Victoria Raschke: Welcome to Witch Lit, a place to talk about the craft of writing and writing the craft. I'm your host, Victoria Raschke, author, publisher, witch and nosy Scorpio. Witch lit is brought to you by Thousand Volt Press, a family owned independent publisher established to produce the books we want to see in the world. All our titles can be purchased directly from thousandvoltpress.com or wherever you buy books. If you'd like to support Witch lit, please consider buying us a coffee@ko fi.com witchlitpodcast Dave Zilla has been reading tarot for about 40 years. His first deck was the Aleister Crowley deck. Probably not the best choice for a beginner, but try telling him that. Although raised a Baptist by age 12, his doubts and questions about talking snakes and trees and where exactly was hell caused him to leave the religion. He has since undergone initiations as an eclectic gardenarian witch, discordianism and gangalero in Paloma and a practicing Olocha Santorio in Lukumi. He spent an inordinate amount of time researching the occult, but also Freudian phenomena, and loves discussing high weirdness. Dave Zillow lives just north of Detroit in Royal Oak, Michigan with his brilliant, grounded wife, two precocious daughters, and a menagerie of pets. Tarot of the Unexplained is his first deck and book, and he regrets admitting he has never met Bigfoot. Dave Zillow, welcome to Witchlit.

Davezilla: Thanks for having me, Victoria.

Victoria Raschke: Thanks for being on. And I love your bio, by the way. It's one of those things writers have to do that are just awful. And I love it when people have fun with it.

Davezilla: Yes. Too many are just straightforward and boring.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah, exactly. So our first question for everybody on the show, like, especially in this, you know, world of hot takes and social media and sort of tantric spans, you know, why? And you have been online as a blogger for 25 years, so maybe you have a different take on this. But so why, why still write? Why still write books and make Tarot decks in this context?

Davezilla: Um, um, the Tarot deck was, uh, something I wanted. Like there, there wasn't one at all that existed that had cryptids and 40 and phenomenon UFOs and things like that. I've, I've seen some tarot decks that had parts of those things like I saw, but they're really, really bad. Like, one was a tarot deck that had like, aliens smoking weed or something. And I was like, that's who. I don't know who the crowd of this is, but okay, um, maybe people with nine planets in Aquarius. Um, and um, I wanted a deck that like kind of covered all those things because I kind of, I'm one of the occultists that kind of believes in that theory of this is all kind of the same thing. Um, that these things all seem to happen together. So when you're, when people are reporting a UFO sighting the same time in the same part of town, you'll see people talking about electrical problems, psychics, um, start having unusual visions and dreams. Uh, people have crypt, Cryptid sightings. They all seem to happen at the same time in roughly the same areas. And a lot of people have always had this theory that maybe this is all kind of the same thing. Um, most like, most notably like, uh, the late, ah, Robert Anton Wilson. He said that, you know, if you, if you were in Mexico and you saw a little man dancing in the desert, you'd go, oh my God, that's Mescalito, the God of the mescaline bush. But if you saw the same thing in Ireland, you'd go, it's a leprechaun. And if you saw in the U.S. you'd say, is that a Martian? And um, it's the same spiritual energy, but maybe interpreted through different ethnic lenses. And I'm a big believer in that, that maybe cryptids are possibly local land spirits, which is why the Native Americans have a lot of tales about them and we don't seem to be able to find the bodies. Um, and I was anyways, because of all that, I wanted a deck for that and there wasn't one. And so during COVID my wife goes, well, why don't you make one? You're capable of doing one, you know. And um, you know, my degree is in illustration, so I thought, yeah, I guess I could. So I spent the next 900 hours, um, painting and wiping myself out every night, like researching and, and uh, meditating on the cards and thinking about stuff. And um, I gotta say that doing this deck in particular was weird because it did seem to raise a lot of strange phenomena in our house for a while. Um, so my wife's very glad that it's over. But um, um, the deck came out, I, I self published it right after Covid, um, and made 100 something decks. Not a whole lot, um, because the shipping at the time was like $1800, um, for just, you know, under 200 decks. And so I was like, this is gonna be expensive. So I did what I could, sold them to some friends and, and sold some, a lot of them. Online. And I sent one to, um, Llewellyn and one to Wiser Books. Llewellyn was like, thanks. No, thanks. Um, Wiser is like, this is exactly something we would love to publish. We've never seen anything like it before. So, um, they said they would love to take it over. They're like, okay, but now you gotta write a book. I was like, oh, shoot, I've never written a book before. So, um. And like an idiot, I said, oh, that should only take me, like, 30 days. They're like, really? It's 200 pages. Just. Just. Just so, you know, something like that. I can't remember. M. I'm, um, sorry. They want 200 words a page, but they're like, you gotta do all. All 78 cards, plus you gotta do the, you know, some other things. Acknowled and research. And I was like, okay, uh, yeah, that'll take me, yeah, 30 days. They're like, you're working full time, right? I'm like, yeah, um, okay. And once I started getting into it, I realized, oh, my God, that's never gonna happen. But I did. I got it done. And they were like, you really did get 200 words per page. Like, exactly 200 words per page. I'm like, well, that's what you told me to do. And they're like, wow, you made our job really easy for the layout. Um, but then when they gave me another book, I was. Had the same idea. I said, oh, I can do that in, like, three months. Like, it's like, we need 75,000 words. I'm like, yeah, that should take three months. They're like, you're kind of a machine, aren't you? I'm like, no, I'm just stupid and over promised. But I did get it done. So.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah.

Davezilla: That'S, um, coming out. We're waiting until after the election to kind of. For some of the controversy to die down on certain subjects before that comes out. But that's out on, um. Wiser. It's on Amazon. It's sold everywhere. It's doing really well, and I'm having a blast touring it around.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah. Um. Um, so I. I bet. I bet. Yeah. Wiser, um, sent me a copy of the deck, and I do a daily, uh, card pool pull. I don't know why I keep saying pool. Um, pull. And so I've been kind of using. I usually have three or four decks going, and so it's kind of been in the rotation. And, um, so it's been really interesting to work with because it. It is there's like a lot of different, like you said, a lot of different cultural, um, especially in the major arcana, there's a lot of different cultural creatures or cryptids or spirits. And, and so that's been interesting because there was something I wasn't familiar with and I had to look up. And so that's been kind of fun, like kind of uh, educational in that and that. But one of the things I love about the deck are the constellations in the sky. So there's like this whole other layer with that in it. And I was just curious, like research wise like this, there's so many components to this deck. Like what was, you know, you're doing the artwork but you're also researching all those components. So what was that like while you were creating the deck?

Davezilla: So I wanted it to be astrologically accurate. M. Um. But I realized after looking through a lot of people's decks that any 10 tarot deck creators will not agree on what the astrological symbols are for each card. And I was really shocked by that. So I decided to go with. I, uh, noticed that the golden dawn had the most, what seemed to be the most sensible system for it during the stars. So I followed theirs and there's only a few cases where I deviated. Um, and that was like, for example, the star card is Sirius, uh, the Dog Star. And I did that on purpose, um, because of the weird connection humans have had with Sirius B. And in particular, like the. Do you've probably heard the, um, if you watched like In Search of or X Files, they talk about the Dogon tribe in Africa, how they've known about Sirius B being a twin star long before we had telescopes that told us about that they um, could see it or at least knew about it and said that that's where they came from and that they were brought down to Earth to be populated by um, these people called the Nomo. And so I have the Nomo ship is one of the cards and then the actual Sirius, the star card, um, you can see the Nomo ship in the background and a woman of unusual race is in the foreground in a pretty standard, um, star card pose where she's got the um, you know, containers of water spilling, um, but in the seven stars. But, um, yeah, it's a little different that way. Um, so I did do a lot of research into that. And that was, that was, like I said, one of the only cards I kind of deviated on the stars with. Um, and a lot of the cards, if you notice, you'll see the moon phase.

Victoria Raschke: Mhm.

Davezilla: Changing as you go through the cards from 1 to 10. Yeah, it'll, it'll accurately go its way through. Almost like an animation. That um, was deliberate as well to let you know that this is, this, you know, the tarot is a journey and it's a story.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah, there's just that like. Yeah, there's so many components to it and it's just been uh, it's almost like little Easter eggs when you pull a card. So this is kind of fun that way. Um, and her listeners. You know, we always talk before and David, I were talking about it. I was like, I don't, I don't do gotcha questions. Um, just because I, you know, I want this to be like an inviting space. And this isn't really a gotcha question, but I was curious about it, especially given the topic of your new book. Um, I saw online you were talking about that someone had said, oh, your deck is great, but it's all AI. And I was like, when I saw it, there's nothing about it that screams AI to me. It's, it's very human artwork. But I was just curious like given that experience of now, I think people don't really recognize. I think there are a lot of people, I think there are people who know, especially people who work in creative spaces can, can point out AI maybe a little easier than others. But how, how, how, like, how do you react to that now? Especially like with the topic of your new book, like, and I guess maybe tell people what your new book is because I don't think we said that.

Davezilla: Okay, so I have a. The book is about how um, witches and pagans and tech, um, people in alternative religions have always been connected somehow to technology. Um, I mean you go to any covenant, guarantee you one person works in IT or something like that, or computers. And um, even the very first programs going back to the beginning of computers were astrology programs. And we've always been involved in that. And so I was kind of making a book that kind of one, chronicled the history of it and two, covered a new area that hasn't been covered yet in books because it's so new. And that was that a lot of um, witches and magicians are using AI to write spells and to create sigils and to uh, write pleas to gods and deities. And I thought that was really fascinating that it was happening. And I thought it was just a couple people, but I realized very quickly that it was all over the country. And so I posed that to uh, wiser. I said, what do you think about this? I have this idea for this book about this. And I showed him some of the samples of some. The spells that people have been writing with things like Chat GP and how they got it to imitate, um, you know, Aleister Crowley or um, you know, Dion Fortune, people like that. And, and they were like, this is a kind of amazing, um, yeah, let's, let's do it. So they were really cool about it and they gave me freedom to just go in deep as I could. Um, and even how, um, things that I discovered on my own, like you can type into mid journey, like what does my guardian angel look like? And it comes up with some weirdly accurate stuff, um, which spooks people out. But it's also kind of fun and it makes you wonder is like the whole concept of the ghost in the machine, is that really happening? You know, is it. They call it the Ethernet, you know, Ethernet for a reason. Maybe there's some ether in there that we, you know, um, I think it could just be another plane of existence that spirits are living in and we're tapping into them because people are. Have always talked about being able to use, uh, technology to make aggregors and servitors and um. So I, I just wanted to be part of that and chronicle it so the book can be read as a history. It can also be read as a. Well, here's how you do it. If you're really interested in this, I'm not telling you you have to. I'm not telling you that this is the way things are going. I'm just saying that this is a way. And maybe if you live in a rural area where you can't. You don't have metaphysical shops, so you can't find certain new things that AI can tell you alternatives that you do have in your area that you can use, um, or to help you save money or um, to do your spells. And maybe you're just not good at writing poetry. Well, it'll help you with, you know, writing better, writing better spells. Um, so that was this idea of this book and it is very controversial. I know I'm going to get a lot of hate mail for it. And like I said, um, the. Well you brought up about that, that one commenter, um, I just kind of blew that person off. Like, look, I have a history online going back 30 years of posting my Adobe Illustrator drawings and my real paintings and real pencil drawings and things. So this isn't like all of a sudden I'm an artist. You know, like some of these people. I've been doing this my whole life. I've been drawing, um, you know, so I, I don't have to anything to worry about or nothing to prove to anyone. I know I can, you know, draw extremely well. I always have been able to since I was a little kid. And I was always like the best in my school. And because I became a good illustrator. That Tarot, uh, deck was a great, um, project because it's like 78 paintings of concepts and symbols. How fun is that? Also, how hard is that? Harder than anything any magazine editor or anybody will ever give you. It is. But, uh, yeah, I expect to get a lot more hate mail. And, um, I think this book, when that comes out, is either going to. And the reason we're delaying it is because, you know, the possibility of more deep fakes and, you know, video for the election. Yeah, it hasn't been happening as bad as we were worried about, but we just figured we'd delay it just in case.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah, that m. Makes sense. Plus, I think the election just is sucking all the air out of the world too.

Davezilla: Oh my God.

Victoria Raschke: A lot. Um, I do. I mean, it's interesting to me and I can see why. Obviously it's controversial and you know, and I think being creative probably makes it harder to. I don't know. There's so much to reconcile about large language models and what is called AI, which we know isn't really quite AI. Uh, it's not really artificial intelligence yet.

Davezilla: Right. It's just generative. Yeah, I could go into that, like, letting people know this isn't really AI, this is just, you know, generative artwork.

Victoria Raschke: Because I think there's a lot. I think a lot of creatives are looking at, you know, the, the current uses of, uh, things like Mid Journey and chat PT and our chat GPT and looking at. Okay, well, right now it's based on like all of this work that other people have already done. Like, it's not. It's not really generative in that way because it's really just like a compilation of human artwork, human writing. Although I think it is starting to especially chat pt. I've read. Um, you know, there's some. There's some concern about it starting to eat itself because now it's feeding on stuff it from its own output. You know that.

Davezilla: Right.

Victoria Raschke: So it's. It's just complicated to look at it as a creative and go, okay, so this is possibly based on my work, but I don't get credit for that, you know, I wasn't asked to participate in that. And then like, you know, looking at that aspect of it, uh, looking at the, like, environmental impact of, of just how much energy these things take and then looking at the possibility of it, like, it's, it's hard to reconcile. And then you think about, well, if it helps us find a cure for cancer, that's great.

Davezilla: Exactly.

Victoria Raschke: But do we want to, you know, bring nuclear reactors back online to do it? It's so complicated. And I think I just applaud you being brave enough to jump into the fray with a published book in the middle of what I think is, you know, like just a churn of conversation right now around it.

Davezilla: Right. And you know, the media throws a lot of things out of balance, like for example, the power consumption to make it look like we're losing power to AI. And the reality is if you combine all of the power that AI and crypto together use, it's, it's 1.4% globally. Um, paper production is 11%. So that's seven times more to, ah, get paper, you know, so we're, you know, there's a lot of, in textiles take up enormous chunk of our power. Concrete takes up an enormous amount of power. Um, do we want to give those things up? No.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah. Um, although there is like a new thing. Like recently I saw like they're trying to, they've finally figured out like maybe how to recycle concrete. And I was like, okay, that's excellent news.

Davezilla: It is, yeah. Um, yeah. So the, the power, it's not as crazy as the media wants to make it. Like, it's like it's, oh my God, every, you're going to lose. You know, it's not like, like the water crisis or something, you know, in the, in the west. It's, it's really, really a small amount. I mean it is a lot when you think about, in terms of other things. But compared to what we're already doing, it's a drop in the bucket. Um, but yeah, and there are companies already working on, try to doing it sustainably and figuring out ways to get around that so that'll get taken care of. We're going to have a hiccup for a while where people are going to complain about it, but it will get taken care of and it will go away and we'll figure out how to deal with that. Um, as far as the other stuff, um, like, for example, the. I always, I always find it, ah, a little interesting when people say, like, well, this is cheating at art, I'm like, okay, I don't see anyone complaining about collage art, which is literally stealing someone else's art and someone else's photography and pasting it together. M and that's been going on for over 100 years and no one's ever complained about it. Um, every single artist going back to the Middle Ages was taught by, by ripping off their instructor, which was usually a great master, and you had to mimic their paint strokes identically. And the reason was they had a lot of projects going and you had to be able to pick up when they were tired and continue for them. So even they had not ghost writers, but ghost painters back then, um, helping them. Their assistants were enormously, um, helpful in getting their artwork out. So in, you know, you hear phrases like, you know, you steal from one, you're a hack. Steal from a thousand, you're a genius. Um, people have always been imitating other people's art, and it's a slippery slope. And I know, and I get it when people say, like, hey, my stuff was. How do you know my work wasn't taken? It's like, well, you can go there's on sites online where you can actually type in your, your, um, name and your URL and things like that and find out what was taken. I. I saw some of mine. I had, like, 12 pieces were used for training, but they were pretty minor. It didn't matter to me. I don't know how many people have ripped me off in real life. I've seen it before. I've seen people imitate my work. Um, so to me, there's no different. It's like when the camera, uh, was invented, illustrators everywhere freaked out and like, oh, my God, this is the end of the craft of illustration and painting. And then it didn't. We got used to photography. You know, when desktop publishing came out, everybody freaked out. Oh, my God, this is the end of the publishing industry. No, it increased it. If anything, when Photoshop came out, photographers freaked out. They were going to lose their jobs. Now they all use it. Um, you know, this is just another instance of something that's going to start out being horrible and then turn into a tool that we all just use every day and don't think about. And, um, that's how it should be used. It shouldn't be a replacement for art. It should be used as a, as a, um, inspiration or maybe help you make quick comps. Um, or maybe you don't know what a certain thing looks like and you just need quick reference that's what it should be used for, not for making art.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah. And I think, you know, like what you said, I mean, there's been hucksters involved in all of that. Like, I think, you know, like the whole genre of spirit photography came out of like, you know, innovations with the camera, you know, and, and a lot of that was fake and garbage, you know, but we still enjoy it now, looking back on it. But like, I think the thing, you know, like AI, like, uh, it's just such a bigger audience of people with this new technology that doesn't have a lot of guardrails. And you know, people were already skiving people's books and republishing them under different names with different covers on Amazon. I mean, that's been going on since Amazon publishing was a thing. And you know, I think now it's, it's like, you know, people. I think it's uh, also like discernment. Like I. The one that has really stuck with me lately is the, the. I think it was a family in the UK and it may have happened multiple times now that bought a, uh, mushroom ID book that was an AI generated one and made themselves sick because they ate, you know, the wrong kind of mushroom.

Davezilla: Yeah.

Victoria Raschke: And I was like, yeah, so clearly the guardrails have not caught up. And I think that's, you know, that's part of this like, soup of this discussion of like, how do we, how do we make this a tool at our beckoning and not a, um, monster.

Davezilla: That's, you know, it's really funny that that example you gave because I considered very strongly becoming a medical illustrator.

Victoria Raschke: Mhm.

Davezilla: When I was going to go to college and, and I was. Someone said, oh, yeah, that's a lot of pressure. I'm like, what do you mean? They go, well, you know, if you, if you have the, like the liver, for example, if you put it in the wrong slightly the wrong shade, an entire generation of doctors can misdiagnose and kill people. I was like, okay, I don't need that kind of.

Victoria Raschke: Nobody needs. Yeah, that's. Whoa. Uh, I never thought about that. That's terrifying.

Davezilla: Yeah, I'm like, I think I'll just stick to drawing other things in magazines and stuff.

Victoria Raschke: No, that makes. Yeah, I had never thought about that with a medical illustration. But yeah. And I mean, yeah, there's just like, you know, like hucksterism is a thing. Like people grifters are gonna grift whatever the tools at their disposal. So. Yeah.

Davezilla: Right. And, and to that exact example, comparing that with like the medical illustrators is like the difference between someone who just wants to do something cheap and fast and make a buck and someone who wants to take the time to learn the craft and learn, um, you know, really, really study and own this, this. And you're right, like you say, no guardrails. It's also like no expertise.

Victoria Raschke: Mhm. Yeah.

Davezilla: And the fact that people are also in a, in a cultural place right now where they don't believe in experts anymore makes it even worse. And I think that's also why they're doubting everything. And every image that comes out now that can seem slightly incredulous is immediately, oh, that's AI.

Victoria Raschke: Whether. Mhm.

Davezilla: It is or isn't.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah.

Davezilla: And no one can believe anything anymore.

Victoria Raschke: And especially, I mean there are, I think, you know, looking at AR AI art I've seen online, like there is definitely a look to it that I.

Davezilla: Mid journey stuff. Yeah, for sure.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah. And when I see it, I was like, okay, that's from mid journey or that's AI produced. And you know, it's gotten better with things like hands and facial expressions and those things continue to improve. But um, you know, I think what you said about the expertise is so important is like, there's a whole group of people who don't trust experts, but they will trust this, you know, ridiculous picture of, you know, a truck with 40,000American flags on it. And why don't people share these pictures more often? I'm like, because it's garbage that was generated by AI, by someone who doesn't care if you're, you know. And so it's like this weird mix of we don't trust experts, but we're gullible for everything.

Davezilla: You know, um, back in the 80s, there was a whole group of, you know, witchcraft books that came out that nowadays are considered to be, you know, completely garbage by a lot of people. M. And we were growing up with those books, assuming they were all accurate and everything and finding out now all the history was made up. And you know, a lot of this stuff was just people trying to fit an agenda or. And that was a really disheartening thing to find out when you were like, but I was told this was the truth or that this was, um, how our religion was and finding out, no, no, none of this is true. And, and even books that were set out to, to debunk and show the true history, like Aiden Kelly's book. And he turned out to be every bit as bad as when he was, you know, he was out there, um, Exposing all the names in the Gardenarians and um, doing, you know, he's just not a good, not a good guy. Um, I don't know this. It's just weird. I think these things keep coming in cycles where we lose expertise or, or be deluded and then suddenly wake up and find out, no, that's not right. And maybe these things are for a reason. You know, maybe they're to help us get stronger and um, evolve a little bit, but they just feel like short obstacles to me that keep cyclically happening.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah. And I just think about the irony of it. Like, we have access to more information than we've had at any point in human history. Like, the average person has so much access to knowledge and yet it's almost, I don't know, like, I think there's a lot of things I could say and I don't know that any of them add to the conversation, but I, I just find it ironic that we're in this middle of like a crisis of what, what is expertise and what does it serve and what is it for? And, and also we have the knowledge of the ages literally at our fingertips.

Davezilla: And, and I don't think our brains can handle it.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah.

Davezilla: Because it's coming too fast. When you, um. I read this fact once that said that the, A single issue of the Sunday edition of the New York Times has more information in it than a person in the 19th century would have encountered in their entire lifetime. And I thought about that. I'm like, God, we ingest that much information all the time.

Victoria Raschke: Mhm.

Davezilla: All the time. We know so much more than people in the past would have known or could possibly have known. But I don't know if our brains have evolved fast enough to comprehend it. Maybe that's why we're in these weird things where, you know, you think about that Jeff Goldblum, um, quote in Jurassic Park. You know, your scientists were so concerned with whether or not they could, they didn't think about whether or not they should. That is one of the most important quotes ever put in a movie. And it's so true. It totally applies to everything that's been coming out.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, like, there's the comprehension and then there's like the assimilation and the synthesis of that knowledge. And like, I really appreciate people who are trying to make sense of things. And it's just, it's a lot. And I think when you come at it kind of like what you've done with your deck to kind of get back around to your Work is, you know, it's. There's so many things that a person can be interested in and synthesize them and there's a danger of like connecting things that aren't really connected because we are pattern making creatures. But then I think, you know, that pattern making also leads us to more knowledge and discovery and things like that. And I think that was one of the reasons I like the deck is because I don't think I would have ever put like, Cryptids and aliens together necessarily. Although I should couch that in the fact that I have been involved in two projects writing Cryptid Romance, and both of them have aliens in the book in addition to like human or Earth Cryptids. So. But I do think those things, I mean, it makes sense that they're related. And I love, you know, the idea that there's this, you know, like a lot of what, like kind of like what you said before, before Roswell and before, you know, like science fiction, invented aliens or whatever that, you know, a lot of those encounters that people now say were, you know, extraterrestrial or UFOs or you UAPs or whatever were was fairy lore.

Davezilla: Fairy lore. And before that it was angels or. Yeah, yeah, it was gods and demons. Yeah, it was all kinds of things. And it's like maybe it's the same phenomenon and people just have their own local ethnic and cultural and time period way of describing it because it's the best they've got. You know, they're doing the best they can with what they know. The same with us. You know, like there's that, our famous Arthur C. Clarke quote where he said any technology that's sufficiently advanced will be indistinguishable from magic.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah.

Davezilla: You know, if we saw something, you know, we can't explain. The Navy's having a hard time explaining those, those pill, uh, shaped UFOs that they're seeing that are going straight up, straight down and moving at 60,000 miles an hour. And we're like, we don't have any tech like that. What is that? And is it tech? Maybe it's not.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah, yeah. Uh, it's so interesting too that, like this is. I guess we're off topic in a way, but not really.

Davezilla: All stuff that's behind my, in, in my decade, all things have influenced it. So now it's. Yeah, it's actually very topical.

Victoria Raschke: But I find it funny that like, you know, the US government drops this. Like maybe UFOs. UAPs are real, at least in that they occur. We don't know what they are in the middle of COVID everybody kind of went shrug.

Davezilla: Oh, I know. Like, is it either kind of like we don't care or. Yeah, we kind of knew that. Yeah, I know the few that are all like, oh my God, they finally admitted it. And it's like. Well, not really admitted it, but.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah, but the, the general cultural shrug really surprised me. But I don't know, I. It's funny you say, oh, yeah, we knew that because I, I have this like, personal theory that I realize other people have also theorized on that like, our media prepares us for things in ways like if you think about like before Obama, uh, there were so many black presidents in films.

Davezilla: Yes.

Victoria Raschke: And. And then, you know, I think so it like that possibility was there and I think there's a lot to that. Just sociologically and culturally that representation matters. But also this idea that, um, you know. Well, we have all these movies about alien contact and alien conflict as like, preparation. And I try not to go down those kind of rabbit holes in my brain because that's a good way to break it. But I'm also like, maybe. I don't know.

Davezilla: Yeah, it's hard to tell. Is like, is Hollywood having a, uh, Are we having a collective unconscious experience or, or are they actually prepping us for something? Or is it just a weird. Or is it just all a weird coincidence?

Victoria Raschke: Yeah. And I mean, it goes all the way back to like the day that Earth stood still. Like, this is not like a new, A new thing really. I mean, new in like all of human history. Yes. But not new to, you know, people with our finite lifespans.

Davezilla: Right. But if you look at all the trends, uh, of how aliens are described, they seem to change every decade. And um, it's interesting that we've never, no one's ever come out and said like, well, the, the aliens were, uh, like ooze or something. You know, they never, It's. It's always gonna be a humanoid or an animal shape. It's never, it's always something related to life on Earth. And how do we know that that's how things would evolve on other planets?

Victoria Raschke: Because we totally, we totally have issues. I mean, the blob, uh, 50s, like we have. And we have slime molds and things like that, so.

Davezilla: Right. I'm more likely to believe that it'd be like something like a big tardigrade or something, you know, those, those bears. Mhm.

Victoria Raschke: Indestructible. Indestructible tardigrades.

Davezilla: Exactly. Something that can handle any, any kind of pressure and Any kind of temperature. And you can't kill the things that to me seems more likely to be an alien than.

Victoria Raschke: Mhm.

Davezilla: Always um, believing it's going to be a thing with two arms and two legs and looks like a human.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah. I mean my personal bet is on octopods.

Davezilla: Right.

Victoria Raschke: I'm pretty sure they're smarter than we are.

Davezilla: I think so too. They're way too smart.

Victoria Raschke: They're way too smart.

Davezilla: I found out there's a spider in, uh, Malaysia. Can't remember. There's a spider that knows how to arrange crystals around It's. It's like one of those tunnel. Tunnel spiders.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah.

Davezilla: It arranges crystals around the outside that help generate electrical current. And it knows when objects are coming from the way the Chris. And it uses certain crystals. Like they said they've tried to give it different crystals and it'll reject them. It knows which ones are quartz. It'll only use quartz.

Victoria Raschke: Wow.

Davezilla: And then it puts a single string between each one and it understands the relationship really, really well. And like that's, that's weird.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah. Well, I mean, I do. I mean there is like. It kind of goes back to that Arthur C. Clarke quote, like when people are like, well, you know, the whole crystal thing is weird. And I was like, what's your display made out of? Like liquid crystal displays. Precursor or precursors to LED displays. Like we know they conduct electricity. Like, it's not that, it's not that weird. Yeah.

Davezilla: No. What a crazy stone. You know, that can. Everything we have is, is. Yeah. A rock. Basically. Just a smashed up rock with electricity pumping through it.

Victoria Raschke: Oh yeah. It's just, it's funny. And like. Yeah. Like I, like I said, I. I try not to go too far down the rabbit holes because I can get stuck there. But um, but they do fascinate me. Like when you mentioned In Search Of, I was like, that probably is one of the basises of why I'm such a weirdo because I was obsessed with In Search of as a kid and still carry a soft spot in my heart forever and ever for Leonard Nimoy and.

Davezilla: Oh yeah.

Victoria Raschke: And you know, I think that. And the Time Life books the phenomenon. Yes, yes. It's like those two things made me a weird kid.

Davezilla: We had those. Yeah. And also. And there was other shows too that, that influenced those things like Kolchak, the Night Stalker. Mhm. I don't know if you remember that one.

Victoria Raschke: Oh yeah, definitely.

Davezilla: Yeah. Very strange paranormal detective show way before the X Files.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah. And even like, you know, like Unsolved Mysteries would have, like, weird paranormal stuff occasionally.

Davezilla: Yeah, they. They do. They switch in between real crime.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah, there's a lot of that in the 70s and 80s, I think, you know, for those of us who are around for that were like, no, things were weird. Like, it was a weird time. Stranger Things is not. You know, there's a reason that that show works for people who love it.

Davezilla: Yeah. And for people who. I don't know, there's like. Yeah. There's a nostalgia for that time from people who didn't see it and then because they heard about it, like, oh, it sounds, like, strange. And, um. But then there was, you know, for us, I feel like we're back in it. It's like these. Like I said, there's cyclical things, and I think one of them is interest in the paranormal and interest in, um, 40. And phenomena and things like that seem to occur on. On the same cycle. And it's. I don't know if it's like, every 30 years or something like that, but there seems to be these arcs.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah.

Davezilla: Where it keeps happening.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah. And I mean, what is it? History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Is like the kind of the satanic panic and, like, the QANON stuff and how that cycle goes back all the way to, like, the pogroms in, you know, medieval Europe. Like, it' It's. It's basically anti Semitism with different packages. It just happens again and again. And you're like, yeah, these. These cycles aren't even new. These cycles aren't even new. Really? So.

Davezilla: No. In fact, um, I read something that said that the one third of the nation being kind of like, ultra conservative, crazy conspiracy theory has gone on since the Founding fathers. M. They've been able to trace it back. There's always been a third of us like that.

Victoria Raschke: Gosh. I mean, you're gonna talk about conspiracy.

Davezilla: It's not gonna go away.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah. I mean, conspiracy stuff around the founding of the United States is. Oh, that is a deep, ugly thicket. So.

Davezilla: Yeah.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah.

Davezilla: Because even. Yeah. That was when the. Everybody still thought that, you know, you could take a live mouse in your mouth. Mouth to get rid of a toothache. So.

Victoria Raschke: Mm. Yeah. Yeah. My current research project is looking at a lot of those, like, medieval and early modern and even some, like, Greek and Roman herbals. And you're just like, wow. Like, it's kind of amazing that we survived as a species based on the stuff we were willing to do in the name of medical science. Um.

Davezilla: Yeah. Between people trying to Eat things that they shouldn't. And men just being men with stupid stunts. It is amazing that we've lived this long.

Victoria Raschke: I think my favorite one that I found, and I may get a tattoo of hellebore just because I love this so much, is this idea that um, and it comes from like Dioscorides, like it's all the way back to Greece, is that hellebore would cure madness of various kinds, like including rabies and things like that. And I was like, well, yeah, if you're dead, you're not crazy anymore. So like, yes, the cure might work, but you also might just be dead.

Davezilla: So that's really funny. Yeah. Put the witch underwater and then yeah.

Victoria Raschke: So much strangeness. So much strangeness. And I feel like, you know, this could be like one of those like six hour podcasts, but we try to keep it to an hour. So, um, in interest of that, I would like to give you the opportunity to kind of plot like I said. This will come out the beginning of February, long after the election. Who's know, who knows what the world will look like. Um, but just kind of if you want to tell people where to find your work, like talk, you know, when your new book will be out, um, all that good stuff. And um, I'll make sure all that's in the show notes too.

Davezilla: Sure. Um, I have a website that is hex support dot club, not dot com. Um, and I post. I'm actually working on my next book on there so you can kind of follow it. It's called how to Witch and it's kind of a sarcastic um, look at how to. How to use witchcraft and how to do everything. It's very, very um, tongue in cheek. But um, I'm posting all the like how to. You'll like all the herb ones. The how to herb ones are going up right now on, on there. So um, they're basically things like, you know, basil smells like licorice and failed marriages. Um, it's kind of very, very Gen X writing style. Anyways, um, so I post that kind of stuff there. I'm also. And also I have anything to do with my, with whatever's coming out. Um, people will know first there. So, um. Yeah. And um, my, all my works on wiser, uh, books. So it's available anywhere. So um, Amazon, Amazon uk, Amazon, CA. Chapters, Powell, Borders. They're not Borders anymore. Sorry. Barnes and Noble. M. Boy, they had a good occult section.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah, Borders had a great occult section and a great magazine section.

Davezilla: Best magazine section ever.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah, I missed that.

Davezilla: It was the first place I saw 40 in times.

Victoria Raschke: I think that may be for me too. I think that was maybe the first place I saw 40 and times.

Davezilla: Yeah. Um, yeah, great, Great store. Too bad. Um, but yeah, any, any, basically online and any place that sells books or tarot decks should have it. Um, and, uh, the book, the Magical AI Grimoire will be coming out, I believe, March 3rd.

Victoria Raschke: Okay. It'll be out right after this. Perfect timing.

Davezilla: Yeah.

Victoria Raschke: Excellent. So I don't know if you got a chance to listen to the show or not, but our last question is a tiny bit of a game of chance. And I always joke that I'm a double Scorpio. My sun and moon are both in Scorpio. I don't know how to do small talk. It's not part of my nature. So I always like to ask people big questions. So I'm going to roll a die, and depending on what number I get, I'll get a question about death, sex, religion, politics or money. And if I roll six, you get to pick which one you want and you can pass because like I said, I don't like to do gotcha stuff. You don't want to talk about that, we don't talk about it. So let's see what the die has to say. Six, you get to pick.

Davezilla: I get to pick.

Victoria Raschke: Death, sex, religion, politics, or money.

Davezilla: Couple. Money.

Victoria Raschke: Money. Okay. Um. It's funny because it kind of goes back to what we were talking about a little bit before. So spirituality, the paranormal, high strangeness, all seem to have this grifter element to them. So what should people be on the lookout for? And how can those or our communities root them out? Or can we even do that?

Davezilla: Oh man, that's a great question. With, uh. Well, with like AI and things like that, there are ways of looking. Um, one, you can see patterns in writing. Uh, for example, Chat GDP has a, uh, really irritating habit of writing the exact same length paragraph every time. So if you see someone's book and every paragraph seems to be exactly five sentences, um, and it uses some phrases that are correct, but uses them a lot, um, in ways where a normal person would never use it more than once in their life kind m of thing, that, that sort of thing's a giveaway. Um, obviously A.I. you can tell because their details will be wrong. Like signs might have mangled text on them or, um, on some of the older models of AI you'll see, you know, multiple fingers, um, or eyes that don't track properly. Um, and that's still an issue. Um, you know, they. They'll get things like hair and follicles perfect. But then other things are still mystifying to AI, like, um, how do you hold a baby? Or, um, you know, things that we wouldn't think twice about. Or what does it look like when someone throws a baseball?

Victoria Raschke: Hm.

Davezilla: Those kind of things that can't quite understand. Um, and it will eventually. But looking at those kind of details when you're like, this doesn't feel right. There's a. There's a phrase called uncanny valley. And it has to do with when we see something that looks very real and very human. But we also know there's something in our guts telling us it's not right. That it's not right.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah.

Davezilla: What's disturbing is uncanny valley is a very deep, primal fear of ours, which means that somewhere in our DNA or somewhere in our past, we encountered something that looked very human but wasn't.

Victoria Raschke: I think about that a lot, actually. I was gonna say that when you brought up in Canyon Valley, and I was like, yeah, I think. I think about that a lot.

Davezilla: Yeah. Does that mean there are encounters with, like, the Denisovans and the Neanderthals or something else? Whatever it was, we got a fear of it and it's not left us.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah.

Davezilla: Um, so that's one thing. And then. And just paying attention to also, like, if a price of something's too low, like a tarot deck, it's probably fake.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah.

Davezilla: Um, people that are promising things are putting out books at a ridiculous speed. That's not possible. Fake. You know, those kind of things we got to watch for and supporting people who. You can tell who the real experts are. You know, the people who are just putting things out and don't seem to be able to answer their questions. For people, um, generally it's because they don't have any expertise in that area and they're just. They're just faking it all the way through. So always look for the experts. They're still there and they care.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah, No, I think that that's. That's so true. And, um. Yeah. That the. I. And I get it on some level because we do live in such an unequal society economically. And I can understand the appeal of knockoffs and things like that because, you know, like, especially in publishing, like the price of books and tarot decks and things like that has gone through the roof in the last three years because of paper supply chain issues and all of those things. So I understand the appeal of those. But at the same time, you're like, yeah, you know, somebody's losing out on their royalties for that. You know, when you buy the fake deck, you, you're, you're feeding the beast of copies and it's, it's a complicated thing and you know, like as a, as an author, you know, especially during COVID I put out several times. It's like, if you need something to read, email me and I will send you a PDF of my book. You know, like, you know, just let's try and support people who are doing the work. And um, But I get it, like a lot of, like you said, you know, sometimes using chat pt, chat GPT may help you because you don't have the money to do something else. And I've heard that from a lot of like self published authors. Well, I just did a, uh, you know, a Mid Journey cover because I couldn't afford an artist and I'm like, yeah, I, I, you know, like financially, I get it. Like, you know, as someone who I'm, I'm not an artist, I'm a writer, but I, I have a lot of artist friends and I'm like, yeah, you know, you maybe took a job from one of them because you, you did that. So like it's, it's a double edged sword.

Davezilla: Yeah, I would have preferred someone say, hey, I did this on Mid Journey. Can you do something like this? This is the direction I'm looking for.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah.

Davezilla: Can you make it for me? M. And yeah, because you're right, it does take away. It's very disappointing and disheartening to put hundreds and hundreds of hours into things and then see it just get ripped off in minutes.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah, the social media beast. I mean like, you know, I, I have friends who are artists who stopped posting on anything that was meta related because of the terms and agreements. And I was like, I, um, don't blame you. I can see that. You know, and I also realized that a lot of artists continue to post on those places because it's the only way they can afford to advertise their services and their work. So, you know, social media has its own underlying beast too.

Davezilla: So it doesn't. And I don't know how it allows so many people to get their entire account ripped off and then it's so hard to get them to lift a finger to shut it down. Yeah, half the time they'll be like, yeah, we investigated your claim and we don't find any merit to it. You're like, but they stole my friend's account.

Victoria Raschke: Like, yeah, well, uh, like it was obviously Fake like, you know, that they're not who they say they are.

Davezilla: But, yeah, their name doesn't have 16 pluses at the end, you know. Yeah.

Victoria Raschke: Uh, the. The counterfeit accounts. And especially, you know, I talk about grifters, like, the, you know, Grand Risings. I have messages from your ancestors, and I'm like, look, I don't know who you are, but if my answers need. If my ancestors want to get in touch with me, they know how.

Davezilla: Yeah, I know. Yeah. I get a lot of those where it's like, you see someone looks like a regular tarot reader, and then if you accept their request instantly, within one second, you've got a. Yeah. Either Grand Risings or my beloved, I feel drawn to your account, and I need to give you a reading. And I'm like, man, I'm a santero. You don't. I'll give you a reading if.

Victoria Raschke: Let me give you a reading that says maybe stop trying to rip people off before, you know.

Davezilla: Right. Yeah. Yeah. I'm an elder in my religion. I don't need your help.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a good way to spot grifters. You know, I think most people who do tarot readings and. And who do any kind of mediumship or anything like that, if they're. If they're the real deal, they don't need to contact you on social media. They got enough people clamoring at their door.

Davezilla: Yeah. And the few. I, uh, mean, I have had one psychic contact me one time, and they actually said, I had a dream about you, and they wrote it out, and. And it was really amazingly accurate to something that had happened. So I was m. Like, okay, that's cool. But, yeah, they volunteered that it wasn't just like, I feel that you need to have a reading. For me, it was like, no, I. They had a. They felt a connection, and, um, it was really out of the blue, and they didn't know what to do about it, but they wanted to share it.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah.

Davezilla: And they weren't asking for money, so I thought, that is legit.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah. Well, I think that not asking her money thing probably is a big part of that, too. It's like, no, I had this dream, and I just wanted. I didn't know if it was a message for you, but I'm going to share it. And, you know, that's. That's totally different than saying, hey, you know, can you Venmo m me a hundred dollars and I'll share this message from your ancestors? And I'm like, yeah, my ancestors Also, like, were poor Appalachian people. They're not going to go to you and tell me to give you a hundred dollars for that information. That's not how they rolled.

Davezilla: Yeah, they were living through their depression. Absolutely not.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah, no, they're gonna. They're gonna, like, you know, they're gonna let me know in their own way. They're not gonna need to, but. Yeah, it's just. I don't know, it's a weird world out there, and I just hope people take care of themselves and each other and. And, you know, on some level, I get the people who are doing the grift are trying to survive, too. I just don't like the way they go about it.

Davezilla: Yeah, I wish you'd pick a better way of. Yeah.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah. Um, well, Dave, good luck in all of your endeavors, and thanks for coming on and for, you know, sharing your work.

Davezilla: Thanks. It was really fun.

Victoria Raschke: Yeah. Well, good. And, um, like I said, this will come out in February, and your new book will be on the heels of that. And, um, I am curious to see the discourse.

Davezilla: Me too.

Victoria Raschke: Well, good luck. Thanks.

Davezilla: Hear a loud scream from Detroit. You'll know that was me.

Victoria Raschke: We'll know what happened. Witch lit is a production of Thousand Volt Press and is edited by Julian Raschke. Our intro music is Cosmic Glow by Andrew K. And our outro music is Voices by Alexander Chanekar. Transcripts in all our previous episodes are available at which. And you can follow us on Instagram or threads at witchlitpod. Please help other witches find us by leaving a rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts. And thank you for listening to and reading WitchLit.