Nicholas Pearson. Rocks, music, reiki, and... more rocks

 In this episode I'm talking to Nicholas Pearson, a teacher, witch, musician, and reiki practitioner. We talked about rocks, witchcraft, travel and... more rocks.

theluminouspearl.com

Transcript

Welcome back to Your Average Witch, where every Tuesday we talk about witch life, witch stories, and sometimes a little witchcraft. Your Average Witch is brought to you by Clever Kim's Curios. In this episode I'm talking to Nicholas Pearson, a teacher, witch, musician, and reiki practitioner. We talked about rocks, witchcraft, travel and... more rocks. 

I also want to say hi to ICFANTW- I hear you. I do my best to not give you garbagey audio, and I'll try to do better next time I do a live recording. 

Now let's get to the stories!

Kim: Hi Nicholas, welcome to the show.

Nicholas: Well, thank you so much for having me on, I've been looking forward to this.

Kim: Oh, yay!  I've been looking, I've been waiting for a couple years for this. Can you please introduce yourself and let everybody know who you are and what you do and where they can find you?

Nicholas: Absolutely. So for everyone who's listening, my name is Nicholas. I am a writer, an occultist, a witch, a rockhound, a big old nerd. I'm the author of eight books so far with a couple more in progress. And if anyone is interested in learning more about my work, you can find me as theluminuspearl in most places, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and the like. You can also check out my website, theluminuspearl.com, and read more about the work that I do, the classes I teach, the books I've got on shelves, and maybe learn a little bit about what's coming.

Kim: Can you please tell me what your name means, where it came from?

Nicholas: Yeah, thank you for asking. So the luminous pearl is actually a reference to an expression we find in Chinese, yèmíngzhū, which refers to a mythological gemstone, a luminous pearl, something that shines by night. And we find analogues to this myth in several parts of Asia, and we also find homologues, things that are like similar, but maybe not related etymologically or culturally in other parts of the world. So you know, we see the wish-fulfilling gem known as cintamani, we see the agnimani or fire pearl known as huohzhū  in Chinese. And it kind of symbolizes finding and refining our light and letting that shine in the world. And that's really what I think of my teachings as doing with others, or what I hope, we'll say. You know, that's the aspiration- that really I'm just helping people find their own inner brilliance.

Kim: That is so much cooler than what I thought you were going to say, which I can't verbalize what I thought it was going to be, but it was not that. That's cool.

Nicholas: Well, thank you.

Kim: Can you please tell me what it means when you call yourself a witch?

Nicholas: Yeah, you know, witch is one of those words that there's so much to unpack for so many people. And I think of the role of witch as being inherently outside the norm, inherently othered, inherently at the threshold, whether that's between roles in society or between layers of consciousness, between worlds that we can experience or travel through. I think the nature of the witch is the nature of an inspirited life. It's not necessarily just the kind of classical mythological concept of making compacts with spirits but it's seeing and recognizing and hopefully interacting with the indwelling spirit in all things, the spirit of place, the spirit of your magical tools, the spirit of yourself. And I also think of the witch as being transgressive, antinomian. I think part of our otherness is just because we wear that role, that mantle of the witch, and the other part of that otherness is because we stand against oppressive systems, oppressive energies, oppressive personalities sometimes, in hopes of making a more magical and equitable world. 

Kim: Do you feel like your spiritual self is different from your conscious self? 

Nicholas: That's a good question.

Kim:  I had never heard it phrased that way so that's what popped into my head when you said it. 

Nicholas: Yeah. You know, I think I think consciousness and spirit are interrelated,  but I also think of consciousness a lot like tuning into different stations on the radio. There are we'll say more gross and more subtle stations, so it's really about what we're tuning that awareness in. I think that's a really good metaphor for how we might understand psychic phenomena and other kind of spiritual skills and talents that we might hone in witchy circles. I don't think that, you know, consciousness is ever separate from spirit, but our awareness of it may be more spirit-based or less spirit-based depending on our baggage, the activities we're engaged in, our environment, and so much more.

Kim: This is hurting my brain a little bit for first thing, for me in the morning. (both laugh) I mean it's 10 o'clock but I haven't had any deep thoughts yet. So. Now, somebody tell me, somebody out there tell me where I can take a class about this conversation, because I want to know more about that, but I don't have time right now. Plus, Nicholas did not sign up to this. (both laugh) Teaching me about this stuff.

Nicholas: Well, I guess, either I'm sorry or you're welcome for deep thoughts this early in the morning. I'm not sure which is appropriate.

Kim: Both, both. Both. (laughs) Ouch, but also whee! Do you have any family history with witchcraft? Or even if you, your folks would say, how dare you? Absolutely not. They still did real witchy stuff when you were a kid, or witchy things, or maybe not even witchy specifically, but like, strange metaphysical things. Did anything like that happen when you were a kid?

Nicholas: Not really. So my dad grew up Catholic, like very Catholic. So I wasn't really raised anything as a result of his upbringing. And when other families did church on weekends, we would go to the library. And I pretty much had free reign. You know, he tried to steer me in age appropriate things, mostly for reading level purposes. But I grew past that real fast. I was a voracious reader. And I think one of the biggest blessings to come from my childhood is that we approached whatever subject I wanted to read with equal gravity. So if I wanted to read about Egyptian mythology, or fairy tales of Northern Europe, or marine biology, or anything else, one of these was not given greater value or weight than another. And so I saw the world through a pretty magical lens from early on. I loved my options to explore myth and religion and to read about them and to maybe embrace these things as more metaphorical than literal. But it definitely paved the way for me having some pretty early aha moments that my dad being a science guy, we did a lot of science reading, but that science and spirituality were both fundamentally achieving similar goals. And those goals are helping humans make sense of the world around them. So whether we do that through myth and magic or measurement and data, it's really about our relationship to the world. And that has carried through a lot. So even if there's no like real magical history that I can find with any immediacy, that kind of upbringing opened the door to magic being a very real, experiential, tangible thing because magic and science really aren't all that different.

Kim: I agree. I love the idea of being introduced to the world with everything equal.

Nicholas: And you know, I don't know if that was purposeful or if that's just the way it happened. Like, you couldn't stop me from bringing home a stack of books. But, you know, my dad was patient with my learning. He encouraged me to keep doing it. And I think that's why I endeavor to keep learning to this day. 

Kim: Yay, Dad! Can you... Go ahead. 

Nicholas: Oh, I was going to say, absolutely. Yeah, I'm really greatful.

Kim: Can you please introduce us to your practice? Do you have any daily or if not daily consistent rituals or habits, magical habits that you partake in?

Nicholas: Yeah. So, you know,  I both love and hate the word eclectic in magical circles because it can mean very different things to different people, but I do have a fairly eclectic practice in as much that I have formal training in lots of different things and they all inform what I do on a daily basis. So I don't belong to any one particular magical school of thought because I embrace many. So my regular practice, we won't pretend that it all happens on a daily basis, that would be an inaccurate picture. My brain is inconsistent on the best of days. So but you know, I love very simple, regular rituals, offerings of candlelight and water to the spirit of place. I engage with the system of Reiki, traditional Reiki, Usui Reiki Ryoho, as part of my ongoing daily practice for, you know, self-care, but also for cultivating that kind of inner spirit, that inner essence that drives our magic. I have a lot less formal ritual in my life these days. I'm real big on spiritual hygiene, so the house gets regular cleansings, and we'll say consecrations and warding and other things just because I'm a fairly sensitive soul, and that supports my well-being. But these days, rather than engaging with a daily kind of ritual practice, I try to approach the day ahead of me as the ritual itself. So what am I doing, and how can I approach that with a magical mindset, with a spiritual mindset, with a transformative mindset? And I try to allow my writing practice, my teaching practice, the day job, going to the grocery store, making my morning cup of tea. That's where my magic is these days.

Kim: Thinking about knowing what you're going to do in advance, just that, much less making it magical, blows my mind. I feel like a failure of a person for saying that, but whatever, there it is.

Nicholas: Well, you know, as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So I'm a list maker. I have to have a to-do list or things just don't get done. And oftentimes I make the to-do list and then I don't accomplish any of the things on it.

Kim: Does it break your heart? It does mine.

Nicholas: I often describe it as it making my brain feel hot.

Kim: Yeah.

Nicholas: So I'm probably somewhere on that neurodivergent scale. The last time I saw my primary care physician, they were like, oh, we should definitely test for this. I'm like, well, that's not why I'm here today, so let's put a pin in that, and then we never did. So I do need a certain semblance of structure, but... life is chaotic, life is messy, so some days you're not gonna cross anything off that list. And as long as I still had a good and meaningful day, as long as I put more good into the world than I subtracted from it, then, you know, I'm, I'm okay with what I accomplish.

Kim: That sounds healthy.

Nicholas: I hope it is. I think sometimes we have to lie to ourselves to get there, (both laugh) but you know, fake it till you make it.

Kim: How would you say witchcraft has changed your life, or would you?

Nicholas: You know, it definitely has. I think witchcraft has made me more courageous. And I don't mean that it has made me fearless, because those are not necessarily the same thing. The role of the witch as being inherently outside the norm means that you will be uncomfortable with your witchcraft practice. And if you do kind of subscribe to this idea that witchcraft is transgressive, you will stand in opposition of things. And the only way to do that is to find courage. Whether that's, you know, a spell that you do to manifest some financial security so you can pay rent on time, you have to stand in opposition of the fear of not having enough, of not being enough, of not doing enough, and make change happen in spite of that. And that takes a certain amount of belief in yourself. You gotta like change the tide there. And I think the magic of this is right down to that root of the word courage, which comes into English via French, cour, ultimately from Latin, cour, which means heart. Witchcraft requires putting your heart on the line. It is being wholehearted. It is tending to the sanctity of your heart, your essence, your soul, your spirit, whatever you want to call it. Even when that is scary, you still do it. You still stand up for that. So I think witchcraft has helped me learn the value of listening to my heart and standing up for my heart.

Kim: That is freaking delightful.

Nicholas: Well, thank you.

Kim: I love that very much. Thank you for saying it because it made my day better. (laughs) What would you say is the biggest motivator in your practice and has it changed since you first started out?

Nicholas: Yeah, you know, kind of speaking to that last point, I think the biggest motivator in my magical practice these days is being a better person. And that manifests in a lot of different ways. It's the pause and the breath you take before you will actually someone on the internet. It's the deep slow breathing and reminding yourself that when someone cuts you off in traffic it has nothing to do with you at all and so you shouldn't take it personally. But it's also like how do I have more compassion and empathy for the other humans around me, and how does getting to know this ecosystem of spirits which are diverse, which are many and varied, which have different needs and ways of relating to the world than I do. How does that create room in my life to do the same with my fellow humankind? And that's definitely different to when I first started. I think, like many witchy folks, we come to magic to get a better life. Whether that's, you know, magic for empowerment, magic for money, magic for protection, magic for, you know, whatever the material end goal might be. It's about having a better life, rather than being the better human. And when we have a certain amount of comfort, a certain amount of privilege, it's much easier to choose to be a better human, but I think witchcraft challenges us to do that, whether we see it up front or not. And that's how we learn to have that kind of courage, that wholehearted courage that allows us to tap in and come from this space that's informed from the heart.

Kim: It makes me happy every time I do these interviews when I hear people, when they say what they feel makes a witch, it's always a little bit rebellious.

Nicholas: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

Kim: It thrills my little heart. What would you say is your biggest struggle when it comes to witchcraft?

Nicholas: You know, it's weird, because witchcraft is inherently about not fitting in. And for me my biggest struggle is feeling like I don't fit in with the people who don't fit in. (laughs) My public-facing self is not very witchy forward, we'll say. Witchcraft informs a lot of what I do behind the scenes, but people know me as the Reiki guy or the crystal guy, or as someone with a strong science background and is a lay science communicator. And because that is what people see, that's where the optics are, I often feel like when I sit down in a room full of, you know, the serious occultists, you know the kind, that they're just not going to take me seriously. But the truth of the matter is that I read and do a lot of the same things they do, it's just not necessarily what is visible from the outside at all times. And people are often really pleasantly surprised to find out that there's this strong kind of Luciferian current, talk about rebels and transgressive energies, this big kind of energy, this big archetype that I work with in my daily life, my personal life, the big work that I'm called to do in this world is like about as witchy as it gets. It just doesn't necessarily come off in my public persona all the time. So it's a lot of imposter syndrome. That's honestly my biggest struggle. 

Kim: Well, now that you said the words, how do you feel like, do you feel like you beat it? Imposter syndrome?

Nicholas: I have kind of two things that I focus on when I feel that rearing its head or, you know, when I'm talking to a loved one or a colleague or a friend or student, anyone who's also kind of going through it. And there are two things that help us cope. I don't know that it ever goes away for all of us, and I think that's a good thing. It keeps us humble. But the two-pronged approach, the first is compassion. Be compassionate for yourself, be compassionate for others. We don't know what other folks are going through, and maybe what we see on the outside is not really what it looks like, just like the opposite is true for me. And then the other part of it is just to mind your own damn business. Do your practice. And if self-doubt or imposter syndrome creeps up, it's usually because you're comparing your practice to someone else, or to something else. Whether that's in the here and now, or at some point in history. Your practice is not their practice and theirs is not yours. So why are we using that outside image as our measuring stick of witchiness, of success, of anything? So yeah, be compassionate and just mind your own damn business.

Kim: Dang, that's a good one.

Nicholas: They are things I have to remind myself of regularly. (both laugh)

Kim: Dang it. What would you say brings you the most joy in your practice?

Nicholas: Honestly, it's teaching. I love seeing the light bulb go off for folks. It doesn't really matter what subject I'm teaching, whatever it is, like seeing that lightbulb, seeing people not just get it, but then get excited about how well they get it so they can take that into the world. I live for that experience.

Kim: I can only relate through animals, but I like... (both laugh) I relate to everything through dogs. But when they realize that, holy crap, I can make you give me a thing, I can make you give me snacks if I do this thing, routinely? Great.

Nicholas: Oh, yeah.

Kim:  I love that. This question is open to interpretation. What is your biggest fear in witchcraft?

Nicholas: You know, I don't know that I really have things that I would describe as big fears in witchcraft. Do I occasionally get those tiny little whispers in the back of my mind that like, you know, what if we're wrong? Like, just hypothetically speaking, what if these like hardline fundamentalist Christians are the ones who are right? And then I go yeah, but statistically speaking-

Kim: (laughs) Science saves us.

Nicholas: Yeah, they represent like the smallest amount of belief in all of human history and some of the core things we see in witchcraft like animism a belief in the spirit world... These trend much higher statistically speaking. So we've got way more data that supports that a witchy worldview is probably a more accurate picture of what's going on. So, you know, those kinds of fears don't exist a whole lot. I think probably in today's strange climate... I live in Florida. Florida is doing some weird things politically. And that's like the kindest way I can put it without feeling overwhelmed by it, (laughs) to be frank. But, you know, the other quiet fear is, you know, what if they make witches the next scapegoat. Instead of immigrants, instead of trans folx, instead of queer people? And I mean, you know, I am a queer person, so we've already got that going, I don't need two strikes. But it's not so much about my fear of witchcraft. It's the fear of what the public will do in response to witchcraft.

Kim: That is one of my fears, too.

Nicholas: Yeah.

Kim: And then I get really mad. (laughs) And then uh... type up long screeds on Facebook. What's something you did early in your practice that you no longer do and why don't you do it?

Nicholas: Worrying about correspondences.

Kim: (laughs) YES!

Nicholas: You know, trying to get everything right. Oh my gosh, the moon has to be in the right phase and I have to calculate the right planetary hour and ideally it has to be on this day of the week and then I have to make sure that everything else lines up perfectly, and then like the more you learn about correspondences, at first, the more you try to get right. And then eventually you're just kind of like, but isn't that the whole point of having these spirits that you work with? Like, shouldn't they be doing some of this work so I don't have to do the rest? (Kim laughs) Like it's reciprocal, you know, I uphold my ends of things, they uphold their ends of things. So I don't really stress about correspondences. And this is a thing that... I have a day job in an occult bookstore.

Kim: Cool!

Nicholas: So, you know, I get all levels of experience and expertise, also all levels of perceived experience and expertise, which often is not the same as lived experience.(both laugh) Right? Separate conversation, I suppose, there. But you know when you get these newbies they're like, oh but I really have to do this protection spell, but I can't wait for the waning moon and I'm just like urgency always trumps the rest. Like we should never let ideal correspondence, ideal magical timing, supersede our safety, our well-being, and our peace of mind. So I don't stress about correspondences. Use the ones that work when they're available and convenient and otherwise, if you do the work, if you cultivate a relationship with spirit, if you cultivate your inner power, your inner, you know, witchfire, whatever you want to perceive that as, you don't need those other things. Those are like training wheels for the real work. And when you do the deeper, bigger, broader work, we don't have to stress about it.

Kim: My opinion is that if I look up in the Big Brown Book and I find out what... I don't even remember who wrote it. Whoever it was that wrote it, why they say I should use white quartz and some basil, if it doesn't make sense to me and I don't understand it, how am I going to, how is that going to do anything for me? Just because they said I should use it? So I make my own.

Nicholas: Yeah, absolutely. It's a lot like cooking. At the beginning, we follow recipes to the letter because we don't understand the process. We don't maybe have a deep relationship with the ingredients going into the dish. But as we become better cooks, as we become more practiced, we can make substitutions, we can make alterations, we can change things according to our preference. But beginners probably shouldn't be doing this with magic, just like they wouldn't in the kitchen, because you wouldn't go, you know what, this this lemon pepper sauce, I'm out of black pepper, so I'm gonna use another strong spice instead, let me go ahead and use-

Kim: Curry! (laughs)

Nicholas:  Right? And, you know, when you put that on the wrong thing, it doesn't work. But if you know what things can substitute for one another, what things play well together, what energies are aligneded in the same direction, then you can do any of it from scratch. And I think you also get to a point where you put less stock in the material body of that tool because you're far more invested in the meaning beyond its physical form. It is not that piece of cinnamon bark that is bringing you abundance. It is the spirit of cinnamon. It is the soul of that plant. And if you don't happen to have some powdered cinnamon, then if you've worked with that plant spirit, you can call to that energy.

Kim: Oh, that's so good! Oh, that sounds so good. (both laugh) Do you have a favorite tool in your practice? And why is it if you do, why is it your favorite? And how do you use it? It does not have to be a physical object.

Nicholas: So I could answer this a lot of ways, and I think I'm going to pick the most predictable for me, and it's it's a category of tool. And it's rocks.

Kim: I kind of expected that.

Nicholas: Yeah a lot of my magic revolves around rock but not always in the way people would expect. That doesn't mean that you know every spell or ritual that I do has a specially imbued crystal to go along with it, but I often kind of anchor the big work that I do in the landscape, which of course is built on and made of rock, at least in part. I think a lot about how the spirit of place is really deeply linked to the geology underfoot, to the processes that have shaped the land. And so if we think of the witch as inherently related to the spirit realm, and the biggest factor in that spirit realm is spirit of place, where you're at changes your magic, then you know the underlying geosphere or lithosphere is a big piece of that puzzle for me. But on the micro scale, there are always rocks around me. Like, you're not going to find me going out into public without a rock in my pocket, or around my neck, or around my wrist, or all three, and maybe also in my bag. And they're the ones that are in my pocket. So, you know, rocks are what got me here in so many ways. And so they'll always be the core of my practice and I love me a really fine museum quality mineral specimen. I really do. But I also just love rocks. I have rocks from different parts of the world, from places I visited or want to visit, because I'm so fascinated by the kind of localization of lore around rock and gem. So you know lately my collection has taken some weird detours and now I just can't get enough British rocks and they don't always have to be the shiny pretty specimens. I like those also, I do have those, but you know, when you find out about this one kind of black limestone that they stopped mining in the 1980s and there were only so many decades they ever used it for some of the most beautiful hardstone inlay and art, you just go, hmm, I think I need one of those for my practice. And then your whole life becomes tracking down this one rock, because it tells a story. I love rocks that tell stories. So yeah, rocks are my favorite tool. And they inform so much of what I do, whether they are these sentinels in the background, whether they're the anchors literally beneath our feet that hold the container for our magic, or whether they function as materia magica, the actual ingredients we use in our spellcraft. Rocks are everything to me.

Kim:  One of my friends went to England and they went to the quarry where they cut the stones for Stonehenge and he got me one of those rocks.

Nicholas: That's super cool.

Kim: It's one of my, I love it very much. It's just a little, it's just a little blue rock, but it's still really cool because of who it is.

Nicholas: Yeah, and that Priseli Bluestone or the Ophidic Dolorite is one of the rocks that I love the most. I work with it. I actually have a pendant that I wear almost every single day without fail, and it has become one of my most trusted mineral allies.

Kim: That's so neat. If you could only recommend one source of information, like a book or a podcast or YouTube channel, whatever, just kind of broad, but also kind of not, to a new witch, what would it be and why?

Nicholas: Well, knowing that I'm the rock guy. I would honestly recommend people pick up a field guide to their local geology. What are the rocks and minerals in your backyard? Because there is great magic to be found there. When you pick up a little pebble of white quartz or a chunk of granite or maybe some flint or chalk. This stone spirit has lived in this landscape for such great amounts of time that we can barely conceive of it. Like it is hard for humans to conceive of deep time or geological time. So like, get to know who's in your backyard, get to know who's underfoot, because they're going to know the energy landscape that you're in better than anything else. They are far less ephemeral than... even the most ancient trees, are but blinks of an eye in the lifetime of a rock. So yeah, a local field guide. And you can find that stuff on the internet too, so you don't even necessarily have to buy the book. But I think that's such a valuable resource. There's a big trend in bioregionalism in witchcraft today where people want to get to know their local flora and fauna, which I think is amazing. But then like we forget about geo-regionalism. There aren't enough people paying attention to the rocks they have access to without having to visit the crystal store and without having to participate in capitalism and all the other isms that are problematic.

Kim: This is blowing my brain a little bit. But I would feel like nervous about approaching them because would they even hear me? Like I don't listen to fleas generally.

Nicholas: So there is something really fascinating about the consciousness of stone. If you talk to people who are into plant spirit communication, who do that kind of plant attunement exercise, they will affirm time and time again that plants do not communicate the way that humans do, that plant spirits don't necessarily speak English. And that is absolutely true. Their life cycles are different, their experience is very different. It is a little bit less individuated than it is collective. And with rocks, it is even less individuated than that. So when you pick up a piece of granite from your local landscape or, you know, whatever is underfoot where you are, for me it's limestone, I don't know why I don't just use limestone as my example. There certainly is an individual spirit to that hunk of limestone, but it's also from a much larger structure, and it's a lot like a hologram. So, you know, when we have this holographic image, when light passes through this thing that is encoded with information, it comes out with an image. When we break that image apart, when we fracture or fragment the hologram itself, the whole image is encoded in every piece of it. And stones are a lot like that. So when you pick up that tiny little piece of limestone or chalk or flint, whatever it might be from your landscape, it is still the collective force. So it's not quite the same as this analogy of like communicating with a flea, which the human mind, likes hierarchies, might go, this is a lesser order. And in fact, with stones, it's such a different kind of thing. And they touch every part of the landscape, the physical, the energetic, the mythic. And so we are part of them and they are part of us. The minerals in our bodies, where do they come from? Right? The things that we get through the food chain ultimately derive from mineral resources and from light, and that's about it, and water. Those three forces make us up from the inside to the outside, from top to bottom. We have a lot in common with the geosphere and we just kind of forget it. So I think they're really keen to support us, especially when we recognize the majesty that is in the humble pebble. They don't have egos like we do. So it's not so much that we have to stroke an ego to get something out of this rock, but to see the world with eyes of wonder opens up magical potential that you won't get otherwise. And so being able to approach that local bit of rock or mineral, that little fossil you dug out of the creek bed, and finding the magic there, that's where magic began. That's where humans communing with the spirit realm began. That's where lists of correspondences began- from personal, maybe unverifiable experiences, the UPG that we talk about, unverified personal gnosis, this all started somewhere. And why can't we cultivate that same relationship?

Kim: Well, this conversation took a turn I didn't expect, but I am having a good time. (both laugh)

Nicholas: Well, that's good, I suppose.

Kim: I'm glad I don't have anything else planned for the day so I can just ponder after this. I think I know the initial answer to this question. Would you say that environment has shaped your practice and how do you think it would be different if you lived in, say, Nebraska?

Nicholas: Well, I don't know a lot about the geology of Nebraska, so I have a lot of learning ahead of me. You know, Florida is not famous for its rocks, so I've had to outsource a lot of rock and a lot of mineral until I could find wonder in the really humble stuff underneath me. You know, my teenage years stumbling into witchcraft, I found my environment to be a perpetual source of inspiration. I grew up in a small coastal community in southeast Florida. My home was a few minutes away from a mangrove marsh, a swamp essentially, on the river, the ocean was a mere 10, 15 minute drive away. You know, just so many different ecosystems. The biodiversity of Florida is incredible. And that almost pulled me in a very different direction in my life, but rocks is where it's at. So, you know, maybe if I'd grown up in a place with more mineral diversity or better, we'll say, more exciting mineral feces, like the stuff you see, the rock that's exposed, being more diverse, I might have gone a little different to my approach. Maybe I would have started with a better appreciation of rock from the beginning. I've always loved gemstones, minerals, crystals, but it took me a long time to slow down and appreciate those like inner pieces of the landscape that you know we just think of as being parts of the parking lot or the driveway or the building material in our skyscrapers. So I'm glad to be where I am now but I definitely think if I'd grown up somewhere else my magic would look different. The kinds of spirits that I've worked with would look different. They'd have different personalities. When the place you work the most magic growing up is a swamp, necessarily the kind of work you do looks different than if it was grassland or prairie or the mountaintop.

Kim: I've talked talked to so many people from Florida lately. I mean compared to how many people I usually talk to. And I had no desire to go to Florida before, but I kind of do now, just because I want to see all the different things.

Nicholas: You know, it's a weird and wonderful place. It is also sometimes occasionally terrifying. But witchcraft is about facing that fear and having courage. So yeah, I recommend it. Try visiting this weird place.

Kim: I feel pretty safe in saying everyone has low periods. How do you pull yourself out of a magical slump?

Nicholas: There are a couple ways that I find have been really helpful for me and I've actually had some really huge ones lately. One of my other struggles in witchcraft is this balance between learning and doing, like the balance between theory and practice. So if that happens to be anyone else's hurdle, just do a thing. Like, it doesn't, don't focus on perfection and getting it right and getting all your correspondences lined up, unless those are sources of inspiration for you, but try something new, try something different. Having more than one practice or application is really helpful, but when you feel like you don't even have the motivation to get up and do witchcraft, then we have to find witchcraft. We have to *be* witchcraft. And for me that comes down to this concept of wonder. Does my practice bring me a sense of wonder, of awe? And if not, I have to slow down until I find that. And that's probably the most meaningful element of my regular practice. When I feel overwhelmed by the work that I've got to do, or I have this problem in my life that I'm sure many other crystal lovers have, and it's too many rocks and too little time, and you just don't know where to start. Pick up one. I don't care if it's familiar or new, if you know everything about it, or at least you think you do, or you know nothing about it. Go find a place relatively free from distractions and sit with that. Find the beauty in it. Ooh and ah over the way light travels through it or reflects off the surface. Pay attention to the little textures and and and patterns that are on its faces. If it is polished, you know, get to know that the exact texture and heft of it. Use all of the senses that are safe and sane. Please don't lick your rocks. I shouldn't I shouldn't have to say that, but I do have to say that.

Kim: You so do, though. (laughs)

Nicholas: And I say that as someone who licks rocks, but it's also like calculated risk. If I am doing this, I am reasonably certain I know what information I will be gleaning, and I am seldom wrong. That doesn't mean I'm never wrong. And once or twice I've been wrong and go, oh, shit, that was not halite. Okay. Boring people from this location. Yeah, that could have had arsenic in it. So, I need to stop licking rocks from this box. (both laugh) But like, again, informed risk. So, but back to the question, which is getting out of that sensory information into play. Our sensory information is the source of sensual input, and that's a source of pleasure. Wonder should bring us pleasure. Our spiritual practice should, at the end of the day, bring us a sense of pleasure. At the very least, maybe a sense of satisfaction. If our goal is always to accomplish things, to do things, to satisfy a need, then the wonder dries up. So it doesn't have to be rocks. You know, go find a green space. Even if you live in an urban environment, find the greenest space you can. And ooh and ah over every leaf, every bud, every texture on the bark. Make yourself a meal and imagine where the food comes from and think about the chain that brought it to you. Do whatever you can to find that sense of awe in the world. And when you do that, you're going to be tapped into that bigger, deeper, broader force that is magic.

Kim: Ooh, I like that. Thank you for saying it. What's something you wish was discussed more in the witch community?

Nicholas: Oh, you know, this is a good one. I don't have something prepared for this, mostly because I'm really impressed at how varied conversations are these days, and how people are willing to broach uncomfortable subjects, sometimes with more grace and compassion than at other times. But you know, since I'm the rock guy, let's just come back to my main area of focus. And just because I'm seeing it being discussed at all doesn't mean I see it being discussed very well or accurately. And it is about the ethics of mining extraction. And there's so many conversations being had about this, and there's a whole lot of finger-pointing and holier-than-thou attitudes. And what I wish was discussed was the rest of the picture. Absolutely, there are deplorable practices that affect the environment and the human labor, especially the human labor involved in getting that shiny chunk of rose quartz or anything else out of the earth for you to put on your altar or turn into jewelry. But it always feels like the people who are the loudest in advocating against this kind of harm forget that the fact that the technology they're using in this advocacy uses far worse and more criminal kinds of things in it than that hunk of rose quartz is ever going to have. They are getting to and from places where they can talk about these things with the help of fossil fuels. They are dolling up their faces with makeup that probably contains things like mica that are, to be quite crass but also quite frank, is mined by child slaves. So I would really love for people to not scapegoat the crystal healing industry. Yes, it's a multi-billion dollar industry and yes, it can do better, but it also represents the smallest fraction of the ethical implications of mining and extraction; of the entire industry. So I would love to see people centering the bigger picture rather than trying to make the baby witches who just got their tumbled rose quartz feel shitty about buying that piece of rose quartz. Because that's not effective for anybody. So I think, yes, the crystal world can step up their game and we can have more transparency in our supply chains. We as consumers can demand better when it comes to the ethical treatment of humans doing the labor and, you know, better environmental protections. But, you know, the truth is that it doesn't matter how much of the crystal healing industry we fix, because the rest of mining and extraction is still deplorable. And that's what we have to shift our focus to. And sadly, that feels insurmountable, because there just aren't enough people doing that work. It's way easier to condemn the tiniest fraction of the mining industry rather than to look at the whole picture, because then we can forget, we can have that convenient kind of sense of amnesia. Oh yeah, I'm not talking about the rest of it. I just want to make you feel bad because you bought this heat-treated citrine. And you know, the truth is that the people who are doing this work, the indigenous folks, the people of color that are largely responsible for the mining in a lot of these communities, this is subsistence mining. If we all of a sudden, if the whole world stopped buying Congo malachite or rose quartz from South Africa, people would die of starvation because they would not be paid living wages by doing anything else. So this is so much more complicated and nuanced, and that's the part I want to see people talking about. The complexity of it, and maybe just being comfortable with being uncomfortable. There's not an answer. There's not a quick fix. So we do what we can with the tools we have, and we constantly strive to have better tools.

Kim: I feel like one of my issues with that is what's the angle of the person saying it? Like what are they, why are they telling me? Or usually it's not to me, I just see it, like scrolling. What is their angle? I want to know... is it concern for the planet, or is it because they're trying to direct you to something else that they're trying to get you to buy? Or they're just a secret, they're, like they have the actual crystal business that they say is ethical and they don't want you to buy from Joe Schmoe over here.

Nicholas:  Yeah, there's a lot of that. There's a lot of misrepresentation of fact there there's a lot of willful ignorance and genuine naivete. And, you know, we live in a world that doesn't fact check very well, unfortunately. I think that's probably the nicest way I can say that without getting on a whole tirade about it, but it's just complicated. And that's not a satisfying answer. People like black or white answers because it allows us...

Kim: I love them.

Nicholas:  Yeah. They allow us to firmly situate us, ourselves, in relation to the perspective that we want to maintain, the goals we want to see manifest in the world. But when the truth is mostly gray, you don't get to do that. Like, absolutely, you can only buy crystals that are purportedly ethically mined, and maybe they are, and maybe they aren't. Maybe they're ethically mined, but then they're cut and polished in really inhumane labor conditions, in unsafe labor conditions. Maybe they're mined safely, and people are paid fair wages, and people doing the cutting and polishing have effective and safe working  conditions, but they're being distributed around the world so many times that the environmental cost, the carbon footprint, the energy investment in getting them from point A to point B to C all the way to Z is so great that it's still bad for the environment. Like, this is so complicated. And whenever we've got people who take that hard line in the sand, condemning one thing but not another. You know, I do question motivation as well, and I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and I think mostly it's people don't understand the complexity, the nuance, the fact that this is kind of the cards that we're dealt so long as we live under capitalism. And that's not to be nihilist or to absolve people from trying, like absolutely try harder, but there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, because capitalism by its very nature exploits the labor, the people who generate the capital. So that's just the way it is. It's true in mining and extraction. It's true in publishing. Like, who is the most exploited part of the publishing process? The author. I say that as an author who's pretty damn proud of his work, who's really happy to be published through traditional means, who loves seeing it go out into the world. And I recognize the inherent difficulties of that. So until the whole system changes, nothing really changes.

Kim: Wow, that's heartening. (both)

Nicholas: Right, you know?

Kim:  I'm going to go back to thinking about the rocks now.

Nicholas: Let's do that, let's do that.

Kim: Do you work with other witches?

Nicholas: You know, I do and I don't. It really just kind of depends on things. I love building community. We've had a weird few years, understatement of the year, right? (Kim laughs) So that certainly has limited the nature and scope and application of the work that we can do in community in a lot of ways. It has not stopped me from trying. I know that the podcast is centered around witchcraft, but that's not the only tool in my toolbox, and it's not the only kind of spiritual or magical community that I participate in. So if I just kind of open it up to all the hats I wear, I try really hard to do work with community at large, whether that has to be virtual or whether that's by attending an event, local or big or otherwise, I definitely do work with others. But I'm really a fan of this narrative that I hear coming from a lot of people in a lot of places lately is that at the end of the day, all witches are solitary practitioners. Because at the end of the day, everything we do in community is rooted in our personal practice. And if you don't have that, what good are you to your community? How can you show up for others if you aren't doing the work for yourself? So yes, I work with other witches and other magical spiritual folks, but I'm still really invested in doing things for myself and by myself when I can to make sure that those tools stay sharp so I can show up for others.

Kim: I like that. And I hope, I mean, I always hope people listen to the podcast, but (both laugh) I really hope new witches are hearing this one specifically, because I feel like media, and social media, and so many things say, hey, you're supposed to be in a coven. That's how witches work. But it doesn't work for everyone. And it doesn't have to, you're still a witch.

Nicholas: Absolutely.

Kim:  It's okay if you're by yourself.

Nicholas: Yeah, and like, you know, back to my personal view or definition of witchcraft, like, we are inherently outside the norm. So if the dominant narrative is saying you've got to be in a coven, then stand up to that and say, you know what, that's not for me. And then you're claiming that antinomian, that rebellious power to show up as your most authentic self. So yeah, it all works.

Kim: Imagine the three biggest influences on your practice, whether it's a person or an idea or a book or a rock. Thank them. Thank them, three of them, the top three. Thank them for their influence.

Nicholas: Oh. I never thought about this in terms of like abstract influences. So, yeah, I want to savor this one. So, you know, first and foremost, a human being who has shaped my practice in a whole lot of ways is Christopher Penzack. When I was a new author, he was very generous with his time and energy and expertise and has been ever since. I have trained through the Mysteries School and the Temple of Witchcraft that he co-founded and the parts of that training I've enacted. I haven't gone the whole way through, but the work that I've done with that has been really meaningful and has helped me sharpen a lot of tools that I've neglected or maybe ignored all together. I also really admire that he has a lot of witchy and a lot of woo in his practice, and I'm kind of the same way. I'm sometimes too woo for the witchy folks and too woo for the, or too witchy for the woo folks, and that's fine. You know, I'll stand in that weird little liminal space and that makes me real happy, and just knowing that I'm not alone is so meaningful. I think, you know, another influence I would have to thank is my most meaningful music teacher, Carolyn Destito, for inspiring me to pursue the horn, even though it was hard, (laughs) really hard. In fact, it was so hard it wasn't in our elementary school band, and the first chance I got going to middle school to switch instruments, I did. And that, contextualized in this conversation, is important because witchcraft is hard, and we don't pursue the tenets of witchcraft to attain perfection. Just like as a musician, we don't necessarily pursue music for the goal of every note on the page being perfect. We pursue music to express ourselves. We pursue music for the sake of art. We pursue these things to tell a story through our craft, even when it is hard, or especially because it is hard in my case. And that's my magical practice right there. Like, it is not a walk in the park, especially when the world is suffering, to try to be this vehicle for compassion, but you do it anyway because the means is the ends, not the other way around. So I can't thank her enough for inspiring me to stick with things, even when they're tough, because that shapes us, that changes us. And I think probably the last influence that I would have to thank, and I'm going to be kind of cheesy here, and just thank the Earth. Like, my practice is so centered on resources that come from the earth that if the Earth looked different or if there were resources we could not receive from her, then I wouldn't have a practice. I wouldn't have a platform. I wouldn't have the sense of wonder that I've got. So thank you, Mama Earth, for these beautiful rocks and minerals. Thank you for all the green and growing things. Thank you for all the beings, physical and non-physical, that I get to cohabit your surfaces with, because they are the source of wonder that drives me forward. 

Kim: That might legitimately make me cry. (laughs)

Nicholas: Aww.

Kim: Man...

Nicholas: I know it's not what you signed up for, I'm sorry and/or you're welcome. (laughs)

Kim: Oh, I'm constantly in tears when I do this. (both laugh) Um... what is your favorite rock?

Nicholas: Oh, I should have been prepared for this one. I have different answers for different reasons. So So, you know, whether it's, you know, the couple of pieces I've got in my collection from Cornwall or my really precious Japanese minerals, I have more Japanese quartz than anything else from Japan or even just like the common stuff we see coming from Arkansas and Brazil that are on the market. Like, I just I love it all because it is it is so diverse and at the same time so reassuringly regular.

Kim: Do you have one specific one that is like it may not have an official name, but it has a name in your head. It's like, oh, this one.

Nicholas: I have a lot like that. And, I couldn't do justice to any of them if I only picked one or two. So...

Kim: You can't pick a favorite child? (laughs)

Nicholas: Well, you know, I can, but they're all listening right now. (both laugh)

Kim: Best not.

Nicholas: You know, I got one of like my Holy Grail quartz specimens fairly recently, so we're going to use that as my favorites. I'll give you two.

Kim: Favorite of the day. Yeah, I'll give you two favorites out of my quartz collection, and they're both citrine. Citrine is by far my favorite colored varietal of quartz. So one is what we call a Japan Law Twin. So it's a really unique law of twinning. And they're usually very flattened and they meet at a 94 degree angle. So it's almost a right angle. And this one is Jumbo. It's larger than life. They sometimes call them butterfly twins or heart twins because the outline of them is kind of shaped like this. And this is gem quality natural citrine from Zambia, from one of the most ethical mining ventures in all of Africa, maybe one of the most ethical mining ventures anywhere in the world, which I really love. I know the providence of it. I know the person I got it from really well. I know who they got it from. I know the story of how they got it. Like the whole thing is just great. And I've wanted a fine Japan Law Twin for a long time. This has a good amount of damage on it, but it is huge. And sometimes we like things just because they're big. It's allowed, you're allowed to be a size queen sometimes, right? (Kim laughs) And then my other sit training that's like a holy grail, in this case, almost a little bit more literally, is something that I didn't even know existed. It is a weird rock. So like weird rocks are my jam. So in this case it's what they call a potato stone, they're also known as dull coat agates, they come from dull coat quarry, which is a mine, a quarry, and the Mendips, which are hills in Somerset. It's actually like kind of the border between the counties of Somerset and Wiltshire. So the most, to name a place everyone's heard of in Somerset, Chalice Well in Glastonbury is one of the most famous sites there. Then on the other side of the divide, famous things you've heard of in Wiltshire include Stonehenge, Avebury, the Long Barrows, all these other Neolithic burial sites. It's situated in this really magical landscape. The guy I got this from has mined, cut, and polished tens of thousands of these potato stones, these weird little agate nodules, and he's only found about ten that contain citrine. So I did the math. I own this one British citrine that is about like twelve and a half parts per million of all the ones ever been found. And that's just so extraordinarily mind-blowingly irregular and statistically unlikely, like it shouldn't exist...

Kim: It's a witch!

Nicholas: And it's in my house! Like it's right here. And it was a...

Kim: It's a witch stone! It's by itself.

Nicholas: Absolutely. Yeah that's that's like, I didn't even know it could exist and I own one anyway, that's... Yeah.

Kim:  That's... I, that makes me happy. (laughs)

Nicholas: Good.

Kim: Do you have any advice for new witches?

Nicholas: Yeah. You know, really really succinctly, take it slowly. Start with what you love, and don't try to be the expert in everything all at once.

Kim: (pauses) That is great advice that I don't ever want to follow. (laughs)

Nicholas: Right, you know, um... (laughs)

Kim: That keeps me safe if I know everything.

Nicholas: No, it's more dangerous, and the thing about witchcraft is that it is dangerous, right? We have to learn to be courageous. So it feels scary as shit not to know stuff, but it also feels scary trying to know everything, because what if you get it wrong? And you're gonna get it...

Kim: Oh, that's the end of the world.

Nicholas: Right, you're gonna get it wrong. I hope you get it wrong. I hope you get it wrong in the safest way possible though, and I hope that you're able to learn from that and have the grace to own up to that, and maybe to have a few fun takeaways from it as time goes on. But if you give yourself permission to take it slowly and focus on the things you love, then not knowing everything is not so scary, and getting things wrong is also not so scary, because if you love what you're doing, it's worth taking that risk of being wrong. And it's worth learning and growing from those experiences.

Kim: Now that you've answered these questions, who do you think it would be fun to hear from? Who should I invite on the show to answer these questions?

Nicholas: So I'm going to say this not knowing every guest you've ever had. So the first person that comes to mind for me is Fio Gede Parma. They have a brand new book out called The Witch Belongs to the World that I'm just in love with. Like, it's just some of the most beautiful prose that I've read. But also, Fio inspires me a lot in very personal ways, like watching their practice, watching their presence, inspires me to want to be a better human. But then also their magic, their craft, is so meaningful that it inspires me to want to create meaning with the work that I do as well. So I think they would have way more entertaining answers than I've got, and some really deep ones. 

Kim: What a great way to put it. Is there anything else that you wanted to bring up that I didn't ask you or anything you wanted to ask me?

Nicholas: Oh my gosh. So, the only way we survive as authors is by being, my publisher likes the expression tireless self-promoters, which sounds a lot better than always giving yourself a shameless plug. So, I will take this opportunity. I'm always writing. I always have new things. So, for anyone who's listening, if any of what I've said resonates with you and or if you just really like rocks or flowers or reiki, I've got a bunch of books for you to check out. My newest one is called Crystal Basics Pocket Encyclopedia. It came out earlier this year and it's a travel-friendly guide. It's petite. It's a 450 rocks, minerals, fossils, and gems. You can also find me on social media, visit my website, sign up for my newsletter, join my Patreon, and experience a wide array of classes that I teach. I probably do too many things, to be frank, but I love teaching, so I have a lot of different ongoing series that I offer, and it would just be a joy to connect with more people through that platform because teaching drives the work that I do. It's where I get the most satisfaction, the most experience. It's also where I learn so much about what works and what doesn't and get to hear things from other perspectives. So I love being able to do that. But if you want to keep track of those things, the books, the classes, whatever, you can find me online at theluminouspearl.com or follow me on social media at the luminous pearl and you'll see my my tireless self promotion there.

Kim: So at the end I have two things that I ask of my guests. Thing number one is please recommend something. Anything at all- does not have to be which related at all. It can be a tv show or a smell you like or an activity you like doing.

Nicholas: Hmm. Hmm. This is a good one. And also very broad and open-ended. Oh, gosh, like, do I want to pick a weird niche nerdy thing or do I want something that's got mass appeal? That's so hard.

Kim: If you can think of both immediately, like real quick, just lay them both out there.

Nicholas: Yeah, so recommending something broad that I think all of us could do better for is like, invest your time not only for yourself, but outside yourself. That can be volunteering, that can be finding a way to give back to community. It doesn't even have to be in a witchy way, but I think that if the goal of the great work, you know, the magnum opus of magic, of alchemy, of the secret arts, is refining self, then, like, there's got to be a way that shows up for others. We can't keep that to ourselves. So you know, do something like that. However that's going to manifest for you.

Kim: Bend over and pick up that piece of trash.

Nicholas: Exactly, exactly. And then, you know, find a weird nerdy thing that is not witchcraft related. And I actually give this kind of advice, or something akin to it, to a lot of my peers. Don't get witch burnout. And especially if you are one of the Serious Occultists, TM, or one of the Dark Spooky Witches, TM, like do something with levity, do something that is secretly like really woo-woo, like nobody has to know that you like once a week go to this love and light meditation with all the people that you would never be caught dead with in public. Like, do a thing like that. And, or do something...

Kim: Goat yoga.

Nicholas: Yeah, seriously. Although that sounds like really devilish to me, which is great. Or, you know, find some other weird passion that you can do that just isn't about this work. So for me, this year, I'm finally taking time to do that in a big way, in a way that I haven't in at least a decade and probably longer, because before then was my like corporate life and I didn't have time for things that were neither my career nor magical back then, and it's music. So I took the better part of 15 years away from music, maybe slightly longer, and like I'm learning to play historical instruments because that's always been my greatest love. And I, if I wait for the opportunity to arise, if I wait to find the right teacher, if I wait for other things, it's just never going to happen. So I bought myself, much to my husband's surprise, more than one historical horn from different countries.

Kim: (laughs) Surprise!

Nicholas: Surprise! Um,surprise might not be a strong enough word to describe things, but so like I do this and the amount of joy that it gives me carries over into the rest of the work that I do. Like absolutely, if you are a full-time witch or otherwise magical person, whether that's your job or not, you can still get witch burnout so bad. So do, like, find a nerdy thing and just do that. And also be of service.

Kim: Find you some glee. 

Nicholas: Yeah. 

Kim: Thing number two is, will you please tell me a story?

Nicholas:  I would love to tell you a story.

Kim: YAY!

Nicholas:  Yeah. I will tell you the story of one of the most significant and unexpected spiritual experiences that I had, and it is not overtly witchy. It's magical, but it's not overtly witchy. So in 2009, I took this life-changing trip to Japan, and everything about it was too good to be true, but it still happened. And I sometimes still have to wonder, like, whoa, did we really get to do all those things? And it's weird, but we really did. So I have to set the stage for you here. On one of the nights that we were staying in Kyoto, we met up with some of my, well, my now ex, but my dear friend Richard's friends in Japan, and we got to see some temples and do the shrines and do all the things that we were excited to do as witchy folks. And we picked one temple to go to on this one particular night in spring, and it's part of a series of temples that are known as the Philosopher's Walk. So they do these kind of events where you get to experience the whole walk, like a little mini pilgrimage. And this one is called Kiyomizudera, which means the Temple of Pure Water, and it's at the end of the Philosopher's Walk. And this was the start of their kind of spring cycle. So on this particular night, all of the temples along the Philosopher's Walk open up after hours. They usually, like anywhere you go in Japan, a temple or a shrine is gonna close at like 5 p.m. sharp or whatever the local time is going to be and that's it. So like at sunset they're all opening up again and you know pagodas are illumined and it's just this beautiful thing. So we're like doing all the fun stuff. This has a sacred spring there, hence it's the Temple of Pure Water, Kiyomizudera, and that's like the big draw and a massive pagoda which sadly was under construction. Excellent views of the cherry blossoms, all this other great stuff, which is the reason people go. But then, like, we end up in line to go underneath the temple. And I'm like, okay, well, this line is moving real slow. I don't think there's anything under here that I am necessarily going to need to see, but we're already in line. So it's got instructions in several languages, including English, thankfully, instructing you to, you know, hold the bag with your shoes in it in one hand and hold on to the rope with the other. And they ask you to formulate an intention or prayer or anything, and to just hold this in your heart as you walk this path. And you come around the first corner and you are in pitch black. And now all of a sudden, I understand why we have very specific instructions to hold on to the rope, and also why the line is moving so slowly. So you like fumble through the dark. It's like a labyrinth as you weave your way through this literal underground part of the temple that I didn't know existed. And finally, you round a corner and there is a single spotlight right above this massive round stone that's carved with a Sanskrit character. We call them bonji in Japanese. It literally means like Buddhist writing, but they're often kind of like a monosyllabic mantra. Like this one sound is the embodiment of the cosmic force of whatever Buddha or Bodhisattva might be associated with the temple. And you come up to it, and it's one of the rare instances where you're actually invited to touch something in a temple, and the edges are worn smooth from the millions of hands that have touched the stone and imprinted it with people's really sincere prayers and everything else and it was just like the most literal experience of coming out of the dark and into the light, coming out of ignorance and into enlightenment, out of the unknown and into a sense of empowerment that I've ever had, that like I felt it with every cell of my body. And we came out of that and wandered into another hall that, again, we almost didn't walk into. And this room ends up being like a three-dimensional mandala of these beautiful statues representing different figures from Buddhism and not Buddhism. Some other figures have been adopted. And, I mean, these are centuries-old wooden carvings that actually come from different countries, and they've been arranged into this form. And we come out and we're learning more about this hall by talking to one of the nuns there at the shrine. And she tells us that the primary deity enshrined there is like a vision of Kuan Yin. It's similar to like in Catholicism, you have so many different images of Mary or Jesus or anyone else. You've got Our Lady of the Charity of Cobre, you've got Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Guadalupe. So it's kind of the same thing with Canon or Quan Yin. And in this particular one, she's known as, or they're known because they're depicted androgynously, as the Bodhisattva of Compassion, who can save you with a single sound. So like with a single utterance can bring you into light. And then we also find out that this hall only opens up once every 33 years. 

Kim: Holy crap! 

Nicholas: And it had been open like six or seven years prior for its normal, like regularly scheduled thing. They opened it this one night only at the start of the Philosopher's Walk Spring Festival to celebrate the life's work of the man who helped with the restoration of this temple because he'd recently passed. And it was his hope to see things continue to improve. So my next chance at ever going back is something like 25 years later, if I can get the timing right, I might be able to see it again, but because it opened for one night only outside of its regular schedule, I got to experience like... I don't really have words to describe what it's like to stare into these statues' eyes. They actually use quartz to create these plano convex lenses that they set into the carved eye, so it's painted. It is so expressive and so lifelike, and they undergo rituals to enspirit them. They might not call it that, but that's effectively what it is. They become these kind of living icons, and being in that room and facing that statue after touching that stone... (pauses) I mean, it's been 14 years, and I still don't accurately have words to convey the magic of that experience. So that is that is my most magical experience I've ever had in this body in this life. 

Kim: I love everything you just said. 

Nicholas: And if we just stuck to the plan we wouldn't have experienced any of it. 

Kim: That's the best part! That's what I need to do with my life is stop with the rigidity. Man that was so great, thank you! 

Nicholas: My pleasure, thanks for letting me tell a random story.

Kim: Well thank you again so much for being on the show, it was really fun and enlightening to talk to you.

Nicholas: Thank you so much for having me.

Kim: And I will see you on the internet, probably Instagram. Okay bye! 

Nicholas: Bye.

Kim: Nicholas hello. Welcome to the weird stuff.

Nicholas: I hope I'm ready for the weird stuff.

Kim: Most of it's pretty tame. What is your favorite quote?

Nicholas: This is an easy one for me. I'm gonna butcher it in the original language but I'm a nerd so I'm gonna try... (fades out) (fades in) I'm definitely a combination of an anxious cat, a badger, and a dachshund. I'll make this make sense for you. (fades out)

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