Rhythms of the Earth and the Artifacts of Magic Revealed

When the winds of the Southern wilds whisper secrets of the old ways, Larry Evans, a witch and occult artist, is there to catch them. Today, our conversation weaves through the thicket of his Appalachian heritage and into the heart of his craft, where we find the enchanting intersection of nature, disruption, and the art of jewelry-making from reclaimed copper. The captivating lore of his family's herbal remedies and hunting traditions paints a backdrop to Larry's embrace of witchcraft as more than just spells—it's a dance with the rhythms of the earth itself. Discover his magical musings at dragonflymoon-studio.com and follow his daily enchantments on Instagram.

Step into the circle where tradition and transformation meet, as we traverse the mystical paths that have drawn seekers and sages throughout history. From the clandestine snake handling churches to the stirring of ancient lunar connections, our discussion with Larry sheds light on the alchemy of personal rituals and the power of symbolic objects, such as magical rings and tarot cards. Our foray into historical texts like the "Four Books of Occult Philosophy" and the secrets of the Emerald Tablet offers a rich context for the modern mystic, inviting listeners to explore the archival depths where the roots of magic intertwine with the branches of knowledge.

As the tarot's rich tapestry unfolds, we honor the visionary Pamela Colman Smith and the profound influence of decks like the Rider-Waite-Smith, Crowley's Thoth, and the classical Marseille. With an eye towards the future, we tease an upcoming conversation with psychic medium Melissa Saint-Hilaire, foreshadowing a journey into contemporary tarot that promises to be as diverse as it is deep. Our episode may have drawn to a close, but the spells we've spun and the tales we've told are just the beginning—join me next Tuesday for more stories where the extraordinary meets the everyday on Your Average Witch.

Transcript

Kim: 0:04

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 Crepuscular Conjuration. This week I'm talking to Larry Evans, a witch in Texas. Larry talked about growing up in the South, a little about tarot and gave us a few history lessons. Now let's get to the stories. Hi, larry, welcome to the show.

Larry: 0:31

Thank you for having me on. I'm sorry we had to reschedule from last week.

Kim: 0:36

Well, I mean not insurance, what the hell. Air conditioning is important.

Larry: 0:40

Air conditioning plumbing. I've had a week air conditioning plumbing I I've had a week.

Kim: 0:45

So can you please introduce yourself and let everybody know who you are and what you do and where they can find you okay, my name is larry evans.

Larry: 0:54

uh, I am a an occult artist. Uh, I am, uh, presently. The website is dragonflymoon-studiocom. I'm on Instagram under dragonflymoonstudio. There's a Facebook page, but that's just basically the auto post from the blog. You can also get to the blog directly through the sacredlifecom. I don't do much of the other media. I have been playing on threads, but it's intermittent, so I'm no longer affiliated with the former Twitter, and so that's about it. I hope to have a store on the Dragonfly Moon Studio site this year. Store on the dragonfly moon studio site this year. Uh, right now it's just hosting the blog which covers occult topics um tarot cards, astrology, that sort of thing aren't you also a jeweler?

Larry: 1:58

I am a jeweler in training, I'll put it that way. I'm, I am learning that. That's one of my art things. Um, I, I, I dabble at this point. Uh, I have been working the last year or so to uh, uh, increase the skills and, uh, manage the fire a little better. So fire is still a difficult thing for me.

Kim: 2:21

So I thought I remembered talking to you about jewelry stuff.

Larry: 2:25

Yeah, we had talked about one of the uh, the rolling mills at one point.

Kim: 2:30

I do love a tool.

Larry: 2:31

Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, uh, I just I, I I haven't quite got to that point to get one of those, because I'm again, I'm still weighing this and that I have a bunch of reclaimed copper, my day job. We put in a high voltage standby power system so I get occasionally I'll get a big hunk of wire and so I've got to figure out melting that down. And when I figure out melting it down, I'll probably need to get get a rolling mill then. But yeah, it's one thing to the next, uh, and then you know, I I have a, I I'm sort of a magpie with my attention, so I've got, you know, oil painting sitting here next to me. I've got sculpture work going on over here, uh, and then you know the day job and and, uh, there's probably a novel or two out there somewhere.

Kim: 3:26

What does it mean to you when you call yourself a witch, or do you?

Larry: 3:31

Well, I do, and that's somewhat recent, just because it's now easier to say that than to try and explain otherwise. But my short answer is I'm an agent of chaos. I am disruption in the universe, so to speak. It's a certain lifestyle that is related to, not necessarily completely in harmony with nature, although I'd like to, but in an awareness of nature. It is doing things which are potentially contrary to what modern, normal people do. It's believing in things that are beyond, beyond the kin of mortal men, so to speak. I, I am that reason that the villagers don't go into the dark area of the forest hell yes yeah, so yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm spooky do you have any family history with witchcraft?

Kim: 4:44

or or even if you came from a conservative Christian family, they still did weird things at night that they didn't tell anybody at church about.

Larry: 4:55

Well, okay, it was never called witchcraft and it wouldn't be called witchcraft today. I grew up in eastern Kentucky, in the Appalachians, so you may know a little bit about that.

Kim: 5:05

A little bit. Not about Kentucky, but you know.

Larry: 5:09

Yeah, you were on the other side of the hill, yeah, but my family history is not. We did things with. You know herbs and and, uh, pulses and and that sort of thing, but I'm not sure that that was unique to us per se. I think that may just be a holdover of the culture there that people you know self-reliance is a big deal. So you do things that you know you get burned, you you make a mustard, pulses, poult, poultice, that sort of thing. My grandfather taught me a great deal of herb lore. We would go out in the hills and get ginseng and mayapple and tea berry and a number of other herbal. Oh, shit.

Kim: 6:00

Remember tea berry gum.

Larry: 6:02

Yeah, Well, this is the actual plant I imagined but, which was not the same thing.

Larry: 6:08

It had a similar flavor, yeah, but it was the actual plant. And the thing I remember most about it was if you were out walking in the woods and you started to get that stomach ache from when you've been exercising a while, you could find this plant and you could chew the leaves and it would get rid of the stomachache. So that's what I remember about it, because we would go squirrel hunting and I know there's probably going to be listeners who are freaking out on this. So and I know there's probably going to be listeners who are freaking out on this but I grew up in this late 60s, 70s era and we still hunted for some of the sustenance on our table. So squirrel, rabbit game, that sort of thing we did trapping in the winter for furs to make, basically buy Christmas presents for the kids and such. And we also did the herbal stuff, the ginseng, particularly for selling mainly into the Asian market at that time because there was value to that. But I still have a few pieces from when we used to go and dig it. There was always that. That was always there. And then, of course, personally I would wander around the woods and sort of talk to the trees and the rocks and that sort of thing, and so I've been weird from birth.

Larry: 7:44

From birth, my grandfather, who taught me this stuff, was also a water witch In the old sense. He was a dowser to the extent that he worked for the local lumberyard construction company and when they went to put in a house and site the new well, he'd go out and cut the twig, cut the fork I think it was a beech tree he would use. Well, he'd go out and cut the twig, you know, cut the fork, I think it was a beech tree he would use, and he would go out there and he would walk around until those. You know, that middle prong bent down and that's where they drilled the well and they found water. So I said, well, how do you do that? He said you can do it. So that's my instruction in that. Oh, that's what he taught.

Kim: 8:28

I didn't do it, so that's my instruction in that, uh, but that's what he thought you go do it.

Larry: 8:31

Yeah, well, you, you can do that. You, you know how to do that. So I I gather you know it was I I tried a little bit with the the uh, the bronze rods. I found some at a store. I, it does seem to do some stuff here and there. I'm not really. I've got a pendulum. I haven't done as much uh, it's one of those things still under experimentation, uh, to do that. But the uh, the uh.

Larry: 9:00

He was also a lay preacher in the hardshell baptist church. So you know, it was not considered witchcraft what he did. Everybody knew what he did, but that was just something he could do. You know, it's like some people are better at basketball, you know. So it was not considered magic or any kind of a trade. It's just he was born being able to do it, and other than that there wasn't really anything, like I said, that marked us out any differently. I, however, was strange, and strange from the very beginning, and that obviously caused a great deal of consternation among my parents, etc. We did, until I was probably eight or nine, maybe 10 years old, attend a Sunday school at a local, I don't know. I guess you'd call them a charismatic church. They were not affiliated with a congregation. As I said, my grandfather and grandmother were part of the Hardshell Baptists, so I did go to a couple of Hellfire and Brimstone services.

Larry: 10:13

And one night we went to the Snake Hamlin Church and people don't know what that is. There's a group and they tend to now be very secretive and secluded because it's considered to be Well when they do a Saturday Night Live skit about you.

Larry: 10:37

Yeah, well, okay, so the snake handler. There's some passage in one of the Gospels about you should put your hands on serpents and they should not harm you, or something of that nature. And so they've taken this up to be a sign of their faith. They're also sometimes they're called the holy rollers, but they would, you know, they'd start the service and then everybody would get ramped up and they'd bring a box out of the back that was full of timber rattlers and copperheads and they'd pass them around. Some of them drank strychnine because they also, you know, they believe in the power of the faith. If you believe well enough, then you didn't die from it, and if you didn't well, I guess you didn't have that faith, but you know, so there's.

Larry: 11:29

There's a lot of weird stuff goes on in the hills and people and again, like I said, they're. They're no longer, uh, because of the, the activities of that sort. They tend to be very insular and far out and they meet in trailers and people's houses and stuff like that. So it's not like an established church because it's dangerous. Uh, so, uh, there was that aspect to my youth but I also, just I was.

Larry: 11:59

I was a strange kid and, like I said, I was given to wandering around the woods by myself and and talking to trees and rocks and that was kind of my, my upbringing with it. Uh, we, we were not severely church people. Uh, I have my, my grandmother, who's both my parents worked. My grandmother kind of took care of us in the summertime as the school was out and after school. My grandmother kind of took care of us in the summertime as the school was out and after school until my mom got home and she was very not crazy religious, but she was a devout believer, you know.

Larry: 12:43

And so I had the book read to me and I know most of the stories and if you go and look at the blog, you can find that I clearly know a good deal of the lore and I think one of the things that people need to understand sitting here in 2024, even if you're a witch, even if you're a pagan, you are living in a post-Christian environment where what you believe has been conditioned by the church's alteration of the history. So being aware of what they believe is kind of useful information, because then you go well, we just subtract this piece out. Leave is kind of useful information because then you go oh well, we just subtract this piece out.

Kim: 13:30

Can you share any of your practice with us?

Larry: 13:34

You know I don't have a lot of. I am it's very image oriented, whether it's because I'm an artist, whether it's making imagery, sigil work, that sort of thing, glyphs and and pieces of paintings and things like that that have a lot of that involved in it, a lot of intention in the work. But also separately, I will use imagery as part of a spell, for instance, there's going to be drawings and designs and that sort of thing. But I also do that just in my head, also do that just in my head. Uh, and and that, uh, it's all about manipulating energy and that sort of thing.

Larry: 14:36

Now that that being said, uh, I have a bunch of tarot cards and I practice astrology and numerology because I numerology numerology was early on what I did, because I found a book that talked about tarot, numerology and astrology and palmistry and some of these other things. But for tarot you need cards and in 1970 or so, those weren't something you could get on Amazon, because there wasn't an Amazon, there wasn't an internet, and so they were fairly rare and astrology you needed a pre-computer. You needed several books. You needed an ephemeris. You needed a table of houses. Books you needed an ephemeris, you needed a table of houses. You needed some means of calculating all this, and I did, prior to computers, actually know how to do a chart with those tools and a slide rule, because the calculations are. They're Byzantine. So if you're not into math, astrology is not for you. Uh, I've since got software, which is great because then, okay, what's your birthday and where were you born? Okay, now let's talk about this. You are aspected over here, so, so it's a lot easier now. Uh, for these, these kids today.

Larry: 16:06

And eventually, I did find a deck of tarot cards. When I was about seven years old. I ran across one, and it's called the Hoi Ploy Tarot. I didn't know that was what it's called until a few years ago. Actually, I just thought it was like a generic tarot deck. It's based on the RWS. I found it in the toys section of the JCPenney outlet in Columbus, ohio, when I was seven years old and I spent my summer allowance to buy it, and that was you know well over 50 years ago, so I just looked on eBay.

Kim: 16:47

Those cards are like $300 now. Yeah, I know, I know.

Larry: 16:51

I didn't realize I'd never seen another deck and I was looking at Via Hedera had posted a picture on her Instagram of her cards. I mean that deck with the key on the back of it, does it have these like it's like an RWS card, but tie-dyed? And she goes yeah, it's the Hoi Poloi, it used to be my mom's, that's my deck.

Kim: 17:12

That's cool.

Larry: 17:14

You know, because that was and I had no idea. I just thought, and then I find out well, the reason they're $200 on eBay is because they were not legally licensed. But but, of course, now the RWS is public domain, which is why you see it everywhere and on everything. In the last couple of years it became legal to use Pixie Smith's images everywhere and people are doing it. But those designs in 1972 were not legally obtained, so they had a short run and that's why it ended up in the Penny's discount bin.

Larry: 17:52

But that's still my go-to deck. I still read with it. I read with it last year in New Orleans for the Writers' Conference. But, yeah, tarot is a big part of what I do, um, but yeah, tarot, tarot is a big part of what I do, um, but a lot, of, a lot of what I do is just, basically, you know, thinking about the world as a magical space, as an energetic space. And even when I'm doing mundane things, I will, you know, okay, the bacon needs to have this.

Larry: 18:25

Some people would call this obsessive compulsive disorder, but I will, you know, align the strips of bacon in the pan in a particular fashion to generate a certain energetic outcome when I'm making breakfast every day, and, yeah, I mean that it is something with obsessive, compulsive behavior, but it's also, you know, I'm aware that I'm doing it. I'm aware that I'm doing it for this reason, to hopefully, you know, not have a miserable day at work, so that sort of thing. And that's when I, when I was working on the blog and trying to figure out what I call it, okay, well, okay, I'm gonna call it the sacred life, because that's kind of what the way I approach this it's not about. Well, I, I need to, I need to put a spell on that boy over there. He's pissing me off.

Larry: 19:22

You know, I try to just, you know, have these little moments. Everything, everything potentially, is ritual. Everything potentially has a magical outcome or a magical influence. So I try to think about the world in that way. Sometimes, you know, it becomes. I try to think about the world in that way. Sometimes it becomes habit. Obviously, I have wards and such around the house. I have certain I've got magic rings and things I've collected over the year. When I'm feeling particularly witchy, I will put them on. When I'm going out and reading, you know, tarot for a crowd of people or something at an event, I'm going to have my demon ring on and my Dracula ring and those kinds of things as much, because I'm very theatrical, I was in the theater, so you know it gives you, you know it, just it. It gives you that vibe when you're doing it, it gives you another layer, uh, of yourself, essentially to enforce what you're doing and how you're communicating with the rest of the universe, to say, hey, I, I'm looking for this outcome.

Kim: 20:41

What would you say is the biggest motivator in your practice?

Larry: 20:46

I think, today. Okay, so my motivator, I think, at this point now, is just general, insatiable curiosity. I'm looking for the big secret, I'm looking for transformative information. I'm going back to you know, trying to go back to the beginning. I'm very much about going back into early human history and figuring out where all this came from, and I have been that way for years.

Larry: 21:20

I did a paper in college art class on that because, looking through we had a graduate class on prehistoric art and going through some of the books and I ran across the Venus of Lascaux, which most people I think have seen, the little statue of the Venus of Wildendorf and wouldn't know what that is if they saw it on the internet. The Venus of Wesco is carved into the wall of a cave in France and it's like the Venus of Willendorf. It is that sort of round feminine figure which has the emphasis on what we would call childbearing traits, so to speak, but in her hand is a horn and the horn has 13 marks on it and I'm going well, that's a lunar calendar, you know. Or it signifies an awareness that the moon and the 13 cycles of the moon and the feminine cycle are all linked together and we're talking about people well before Fred Flintstone. Okay, you know, we're talking about just this side of Neanderthal man having this awareness and understanding. So magic goes back that far. Now I you know, I mean, I'm not, I'm not saying well, there was, you know, this utopian mother goddess cult thing, but we were, we had a greater awareness of these things that now are central to what is taught through Wicca, what is taught in in virtually all of the, the witch centric and some of the pagan circles today are are just part of when we started working out as human beings. This was, this was where we found, and there's a similar image which, during this research, was what they call the sorcerer, which I think is in. It may be in Spain or France, it's a painting, but it's essentially a man wearing a deerskin with horns. But if you go and you look at the Gundestrup Cauldron and you look at Cernunnos and all of the Celtic pagan imagery that you see out there now, the horned god, it's the sky. So this goes back, you know, to before written history. This goes back to the early Stone Age and that's one of those things it's like.

Larry: 24:18

Well, we as a species seem to have embraced art and magic at the very beginning. That is the line that separates us from just being smart chimps. You know, we are defined culturally as a species by doing things that are related to the creation of art and the practice of magic, or shamanism, if you will. Everything else that comes afterward is politics. You know, the priest kings and the pyramids and the ziggurats and all that. Those all come later, when we start to move into a uh fixed uh agricultural society from being a hundred others.

Larry: 25:17

But you, the hundred others, were going to places like Stonehenge and uh, quebec, tepi and Turkey, uh and, and they were apparently traveling to these places on an annual basis or semi-annual basis to have a big uh party. And well, clearly there was probably trading going on, there's probably marriages being arranged, there were certainly ceremonies of some sort going on. One of the things that they partook in was the feasting and the brewing of beer, such as it was in those days fermented products, grain beer, whatever. So there's a theory that our initial movement towards from being a nomadic hunter-gatherer species that followed the herds or sort of wandered around the herds and maybe semi-domesticated them and moved from place to place to a settled agrarian society where we're growing fields and such is because we had this need to grow the grain to make beer, so that that beer could be used in a quasi-religious sense to encourage visions and altered states of consciousness. So we actually started growing wheat and barley and farrow and some of these primitive grains to get high and see spirits, and to do that we had to stay in one place, so that then you have to keep the animals there, so we domesticate the animals and from that then you get, as I said, politics, you, you, you start moving away from what was generally a a cooperative, uh, tribal society, which may have had a council of elders, uh, that may have had a war chief, something that you would see with the Native American peoples when they came over here, to something a little more imperial, like what Cortez found when he encountered the Aztecs, which had a more fully developed religion and dogma and ritual and hierarchies and that sort of thing. And it's, it's, you know, it's the same if you go to the middle East and you look at Mesopotamia and then you look at at the, the Chaldeans and the Persians and the Assyrians and the Egyptians and the Greeks, and it all kind of streams from that.

Larry: 28:01

But back before all of that we were just wandering around looking for a good time and we built these things like Stonehenge to tell us when we were supposed to be there, because they're all calendars but because of the time it takes to build something like Stonehenge.

Larry: 28:19

This culture starts out with with, you know, just started out with posts in the ground. You know, we just and they go and they look and go, okay, well, that is, that post lines up here on the solstice sunrise. It must be time for this and that, and they would be. I mean, we have evidence that they were bringing pigs from Scotland which presumably they're walking to come to Stonehenge for the winter solstice ceremony. So you know and this is easily, I mean on foot, I would say probably, you know, a week or two, maybe more, especially if you're driving herd animals into these rituals and these ritual gatherings that we really can't wrap our heads around in the 21st century with, you know, all of these internet and everything else. So that's kind of what motivates me now is to go and try and sort of unravel those threads and see where they lead.

Kim: 29:44

What would you say is your biggest struggle with your practice?

Larry: 29:50

You know it's, it's hard to. I don't really know that I have a struggle per se. I have been doing this sort of innately for 50, 50 years, 51 years now, um, and sometimes I'm frustrated that it's in the last 20, 25 years what's available out there in terms of information has kind of flattened, if you will. There's a whole lot of stuff out there that is aimed at which one. I want no harm in that. It needs to be out there. But if you're looking for the tome of ancient and forbidden knowledge, those are a little harder to find, and so that's, I guess, the frustration. And when you do find them, they're pricey.

Larry: 30:59

There was a recent translation of I'm not sure if I pronounced it correctly the Picatrix, which was it's an Arab work that was brought into Spain during the what we call the Moorish Caliphate in Cordova. It was prior to 1492, so we're talking about the Middle Ages Caliphate in Cordova prior to 1492. So we're talking about the middle ages, uh, and then it was translated into uh, latin, and the Latin has been mistranslated over the years. But essentially it's that black magic book that you see in all the Hollywood movies. Uh, it is. It is literally it's the basis for things like Lovecraft's Necronomicon and these, these, this idea of this grimoire magic it is. It is covering things like astrology and and herbs and alchemy and it probably was originally written from pieces like it's kind of like Ptolemy's four books of astrology. It was probably put together somewhere in the Library of Alexandria back during the Roman period, early Christian period maybe, and from older documents, things like I don't know if you've ever heard the the Emerald tablet, uh, hermes Trismegistus.

Kim: 32:56

Nope.

Larry: 32:57

Yeah, okay, so this, this is deep magic stuff.

Kim: 33:01

That's not really what I do, but I know.

Larry: 33:05

Yeah, and if and if it's something you're interested in, I there, I would say there's a. There's a book out there. The author's name is Kurt Saligman and it's called the Mirror of Magic. I believe you may also find a more abbreviated version called the History of Magic and the Occult. It's what I used to have and it is that history that goes back into at least Alexandria and it tells you about all the the different uh, uh sort of personalities and movements within the history of magic and and how some of that came up. So, and then from that I'm going okay, well, that's a really neat thing. I got to go find that book. You know, uh, I, I, I need to read the. You know the four books of occult philosophy by Cornelius Agrippa. I need to read Paracelsus, the instructions on how to build the homunculus, which is what Frankenstein is based on. So you know the alchemy texts.

Larry: 34:08

The Emerald Tablet is supposedly written and the Emerald Tablet is supposedly written in. The Emerald Emerald is a misnomer. The description of it is basically this was a copper or bronze inscription that because the natural action of air had turned green, natural action of air had turned green and supposedly the inscription translated it's a fairly long poem, but the term as above, so below comes from that and it's essentially saying well, if you want to change things in a magical sense, you need to understand how they're put together by the universe, and then you move those parts around and this is what becomes alchemy in the Middle Ages, so that sort of thing. So, but when those books, when those books do come out and thankfully a number of them are presently out there free on something called archiveorg, if you know what you're looking for and if you you were into reading that long hair stuff, and I think the, the uh, the four books of Ptolemy, which are the basis of all Western astrology, uh, as it is today, were uh, uh, the earliest translation is something like 1353.

Larry: 35:50

So you know, you, you have to be able to kind of read some of that. Sometimes it helps to read French and German, latin, greek I'm not great at that Hebrew, so I mean, this is not a, again, clearly not your. Your basic witchcraft it's certainly not what you know sits over here as, as I think Corey Hutchinson would call it, folk witchcraft, or or the the natural, just sort of sympathetic magic where you know to. To simplify it, you know, you've got some red thread and you're pinning pins in a wax effigy and that sort of thing, which also goes way back. But that's kind of. If you're asking me, what's the frustration is, I just don't have enough money to find all that stuff.

Kim: 36:51

Well, speaking of money, what's your favorite tool? It does not necessarily need to be a physical object.

Larry: 36:58

My favorite tool is my imagination.

Kim: 37:02

What do you do with it?

Larry: 37:05

I think about how the energy patterns need to move and I stretch out my thinking. People talk about visualization and intent. If you do it long enough, something tangible. My go-to is going to be my cards. That then becomes a visualization thing. That becomes a communication thing. I'm going to pick this card to accomplish this particular spell task.

Kim: 37:43

I have a question about that. Sure, so I don't really do divination. I've mentioned that before. I don't really do divination I've mentioned that before, but I do sometimes use divinatory tools in spell work. Do you do something similar? It sounds like you might do both.

Larry: 38:01

Yeah, exactly With with with tarot, and this is something because I got, once I got down and, like I said, I've been doing it for half a century. Once I got down, this is the meaning in the book for this card and there's, you know, there's 78 cards and then there's, so there's two meanings for each of them because there's upside down, and so once you kind of get that down and sometimes unfortunately I think a lot of people are approaching it with well, this is what the book said you start to realize that there may be something more to that Tarot itself, and I just spent most of the blog the last year going through my personal tarot journey through the major arcana the 22 cards which are considered the trumps in the deck. This was a card game that the Italians came up with. The original probably was the original card four suit card deck probably came from China through the Silk Road, where it mutated into a game played by the Arabs, which then went into Italy via Venice and the Venetians wanted to gamble on it. So they added cards and their tarot decks, the Tarocci game. There are some of them in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance that have up to 40 trumps and they're not the ones that we see now, but this whole idea that there's a secret book and something brought up by the ancient Egyptians which transferred through what we now call the Romani people, who were mistakenly called gypsies because they were mistakenly believed to be Egyptians, and we now know they are more closely related to people from India and the Hindu tradition.

Larry: 40:09

But the imagery itself can be, if you're doing sympathetic magic, if you're doing image-based magic, where it's like I need to have this thing happen. The tarot card has so many images that you can use to focus your intention when you're doing a spell. In fact, some of the early decks that the Italians had made the more famous ones, the Sforza deck that's in the Morgan Library in New York they were missing the devil card and the tower cards, because it is believed that witches took those cards and used them in spell work. So they were using them to as as if you will either a curse, in the case of the tower, to bring ill on uh, uh, whoever you're cursing, or they were using the devil card as a portable idol for commuting with Satan. Uh, which again we're talking about it, again a Catholic worldview where all witchcraft was from, uh, from the devil communing with satan, uh, which again we're talking about it again a catholic worldview where all witchcraft was from uh, from the devil. So that goes back a long way to use that, but it's, it's a great visualization tool. It's I, I think about it and and when I'm uh, when I'm reading for people I mean I'll say, look, I I don't claim any kind of special psychic sense, I don't claim that this is magically showing us the future. It's kind of like a Rorschach test the images.

Larry: 42:06

There's what the cards have been said to mean for the last 100, 150 years, and that's really what you're dealing with. If you're talking about tarot, most of the meanings that we have now go back to a couple of the cultists in France and then in England around the late to uh, early 20th century and, depending on who translated, who you got, these are what the cards mean, but these meanings probably go back a little further, but maybe not. And so if you look at the tower and one of the things about the tower, the tower is the one that you know. So so, basically, for a while there, everybody was terrified of the death card. Oh, it's the death card. You're going to die, which would logically be right, it's the death card, but then it was well. No, you're not going to die. It's a transformation. You're leaving behind a certain life and you're taking a new life, and it's about regeneration and all that. And it's tied into Scorpio energy. And I'm not making fun of any of this, because being a Scorpio and that's kind of what the Scorpio astrological sign is about, and the house that's governed by Scorpio is about, and the, the, the house that's governed by Scorpio is about, and you know it's, it is a sign of resurrection and and uh, transformation.

Larry: 43:42

So then the tower becomes the villain, you know, because you got to have something in the deck that people are afraid of because shit happens in life. Yeah, there, there are miserable things that happen in the world that people are afraid of because shit happens in life. You know, there are miserable things that happen in the world we're in, so not every outcome can be a positive outcome. So something has to portend that, and the tower sort of took that over and and I've made a couple of articles on the blog about the concept. But Well, when the tower comes up, there are two ways to look at it you can be the tower or you can be the lightning. So you can think about this as not just okay, here's something you know that's horrible, that's going to befall you and destroy your life and you lose everything you've got. Or you can think about it in terms of you are about to blow away all this crap that's built up that's keeping you from going on to the next point, all this crap that's built up that's keeping you from going on to the next point. And so you know, there's a lot of of interpretation.

Larry: 44:58

But if the card comes up and I look at the image and go, okay, well, in the book it says this, and I'll start from that point, because there's there's there's a good deal of reasoning behind some of it. There's a good deal of reasoning behind some of it. There's a good deal of tradition behind some of it Excuse me and there's reasons to follow those prompts. But in the end, tarot itself is a is an imagination process. It is. It is when you every reading is going to be different for every individual and it's a two-way process. I will sit there and I will talk with it to people and, okay, well, so this is what this card means. And then they'll go oh, that's happening right now because, well, that's not necessarily magic. It's because maybe the two of us looked at the image and tapped into that, you know, happening in the universe. I'm not saying that there's, there's like that quantum physics thing yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's.

Larry: 46:12

And you know, if we get off on the quantum wormhole thing, we'll be here all day.

Kim: 46:17

Yes we cannot, because it makes my head hurt.

Larry: 46:22

I love playing in that playground, particularly in terms of magic.

Kim: 46:28

It makes me really angry.

Larry: 46:30

Yeah, well, I mean the whole thing and everything is perception, you know, and we're looking at. You know, time isn't real and space isn't real and everything that's happening is happening in our imagination. Well then, you know, imagine different. What's magic, you know, if you can and I'm not a Crowleyist, I have studied Crowley. I have issues with Crowley as I grew further along. But the thing with Crowley, which is, you know the book of the law and do what thou will, there's a caveat in one of his later works about, well, the will is finding out what the will of the universe is and aligning with it. And I'll take that to the extent of saying, well, what it is is trying to figure out which part of the universe is tending in that direction and then shift toward that part of the universe, you know, to that quantum outcome, if you will, because otherwise, you know, the cat's still in the box.

Kim: 47:43

Okay, I would like you to imagine your three biggest influences, whether they are people or a dog, or a book or some philosophy theory that you read one time. Thank them for the effect, thank them for how they influence your practice.

Larry: 48:05

Okay, I had to kind of dig through this because after 50 years there's a lot. I think most influential is the works of Wallace Budge, who was the director of Egyptian studies at the British Museum back around the turn of the previous century. He's since fallen out of favor, as have many of the troublesome Victororians, uh. His translations clearly are made from a imperial, colonial christian point of view, uh, but he preserved the book of the dead. He brought forth uh texts on magic and in fact he has a book called called Amulet and Talismans.

Larry: 48:55

So you know, I mean he was doing some very early work on ancient people's belief in magic and the occult and he was writing, he did a hieroglyphic dictionary which again has since been improved and corrected, hieroglyphic dictionary, which again has since been improved and corrected. But books were fairly easy to get. Dover published a lot of them and so they're fairly ubiquitous and easy to get out there and for many, many years it was always available. So certainly that was a big influence for me, because Egypt and the Middle East and the Near East cultures are a very big part of my whole universal world view. The second, I think, major influence on me was someone named Sybil Leak.

Kim: 49:46

Have you heard?

Larry: 49:48

of her. Okay, I found Sibyl Leak's Diary of a Witch in a basement used bookstore in college. Where else would it be Found? Diary of a Witch about 84, 83, 84. And then after reading that, you know there's always a list of the other books in the thing. So I went in search of things like that and so I got herbs from that. So herbs, I got her my Life in Astrology, which greatly expanded my awareness of astrology at that point, and I think I've got two or three others. They're hard to find now because they've been out of print for several years.

Larry: 50:45

She was one of the first people that were out as a witch in culture, that were out as a witch in culture. She had that very, you know, when you think of the hag. She had that look. She was, you know, in all black. She was English. She was from the north of England area called New Forest. She contended she was a hereditary witch. She says she was part of Wicca, which is not. I'm not sure that's the Wicca that became Wicca.

Larry: 51:15

But you know, there's a lot of conflicted stuff happening in the mid seventies and then when you get down to the third and final influence, it's probably, it's probably a tie between Einstein and Hawking, which again goes back to that quantum mechanics thing. And I do read that long hair stuff and and again, coming from a mathematical background, and and, uh, my, my day job is in computer science. I've been in the tech business for the last 25 years, so I I have a tech bent as well as a magic bent, and there's the stuff that you read that's generally published and shows up on Nova and the Discovery Channel, and then there's the stuff that they wrote, that they wrote for the science scientists and and I, I, I puzzle through that. I mean, I like, like someone would a grimoire to go through and go back through and go over and again and, just, you know, puzzle and think through this.

Larry: 52:27

So so the, the two most preeminent physicists of the 20th century, I think, are because in the end of the day it's energy work. In the end of the day, it's about changing the structure and nature of energy. And Hawking is one of those people that says, well, the nature of the universe is the way it is because that's the way you think it is. So if you think differently, the universe becomes a different place. Well, that's magic.

Kim: 53:10

What advice do you have for new witches?

Larry: 53:15

Trust no one. I mean basically what I just said. Do not necessarily trust, but verify. Do not necessarily take what someone is telling you as an absolute, verified fact of the universe. It's not because someone is lying, it's not because they don't necessarily know, it's because that's the perception of reality that they have. They may have gotten it from someone else.

Larry: 53:45

Going back to tarot cards, what I said you know the meaning of the tarot cards largely comes from Arthur Waite who wrote the book that goes with the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, which was the official tarot deck for most of the 20th century. There was pretty much one competing product and that was the Book of Thoth or Book of Toth or the Crowley Tarot. And that was the Book of Thoth or Book of Toth or the Crowley Tarot. But for the 20th century, I mean, the cards were either one or the other of those decks. And then in the 60s and 70s, when people started making alternative versions, the other deck that was out there is the Marseille, which are those really ugly woodcut ones which were the basis for the RWS, which ends up being sort of the basis for Crowley, for Frida Harris and such, but the ones that Pixie Smith made and they're fabulous.

Larry: 54:51

I mean, she's a fascinating person just by herself. You should go out and look about her on the internet and her history and and being part of the theater and the Bohemian lifestyle. And uh, she's a person of color. Uh, she's a person of mixed race. Uh, she, she did, you know, stage design for Bram Stoker, you know. So she's way more than just the tarot deck. She did stage design for Bram Stoker, so she's way more than just the tarot deck.

Larry: 55:18

And for many years her contribution to the tarot deck was sort of swept under the rug because it was called the Rider-Waite tarot, because Waite wrote the manual and Rider published the cards, the cart, but uh, the, the meanings of these came from wait's retranslation of something that the golden dawn society, which wait and uh crowley and uh mcgregor mathers all belonged to, and mathers had taken most of his cue from a guy named eliphis levi, whose name is actually alphonse louis, something who was a failed divinity student in paris, who is the one that says well, the tarot is actually the torah, you know it's, it's really jewish mysticism and these is this what these mean. And if you, if you go read Levi's book, you know there's a whole lot of uh, you wouldn't call it there's. There's antisemitism in a way. Uh, because while he's using the Jewish mysticism, the Kabbalah and things like that, he's also sort of discounting the people themselves and the, the history of the, the religion he's, you know, focused on. Well, here's the magical tradition, but it's kind of like people say, well, the aliens built the pyramids, um, um, and Levi was pulling from people who caught the count to Gavilan and a few others in France had preceded him who came up with these, the meanings that we have for tarot now, and so you've got basically a lot of old white men who said this is what the cards mean. And it gets propagated because the first thing people do when they get it is they take off a little white book and they read the meanings in the book and they go okay, well, this card means this, and if it's over here on this day, and that's why I say you know, go back to the source, look at the cards, look at the artwork and what does it mean to you? And that's what I say when you know, when I'm talking to a new witch or someone who's becoming interested in this Look for what you mean. Certainly, read the books, read the history and then go and look and see what. Because history is written by the winners.

Larry: 57:54

History is written by people who have an agenda to write history. It's not different if it's magical, it's not different if it's you know this culture or that culture. History gets written by the people who want to make this selective agenda's choice to say well, these people and Levi is actually the one that uses the term gypsy. Levi is the one that says when it came from egypt by these people christian, he calls them bohemians and they weren't bohemians either, but he refers to as a terror of the bohemians and his stuff. Again.

Larry: 58:29

You can find it out there on archiveorg, translated into English by Dr Waite, and it is some of the most racist.

Larry: 58:42

You know white, european, quasi-christian bullshit and we've been carrying that along for well over 200 years, and so you know when we have a witch awakening that we're having now, when we're having this sort of open discussion in the community about these things that are now important, because we do have people of color in the community, we have people who, who view them, their personal identity, gender and sexual orientation and things of that nature in a different vein are going. Well, wait, this isn't about male and female and white and European, and it's about other things. And that's why I say you know, go back and look at those sources. Go back and read this. Don't limit yourself to the one book, don't limit yourself to two or three books. Don't think that every book that they have at Barnes Noble that are clones of each other because there's a big boom in witchcraft right now and they're trying to make a buck is the true character of the thing. Find out for yourself the thing, find out for yourself.

Larry: 1:00:03

who do you think I should have on the show next? Uh well, I had sent a link to my friend melissa saint-hilaire, who has a book coming out in may. She's a psychic medium, uh, witch out in. She's been doing this for years Really sweet lady, and I think you have made contact with her under American witch 13.

Kim: 1:00:25

Oh, I think, maybe I do vaguely remember that.

Larry: 1:00:28

Yeah, I I had, because when you posted the last thing on Instagram what I'm looking for people for the show I just I tagged her and said hey, melissa, I know you get a book coming out. You really should talk to this lady and she's she's great interview. She's been on a couple of different podcasts. She has her own called the circle cast. It's kind of intermittent because she's all over the planet and she, she's you know she and she does read out there and hollyweird. One of them is an astrologer named Renee Watt. She's out of Portland. I met her through Melissa. We've become pretty good friends. She's a fellow Scorpio, my circle. Typically, for some bizarre reason, on the Instagram they're all Piscean women. They're in their late 30s to early 50s.

Kim: 1:01:21

Is there anything else that you wanted to bring up? Anything I didn't ask or anything you wanted to ask me?

Larry: 1:01:27

I? You know I don't. First of all, I want to thank you for your military service. I don't know how long ago it was. Thanks for paying for my hip replacements.

Kim: 1:01:35

Yeah, you and your military service. I don't know how long ago it was. Thanks for paying for my hip replacements.

Larry: 1:01:36

Yeah, you and your husband both, I understand it correctly were both in the military. And then did you jump out of perfectly good airplanes.

Kim: 1:01:48

I don't know if they were perfectly good, but I jumped out of them.

Larry: 1:01:51

Well, to the extent that the military has good airplanes, but I mean of course, that's hence the hip replacements.

Kim: 1:01:58

I suppose probably so. At the end I ask two things of my guests. Thing number one is please recommend something to the listeners. It does not have to be witchcraft or witchy, or metaphysical or occult related at all, just whatever you're into right now.

Larry: 1:02:26

That's a little bit of a tougher question Because you know, again, so much of my life is wrapped around that I suggest that you look for inspiration in something other than the occult books or things. I listen to a lot of progressive rock. I listen to what we used to call in the 80s wizard rock. I read a whole lot of science fiction and fantasy, and I think that certainly has a bearing on my, because the good stuff has glimmers of real magic in it, because they had to pull it from somewhere. So I think there's. You know, don't just limit your view to what is out there. I guess if I were to recommend something, I probably am going to pick the works of the author Michael Moorcock.

Larry: 1:03:38

One other thing I want to recommend and I found this the other day and it just came back to me is a book, again by an obscure author named Roger Zelazny, called my Name is Legion. It is a three-story anthology, the large part of which is a novella. But without giving away spoilers, the idea here is that the character is one of a number of data scientists who, at the time that everybody was being put into the computer in the world, decided well, they didn't want to be in it. So they basically left themselves out of the database and left the back door in the database so that they could create identities and credit cards and things like that, to live this ability and turned into sort of a hyper detective who goes and solves cases that are well outside the the norm. And particularly interesting to me although all of the stories have a very interesting bit is the middle one, which I can't pronounce pronounce the title because it's in Dolphin, so that should give you some sense of what you're looking at.

Larry: 1:05:06

He's also a very prolific writer. He's probably best known for what's called the Chronicles of Amber, which is the theory of that is that there's a royal family that lives in the real universe and everything else is a shadow of that real universe. And I got into it because they use tarot cards as teleportation devices. So it's it's fairly cool and that's one of the things that spurred me on to thinking well, maybe I can do something with these. It isn't just reading the future, so you know ideas they come from everywhere. But the book, the anthology book, is called my Name is Legion.

Kim: 1:05:50

I actually have heard of him.

Larry: 1:05:52

Yeah, it should be out there on. You know, you can definitely find it in used book places. I don't know if he's in print anymore, but the Chronicles of Amber is still out there. It used to be. The Chronicles of Amber used to be the bonus selection of the science fiction book club, so all of us who were into that have that book. It was that or Dragon Rider's Apparent. That's the one I would have chosen, yeah, yeah. So I mean this is this is a and again for the younger folks listening, the science fiction book club was basically the weird fantasy sci-fi equivalent of the columbia record and tape club.

Kim: 1:06:33

I think I have. I belong to that.

Larry: 1:06:36

Yeah, I did too. Uh, and I I got you know books by Larry Niven and Andre Norton and Ursula Le Guin and um Marion Zimmer Bradley, who wrote the uh, the St Germain Chronicles, uh, which is is about, you know, vampires and time things. There's a lot of good stuff out there to get, and so, you know, I grew up reading this stuff, as well as the magic books so it kind of all intertwines.

Kim: 1:07:12

So the last thing that I ask of my guests is please tell me a story. It does not have to be a real story, but that's what.

Larry: 1:07:15

I prefer. Yeah, you know, this is one that I've been thinking about since I first heard the interview question, Because finding stories for me and I actually thought of one yesterday that was different from what I was really going to tell because it's a better story. Because it's a better story Back in the middle 80s, between the theater college and the art college I ultimately ended up going to, I had an ambition of going into the science fiction film as a business, you know, as a career. As a business, you know as a career, and I obviously I'm of that age when Star Wars happened. But I'm also of the age when Space Odyssey happened and I saw it when I was four years old and I haven't been the same since. So again, if y'all haven't seen it, go out and look at that thing. It's not the same stuff that you see being made now.

Larry: 1:08:23

But I went to college initially for a theater degree because of I thought, well, because you couldn't get, there was no film school in Kentucky and I really had no opportunity to go anyplace else. So I went to the University of Kentucky, studied theater for about a year and then the grades said no, you don't need to come back again because witchcraft and substances, and you know things, witchcraft and substances, and you know things, early 20s, uh, late, late mid-1980s, early 20s if y'all were there, you know. If you weren't, you're just gonna take my word for it because we didn't have instagram and, thank God for that, there's no evidence. So, anyway, I took off trying to find the next step before I went back and I went into art and I, during that time, joined a local group of other people in their 20s-ish Some of them were older, mainly a lot of them were older ladies a local group of other people in their twenties ish.

Larry: 1:09:37

Some, some of them are older, mainly a lot of them are older ladies who who wanted to paint, you know, um, still lives of flowers, which is nothing wrong with that, Nothing wrong with that, but you know I'm the guy that's painting dragons, Okay, so you know my influences there for Zeta and Boris and those sorts of things, um, and comic books, and so you know it's a very collective group. We had people who were poets, we had people who were, you know, and, and I, because I had a background in theater, I would basically put together the first community theater in a small town in Eastern Kentucky, and folks, let me tell you that is an accomplishment. You know you were in that part of the world. You know how hard it would be to do something like that.

Kim: 1:10:29

Yeah, we did not have that where I lived.

Larry: 1:10:32

No, I mean to have anything that was arts oriented in the culture was was just, you know. So, obviously, this is one of those. You know, I found my people moments and, yeah, we, we enjoyed ourselves. We enjoyed a little adult beverage now and again and maybe a little herbal refreshment and uhment and such, but we were making art and we were doing cool things. And, you know, we found out that the government had money to give us, if you knew how it is. So we went to, we had to, I had, we had.

Larry: 1:11:15

In the middle of planning this thing, we got signed up for a seminar weekend in Louisville, which is again, no, it's in the other Kentucky, because there's Eastern Kentucky and then there's the other Kentucky, and Eastern Kentucky is Appalachian and has more in common with East Tennessee and Western Virginia and West Virginia and, you know, southern Pennsylvania and Northern Georgia and North Carolina, than it does with the other parts of the state, which are very much more modern, urbane. And boy, how did they tell you that? So we went to, we had this thing, and then I came down with appendicitis and I'm in the hospital having my appendix out, and so it's like, well, gee, am I going to be able to get out of the hospital and go to this seminar. And it turned out I got out, I was good with that, and the guy says you know what, you'll be fine, just lean on a cane and don't go dancing or bowling or anything. And so that's okay, I can go to a seminar.

Larry: 1:12:37

And so we get in the car and we drive to Louisville and we get there and it's the prestigious in those days Seelbach Hotel, which is one of the fancy boutique hotels which you know, being a kid from the hills, I had not really actually been to one of these places. But we get there and it's like, well, we only have one room. Now I've got two young ladies here, one of whom is married and they're both a little bit older than me, but he said we only have one room right now. We'll have to get another room ready, figure out how we can move people around or whatever, because it's a busy thing and Van Halen's in town for a concert.

Larry: 1:13:22

Okay fine, okay, fine. At this point I'm kind of in pain because I just had my appendix out and I got the stitches in there, and so we go and we do the first day's seminar stuff and I'm, you know, fidgeting in the chair and all that stuff. I'm trying to get through and we get through it. And we, because they gave the girls a room and I'm fine with that, right. You know the girls are going to share the room and that's okay, and obviously I had to have a separate room because, again, one of the ladies was married and it, you know, people not that any of us really would have cared, but people and so I, you know I, we're in here midnight past midnight, right, still no room for me, no room at the end, trying to figure it out. We're going to see what we can do. We may have something we can put you in. We're going to have to figure stuff out and you know you're basically getting a run around.

Larry: 1:14:26

You're from eastern Kentucky, they really don't give a shit so you're just hanging out in the lobby yeah, so we're just I, the girls were sitting there and so we were having a few adult beverages and hanging there in the lobby, which it's a nice lobby there's a couch and I'm sitting on the couch. Then Helen comes through after the concert and I look up and go what are those people doing over there? Okay, and they're walking through and they're heading out there and I go yo, eddie, eddie, being three sheets to the wind goes hey man, how you been. They gave me a two-room suite. They gave me a two-room suite Because they thought I knew Eddie Van Halen. Oh, so that's the story.

Kim: 1:15:28

That's cool. Yeah, yeah, Also ha-ha, stupid, yeah, yeah. Well, and then you know Also.

Larry: 1:15:36

Haha, stupid, yeah, yeah. Well, and then you know the girls. You got a room, fine. So the next day the girls come in and go how the hell did you get two rooms free? Because I said yo, eddie, and they thought I knew Van Halen.

Kim: 1:15:57

That's fucking perfect.

Larry: 1:15:59

Which you know. That speaks to our whole culture of fame and celebrity and ridiculous stuff like that. I used to travel around the world working for a company that sold giant billboard printers and we really weren't the CIA. I got mistaken for the undertaker from wrestling Cause I was about that size and I was wearing black all the time, I had the long hair and I had the beard and I got so many free drinks out of that.

Larry: 1:16:36

Good, yeah, you know, I had, uh, when I, when we were in egypt, uh, I, we were had a day off and our client took us down to cairo because we were working in alexandria, and he takes down to cairo and I actually had to go in the pyramid and I, you know I'm going to Egypt. Right, how am I going to dress? I'm going to dress like Indiana Jones, okay, well, yeah, so here I am going, you know, through the to the pyramid complex dressed like Indiana Jones, and you know, my buddy that's with me goes over to this bunch of german tourists and and basically says hey, you know, dr jones will take you through the pyramid. Oh, my god, but you have to buy us around back at the bar. And they brought us around at the bar and they thought you know, at least I wasn't telling the same lies that the guys told Herodotus. That's what they're still selling. You know that the pyramid was built by slaves and all that silly stuff or aliens, but that's yeah, I had fun with that job.

Larry: 1:17:59

Unfortunately, it was not good to be married with children, with small children, and have that job. So Egypt was my last trip on that, but I got to go to Moscow and Venice and Sweden and Stockholm. Stockholm in the middle of winter, saudi Arabia in the middle of August Well, that's cool, yeah, well, it wasn't. In. Saudi Arabia Got all the way down to 112 at night.

Kim: 1:18:28

Sounds like here.

Larry: 1:18:29

Yeah, and then you know, Stockholm in December and February got all the way up to 14 below during the four hours of sunlight.

Kim: 1:18:37

Yeah.

Larry: 1:18:39

So just not to you know. And Italy, I got to go Italy, the customer over there. He was supposedly associated with the organized crime organizations and everybody in the company was afraid of him. But I went and made a joke with him and and, uh, he said, hey, you know, you're all right, let's go over to let you know. Let let the other guy there work on the machine, let's me and you go drive over to southern town, to the beretta factory and fire the ten thousand dollar skeet guns yes, let's do this like I'll do that yeah okay, bye then

Larry: 1:19:16

yeah, so it was. You know, it's a cool job, you know. And uh, again, that's another story that if you, if you have time, I'll happily tell that. Um, and you can pick whichever one you put up there. But I, I had gone in there and initially he was trying to intimidate us. We were supposed to go and upgrade his printing machine and he was I had not been there and of course, everybody who had been there, but no one ever went back twice. No technicians or the people ever went back twice, because they were all afraid of it.

Larry: 1:19:48

And so we met him at the trade show. It's like you know, you're going to come down here in a couple of weeks and work on the machine, et cetera, et cetera. And he makes some remark about you know, if it doesn't work, we're going to do things the Italian way, we'll break your kneecaps. And I go yeah, yeah, okay, big guy, big burly guy, you know. And so we get down there a couple of weeks later to repair his machine. And he hasn't made the payment because the machine didn't work, and they're not going to let us repair the machine because he hadn't made the payment. So I sit in Milan for a couple of days, you know, killing my heels. And so they said, okay, we'll go over there and do it. And so it's, and you know we go in, go over there and do it and such. And you know we go in there and and he's ranting and and yelling and you know, look, harry told me you gotta pay before I work, otherwise we do things the italian way. I break your kneecaps and the whole damn room, just, you know, shuts down. It's one of those quiet, quiet moments, right, you hear the pin drop and then he just busts out laughing and after that we go shoot the bread because we also liked opera, music. So we're driving across uh italy, you know, in in his uh ferrari to the beretta factory listening to opera all the way up.

Larry: 1:21:16

And so time passes and I start working for another company and we buy a Roland printer and they send me out to the factory in Irvine, california, to do the technical training on the Roland printer. And so we're there at the factory. We were having dinner that night and there was a gentleman from uh, the italian division of roland corporation, and who was there for factory training and such. And we're all having dinner and we're talking stuff and I said I said you know, you know senior monster daddy. And he said oh yeah. I said let me tell you a story. So I relate the story about the. You know we're going to break your kneecaps. He said that was you. So apparently monster daddy had been told the same story over there. That's all right. Yeah, I said how's he doing? So?

Larry: 1:22:14

I think the gentleman's such past, because this, you know, this is in the mid-90s but the company's still there. I think his son probably ended up with it, but it was. You know, it was an interesting lifestyle, but again, as I said, not one that was conducive to being young, married with small children. So I did it for a couple of years and then I found something more terrestrial. But it's nice to let somebody else pay for you to see the world. That's the only thing you can recommend, if you can find somebody else to foot your bill to go do these things.

Kim: 1:22:47

I don't recommend the Army.

Larry: 1:22:50

Yeah, well, I mean, that was the other options the Army and, as I said, our motto with the inkjet thing was we're not really the cia. I've been some places saudi arabia they thought we were spies uh, or the, the. There were a couple places where you know, because you're telling people, well, we make these giant printing machines that print billboards, which at the time was not very well known. There were three companies in the world that built them and we traveled extensively over the planet. And so we're in Saudi Arabia, arabia. We've been invited to the consulate through a long, convoluted path that somehow ends up. The consulate general has received orders to invite us to the consulate for dinner and we're there and the other couple at dinner are from Tel Aviv.

Larry: 1:23:56

Now, this is in Saudi Arabia, you know the, the heart of the Muslim world, and there are people there from Israel and they think we're spies, you know, because we're relating the story. But well, yeah, we've, we've done this. I said, you know, we're going to Moscow next week and and he just got home from Beijing and you know I was like no, you're spies. So our running joke was we're not rid of the CIA. So, but it was fun, it was fun and I wouldn't trade it because it gave me a better perspective of the general picture of humanity and what we believe in this country not being what the world actually is.

Kim: 1:24:38

Thanks again for being on the show. Everybody, be sure to go check out his Instagram and I will see you on the internet. Okay, bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of your Average Witch. You can find us all around the internet on Instagram, at your Average Witch Podcast, facebookcom, slash groups, slash hivehouse, at wwwyouraveragewitchcom and at your favorite podcast service. If you'd like to recommend someone for the podcast, like to be on it yourself, or if you'd like to advertise on the podcast, send an email to youraveragewitchpodcast at gmailcom. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next Tuesday. Bye.