.
Most of us are so hungry for spiritual sustenance that we’ll accept anything as food, even if it might be poison.
Recently, the high-school quarterback of the new-age psychedelic scene, Aubrey Marcus, publicly announced on his podcast that the goddess Isis told him to impregnate two women: his wife, and a 28 year old woman he met on a dating app. His sycophantic court magician, Dr. Marc Gafni, was there as well, stroking his ego and validating him, every step of the way, while the two women in question sat there and tried to get a few words into the conversation.
The whole thing was truly bizarre.
For readers blissfully unaware of this man, please don’t proceed any further. Avert your gaze, sweet summer child. Run far away.
I once asked a respected elder and well-known teacher his impression of Aubrey Marcus after he was featured on his podcast.
“He’s both insecure and competitive,” he reflected, “which is a particularly dangerous combination.” These words were not spoken lightly by this man, who has been around the block in the men’s work and self-development world for longer than I’ve been alive.
Like Donald Trump, (whom he publicly supported and believes will usher in a “new era of honesty and truth,”) Marcus has curated a cult of personality that will inevitably come crashing down. Whether this is his “tower card” moment or not, things are about to get way more weird in Aubreyland.
And to be honest, I am so here for it.
Because to me, Marcus’ trajectory has been a prolonged study in the archetype of the charlatan, which I’ve written about in a previous article. His popularity is also a living symptom of what Robert Bly called the “sibling society,” a cultural condition whereby we look to our peers for guidance and leadership since very few elders can be found.
Sure, I might be projecting here. I don’t know Aubrey, and he doesn’t know me. I can have compassion for the wounded little boy that is dwelling beneath all the swagger and pretense and need to dominate and own and win.
But for years now, something about him has made my skin crawl. And that’s putting it lightly.
At the end of the day, Aubrey Marcus’s popularity is a mirror, reflecting back our culture’s crisis of spiritual authority, our desperation for inspired leadership, and our thirst for initiatory guidance. I imagine that his fans see in him all they lack, which is perhaps one reason he has been so successful.
It’s also why he, and people who step into unchecked positions of power, are playing a dangerous game with psychic forces they may not be prepared to contend with.
But ultimately, none of that is my point. While deeply relevant, questions around relationships, polyamory, and masculine and feminine dynamics are not my focus here either.
(For a nuanced discussion on this and other concerning elements of the podcast, I’d highly encourage you to check out a recent conversation between my friends Ian MacKenzie and Deus Fortier on The Mythic Masculine podcast.)
My point dwells in one small detail: his claim that the ancient Egyptian goddess, Isis, gave him personal instructions, that he needed to be with both of these women, that it was divinely orchestrated, that is was the direct will of “Isis.”
Surely, Isis must have a direct line of communication with a gym-owner from Austin, Texas. Surely, Isis wouldn’t lead him, or any of us, astray. Surely, Isis can’t be an imaginal projection of his own ego, lust, anima, or shadow.
Surely Isis must be an angel, and not a demon.