For millennia, humans have considered the dreamstate to be something mystical. After all, it’s a place where anything can happen. Dead loved ones can appear to you, friends can return, you can imagine what life would be like if you had made a different choice, and it all feels real. The thing about dreams is that it feels just as real as regular waking life.
You might not meditate, drop acid, or take magic mushrooms, but you experience an altered state of consciousness every night. When you fall asleep, you dream. Even if you don’t remember your dreams, you still dream when you enter REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep.
And if we believe that paranormal experiences happen to us in an altered state of consciousnesss, when are they most likely to happen except for the altered state that we naturally go into every single night?
What if we don’t have to be alone while we dream? What if someone can communicate with us, or even join us?
In this episode, we’ll talk about the most famous dream research, from Sigmund Freud (he’s the man who really introduced dream interpretation into the modern era with his “talking cure”) to Dr. Stanley Krippner, who did dream ESP research for decades, to the latest studies that prove there’s actually something significant (even if it’s only statistically right now) more to our dreams than just a “undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, or a fragment of underdone potato”! Here’s what we cover:
For the song this week, we picked a track off our first album where “dreams”, whether they be of the “wake up in a cold sweat” kind, or of the daydreaming your future kind, can have a huge impact on your life. They can paralyze you as well as energize you. Because no matter where the dreams are coming from, you have to pay attention to them, so you don’t get stuck!
Woke up this morning paralyzed by a dream, Stared at my ceiling for an hour, Prayed a little, thought a little, then got outta bed. Then I went to work at nothing for what seemed like forever.
The days turn to hours, the minutes race past. Dreams have this way with me, moving too fast. We danced until dawn under endless sky, but when I woke up, it had passed me by.
I’m falling behind in the human race, cuz all of my life I’ve been running in place. The boys with big dreams have to pick up the pace, or all of our lives we’ll be running in place.
This room looks so old and worn and beat, I stared out my window for an hour. When you have too much ambition than it’s worse than none at all, when you’re waiting for a sign that will never come.
The days turn to hours, the minutes race past. Dreams have this way with of outreaching my grasp. We danced until dawn under endless sky, but when I woke up, it had passed me by.
I’m falling behind in the human race, cuz all of my life I’ve been running in place. The boys with big dreams have to pick up the pace, or all of our lives we’ll be running in place.
Queen is once again one of the hottest bands around, 28 years after their beloved singer died, thanks to the amazing popularity of the biopic of Freddie Mercury, Bohemian Rhapsody, as well as an Academy Award for Best Actor for the movie’s star, Rami Malek.
Even though Queen was already seemingly out of vogue by the time I started getting into music, the second tape I ever had was Queen’s Greatest Hits and at 13 years old, it blew my mind. Freddie passed away the November I was a freshman in high school and that brought attention back to the band enough where the deejay let me request “Bohemian Rhapsody” at our dances. Of course, we’d slow dance with our girlfriends to the mellow parts and then rock the f#$% out to the big riff when it came in. When Wayne’s World came out only a few months later and the everybody was headbanging in the car, it felt like it was a window into my teenage experience. That’s when I realized how universal the appeal of Queen really was.
“Bohemian Rhapsody” was always too hard to cover, so we just stuck with the easy ones, like “We Will Rock You” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, but they always had a place in my playlist. And still do, here’s a picture of Wendy and Scott from What’s Your Ghost Story at SXSW 2019 where we were partying to a Queen tribute band at the Good Omens launch party. The bald guy is the singer and he was an incredible performer. That dude had balls and we all knew it, because we could see them outlined in his full unitard!
That singer was fearless, and that’s what Freddie could inspire you to be, because as a frontman and a songwriter, he was as bold and audacious as they come. He made the line “I want to ride my bicycle” sound badass, he makes tough guys sing along to “Aw, you’re my best friend” and still think it’s cool! He could bounce from jazz to hard rock to opera in a song and it all felt natural. Not only was he an incredible guiding light for me but for millions around the world, and you can tell how deep is effect was, because people have been seeing his ghost now for decades.
Just in March of 2019, a listener to 97x, a Classic Rock station in the Quad Cities claimed that he captured a picture of Freddie Mercury’s ghost high above the stage at a Queen tribute concert in Moline, Illinois. Now it’s obviously just the way the lights are interacting with the fog machine and it looks like one of those images where people see Jesus with the sun peeking through the clouds, but it’s still pretty fun once you see it.
Is this Freddie singing along?
Someone posted in the Unexplained Mysteries discussion forum that Freddie visited them while they were listening to “Bohemian Rhapsody”, the best part is how he describes what the singer was wearing.
I was listening to “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen last night and the visage of Freddy Mercury coalesced into cohesion right there in my living room!
he was wearing these snappy red leather chaps and and knee high motorcycle boots!
I said “Freddy what are you doing in my living room?” and he just snapped both fingers and vanished before my eyes!
outpatient777 – April 16th, 2009
Now the next line he asks, “Am I schizophrenic?” so it’s probably just a silly troll post, but this was a long time before Bohemian Rhapsody came out as a movie. However, they’ve never stopped playing Queen songs on Classic Rock radio, so those songs are never too far from our imagination.
Freddie also visited Jennifer Bennett, a California girl raised in the 70s, she woke up a couple of days after the 22nd anniversary of his death with the lyrics of “Bohemian Rhapsody” stuck in her head, and what she says was his energy. She says:
Freddie and I have never been particularly close so his presence was curious. I was a bit embarrassed to to have felt visited by him, or at least visited by the energy that he embodies. Freddie Mercury – bold, brazen, impressive, self assured, diva. It felt as if I have something to learn from him. And, of course, to hear Bohemian Rhapsody as if it was plugged directly into my brain… Jeez. The power ballad that puts all others power ballads to shame. Yet, it was only the first 3 lines I heard this morning, over and over.
She talks about how she admired him for his brash fearlessness and how she felt emboldened by his energy. Was it Freddie flitting in and out of her dreams, coming to her with a message that she needed to hear?
This album cover was also the inspiration for Guns n’ Roses original cover for Appetite for Destruction
But while Mr. Fahrenheit might have visited Jennifer Bennett once in the morning, his ghost spent much more time with Christine Burgess. The Decemeber 15th, 1996 News Of The World (a tabloid newspaper that Queen named an album after!) features a story about how Christine said she started an affair with the ghost of Freddie Mercury shortly after his death.
Christine’s husband was said to be frustrated that Christine kept comparing him to Freddy, who he called “Mr. Perfect”. But poor Stuart also insisted that his wife was “mentally unstable” and that seemed to be proven true, because Christine would show up at the home of Mary Austin, Freddie’s sometime lover and longtime companion. Burgess said that she deserved to move into the home, which was left to Austin by Mercury, because “she and Freddie were lovers in a former life.” It wasn’t just Mary, but she hounded Queen guitarist, Brian May, as well as Freddie’s friends. And she wouldn’t be deterred, the article ends with her still claiming:
“These people are frightened because Freddie is with ME.”
Queen guitarist Brian May – he’s also a Doctor of Astrophysics – FOR REAL
I feel him around a lot. I don’t want to be too mystical about it but he is very much a part of what we do.
Brian May about Freddie Mercury
This was right when Brian was producing an animated special called One Night In Hell based on some art he has collecting, but more interestingly they were a about to release three new Freddie Mercury songs that they had found in the archives on a record called Queen Forever. So, obviously he was thinking a lot about his departed friend and hearing his voice in the studio might have brought back some of those familiar feelings. Who knows, maybe Freddie was with them, just like he visited Jennifer a few years earlier.
Actor Rami Malek who won the Oscar playing Freddie Mercury
There has been feeling from Rami and Brian along with the film’s directorBryan Singer that Freddie is watching them prepare for filming. Rami believes Freddie’s presence is very much on-set and with him wherever he goes, including when he’s at home practicing singing Queen songs… Rami has been dreaming of Freddie telling him about how he performed on stage, showing him his moves and how it is to be a rock star.
Anonymous source from the set of Bohemian Rhapsody
But speaking of director Bryan Singer, he has himself been embroiled in controversy over sexual allegations of seducing underage boys. And it certainly doesn’t help that in many people’s minds he’s associated with Kevin Spacey, since Singer was the one who really launched the disgraced actor’s career by directing him to a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in The Usual Suspects. When Malek was nominated for the Academy Award, he was immediately interviewed for the Los Angeles Times, and when pressed about the allegations against Singer, he brings up Freddie’s ghost again.
I didn’t know much about Bryan. I think that the allegations and things were, believe it or not, honestly something I was not aware of, and that is what it is. Who knows what happens with that … but I think somehow we found a way to persevere through everything that was thrown our way.
Perhaps that was Freddie himself doing it, because we wanted to make a product that was worthy of him. Who knows?
Rami Malek
So, while Freddie’s physical body has been gone almost three decades now, it looks like his spirit isn’t going anywhere. Whether or not it was actually his consciousness visiting Brian May and Rami Malek or it was just his personality was so larger than life that it’s easy to mentally create the energy in our own heads, it doesn’t really matter.
Freddie Mercury is still alive every time we sing along to words we don’t even understand like “Scaramouche scaramouche will you do the Fandango?” Freddie Mercury is still alive every time a teenager bangs his head to that incredible guitar riff and then grabs his partner to slow dance at the end. Freddie’s dead, but we bring him back to life every time we let it rip to a Queen song.
In addition to being lovers of the paranormal and all things Fortean, Wendy and I also have been performing in a rock band since college. The name of the band started as Nevermore, which we thought was sweet because everyone loves Edgar Allen Poe, but we switched it to Sunspot because the lawyers for a power metal band called Nevermore threatened to sue us when they got famous before we did.
Sunspot seemed like a cool name because they’re dark mysterious parts of the sun that interfere with radio waves on Earth. We’re all into sci-fi, so having an astronomical event be the name for our band sounded about right. Plus, it was the 90’s and compound nouns were all the rage then (Pearljam, Soundgarden, etc…)
We’ve always had a touch of an occult bent to the music and have long enjoyed the symbolism and mystery of the Tarot deck. In fact, our band, Sunspot’s first album, Radio Free Earth, featured The Fool from the Rider-Waite Tarot on the cover. I’ve always loved the Tarot, even though I don’t find it particularly mystical.
It’s a great party game, but it’s also a useful tool for self-reflection. The Major Arcana represent archetypes of personalities, and we all have a little bit of those archetypes inside of us at one time or another, so it can almost be a form of psychoanalysis. When you deal the card, what does that archetype mean to you and for your life?
So when, we were looking to create a rock opera that we were going to tour the country with, we knew we were going to be playing for a lot of people who had never seen us before. We needed to find some kind of shorthand that we could use to get a message across quickly to audiences who weren’t very familiar with our music. The Tarot seemed like the perfect and we could even give it a frame story of a lonely guy talking to an Internet psychic and the cards that he deals would then lead into the songs.
But in order to get to that story, we had to work our way through the process of how we would tell a story in a live music performance by using background videos, tarot cards, and loud rock songs. Here is the process we went through and the notes we took to figure out the beats of the story, what Tarot cards would work the best, and then you can see what became the final product, our rock opera, Major Arcana.
What Story Are We Trying To Tell? “Life is pain. Anyone who says different is trying to sell you something.” – The Princess Bride
We’re all slowly disconnecting from each other. How can it be possible that we know more about each other than ever (we know what someone has to eat through their Twitter update, we know what they’re listening to at the time through Blip.fm, we know the score of their children’s soccer game through Facebook) but we take care of each other less than ever. We know the lives of celebrities better than we know the people who live next door. A recent study found that the number of people with whom Americans can discuss matters important to them dropped by nearly one-third, from 2.94 people in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004. Researchers also found that the number of people who said they had no one with whom to discuss such matters more than doubled, to nearly 25 percent. We have more ways to connect with people like us than ever, but there’s nowhere we belong more than ever.
The theme of this work is taking a journey that starts in naivete which leads to mistakes, pain, and isolation. It is only when he doesn’t try to control others but takes control of his own destiny that he rejoins society and finds the place where he belongs. Sunspot’s music and live show is a communal experience for the audience. Bringing people together is something we do extraordinarily well (there have been 4 weddings from people that have met at Sunspot shows!) Our music and performance is about connection from interacting with the audience to communal singalongs. We are all about bridging the gaps in the human condition.
Why The Tarot? The main character is portrayed as a modernized version of The Fool from the Tarot and is representative of a desperate soul in search of experience. We use graphics and animation during the songs to show the emotional significance and characterization of each experience and to highlight the performance onstage.
Each song is represented by a major arcana tarot card that in its meaning helps represent the song graphically while the music conveys the emotion and the performance makes it real for the audience. By using the Tarot mixed with sci-fi elements we’re combining mysticism and technology. Viewing modern-day problems through the lens of archaic symbolism, much like the main theme of the piece deals with the paradox of how ultramodern forms of communication cannot cure the age-old problem of humans not relating to each other.
By using the Tarot, we don’t have to spell everything out for the viewer and we can use symbols that many are already familiar with, yet simple enough that their meaning can be imported through a few images. Also, it enables us to use a motif that began on our first record and work off the symbolism of each record afterwards because the iconography of our albums can be juxtaposed with the Tarot easily as well as integrating into the show’s themes.
Here is the basic structure of the character’s journey, the symbolism and iconography of each moment:
When The Revolution Comes (The Fool)
The character is an idealist and it’s one of our few songs that is honestly idealistic. It’s pure and sweet and non-ironic.
This is the perfect song to introduce the Fool character. After all, it’s his naivete that sets him on his journey.
The Breach (The Emperor)
Stinging disappointment and the way that idealism and hope can be inverted and crushed. Trust is abused and eventually broken. The descent begins.
The Emperor symbolizes the desire to rule over one’s surroundings, and its appearance in a reading often suggests that the subject needs to accept that some things may not be controllable, and others may not benefit from being controlled.
Sweet Relief (The Hanged Man)/Tunguska (The Wheel of Fortune)
A pean for the beginning of separation, the start of a change. The idea that the grass is greener on the other side of the street. The notion of emotional divorce from the world begins to seem attractive because there has to be a better way.
A pean for the beginning of separation, the start of a change. The idea that the grass is greener on the other side of the street. The notion of emotional divorce from the world begins to seem attractive because there has to be a better way.
The Hanged Man relationship to the other cards usually involves the sacrifice that makes sacred; personal loss for a greater good or a greater gain.
And when the song switches to “Tunguska” it’s the moment of impact, when the isolation begins. The character gets the last vestiges of his hope destroyed, blown away.
The Wheel of Fortune represents the intercession of random chance into the Fool’s path. The card represents the forces that can help or hinder the querant suddenly or unpredictably.
Eat Out My Heart (The Devil)
Here comes the idea that there’s no way to win, that separating from humanity is the best way because when you care too much, you lose.
Or it’s the idea of being a slave to an idea. The character is a slave to his idea that he’s been hurt. “Eat Out My Heart” is a song about hating someone else and being a big old victim. It’s wallowing in self-pity and delusion that someone else is to blame for why the character feels stung. As long as the character is encumbered by those emotions, they never get better. It’s not about being upset with the girl who this song is for, because that girl isn’t suffering. It’s the character singing who is being punished and he’s punishing himself. The Devil is great for “Defeated” but also works for “Eat Out My Heart” to add some levity here.
The Devil is the card of self-bondage to an idea or belief which is preventing a person from growing or being healthy. It is the card of futility, pessimism, and mistakes.
Neanderthal (The Hermit)
The lowest point of the emotional arc. Relationships are about domination and humanity is cast aside in favor of the animal. It’s the heaviest moment, the darkest lyrics.
The Hermit represents the need to withdraw from society to become comfortable with himself. He represents isolation.
Dig Your Grave (Death)
The other side of the door. It’s about seeing how someone else retreats, it’s about how someone else runs away from the rest of the world and in reacting to that event, the character starts to regain his (or her) sense of connection to the rest of the world. Only through forgiving others for how they’ve wronged you, can you start to become part of the community again.
Death implies an end, possibly of a relationship or interest, and therefore implies an increased sense of self-awareness.
Perfect (Strength)
A realization of that’s how life is, that you can’t control what happens around you only how you react to it. The character just wants to decide his own destiny.
“It doesn’t matter if everything’s ugly, it doesn’t matter if it’s all unsafe.” This song works well with this theme right off the bat. It’s a little more fun and the message is more straightforward. It’s happy, but not too happy and would lead well into Summer Day.
The modern interpretation of Strength stresses discipline and control. The lion represents the primal or id-like part of the mind, and the woman, the ‘higher’ or more elevated parts of the mind. The card tells the Querent to be wary of the temptations of the flesh.For example, in The Chariot card, the Querant is fighting a battle. The difference is that in Strength, the battle is mainly internal rather than external.
Summer Day (The Chariot)
I’ll be part of the group but by my own terms. I’ll live my own life and I’ll do it the way I want to. That’s what’s important, that’s what counts. You can’t make me grow up because I’ve seen the pain and the suffering that grown-ups endure. I’ll join, but only if I get to make the rules.
After the impulse that pulls us out of the Garden, we get on our chariot and depart. At that point, we are the Hero of our own story; maybe the Hero of everyone’s story. That Hero might represent Helios, the Greek god who drives the Sun’s chariot across the sky, bringing light to the earth.
No Place Like Home (The Star)
You have to accept that the world will crush your hopes sometimes, and that the world is hard. But it’s not impossible to find your place and sometimes it’s right back where you started, but when you get here this time, you at least have a better understanding and you’ve chosen to be here. So now, you may not necessarily be in the place you think you shoud be, but you’re in the place that suits you best.
The pool of water refers to the subconscious. The land refers to the material world. She renews both. Usually divined as hope for the future, good things to come regarding the cards close to the star. By having a foot in both, this is where the Fool understands that he needs to be part of the material world as well as his own life. This is the reintegration and reconnection back to society.
So, this silly story told through tarot cards consumed about a year of our lives. From the initial concept, to writing new songs, to figuring out how to synchronize the videos and lights, to recording the actors, to booking the tour, and then editing the DVD and all the videos ourselves.
And through that year-long DIY creative undertaking, much like a good Tarot reading, we learned a lot about ourselves. We loved the final result and the show was great (we even recorded a video tour diary as well as a directors commentary track on the DVD!), but it was the processthat we’ll always remember.
By doing it all ourselves and creating everything from scratch (except for the Tarot cards), we put ourselves through what sometimes felt like Hell. But it was our own “hero’s journey” along with the character from the show. And hopefully we too might have started off the trip as the Fool, but came out the other side, The Star.
Gary Lachman is a man after our own heart. Not only does he write amazing books on occult figures like Aleister Crowley, Madame Helena Blavatsky, and Colin Wilson, but he started as a musician in the New York New Wave scene in the 1970s (the most exciting time to be a musician ever, in my opinion!) As the bass player of Blondie, he wrote songs like “(I’m Always Touched By Your) Presence, Dear” which talks about the strange ESP and synchronicities that he shared with his girlfriend at the time and it even namechecks theosophy (which might be the only time that’s happened in a Top Ten UK hit!) Later on, he played with Iggy Pop after forming his own band, The Know, a name that was directly inspired by the early Christian Gnostics (a mystery religion that believed that you could interact with God directly instead of through the institution of the Church.)
So, Gary used to write pop-rock songs based on paranormal themes, which makes him awesome. But since leaving the music business in the 80s, Lachman subsequently moved to London and has been writing books and articles on occult figures and paranormal themes since.
Allison from Milwaukee Ghosts gave me his book A Secret History of Consciousnessfor Christmas in 2003 and it was the first time I’d heard of Nineteenth Century New Age philosophers like Madame Blavatsky and Rudolf Steiner. It was the first book that I read as an adult that shook my materialist worldview to the core and made me see mystery in the world anew. That’s why we had to have him on the show!
Gary Lachman from his feature in the New York Times
So, it’s perfect that Allison and I talk to Gary about his New York rocker youth, some of the occult imagery they appropriated for the New Wave aesthetic, and how he was ejected from David Bowie’s party over a disagreement about an occult author(!)
But then we get into the meat of his research and writing about the Western Esoteric Tradition – that is the philosophical idea that one can achieve Enlightenment through direct interaction with the Divine or the Spirit World instead of a mediated route through a traditional religious institution. Influenced by everyone from Carl Jung to the guy who wrote Space Vampires, Gary Lachman also gives Allison and I a workshop in integrating the spiritual side of yourself with the materialist parts. Gary covers that in his latest book, The Lost Knowledge of the Imagination.
President Donald Trump and Pepe The Frog with a Trumpian Combover
But things get really interesting as we preview Gary’s upcoming book on President Trump. Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump is the kind of work that you have to see to believe. We discuss the real power of symbols, the external group consciousness that is the World Wide Web, and much like our conversation with Nick Redfern about The Slenderman, we delve into how social media and the Internet might be affecting reality (just wait until you hear about Meme Magic!)
Make sure to visit Gary’s website and read some of his articles and check out his books. He sets the standard for thoughtful discussion of occult philosophy and detailed research. This interview is a great starting off point because we cover the basics of the subjects that he goes much more deeply into in his books.
Speaking of deep, since Gary Lachman was the one who introduced me to Madame Blavatsky, the ultra-dramatic Spiritualist who founded the Modern Theosophical Society as well as being one of the key philosophers who ushered East Indian spiritualism into Western society, we thought she’d be the perfect inspiration for this week’s song.
In her most famous book, The Secret Doctrine, the opening stanza discusses “The Night of The Universe”, which is a time in the cycle of creation and destruction where everything is gone back to its original form, the clay of all creation has been crushed and balled back up ready to begin again. It’s a time of no pain or want or trouble and to us, the perfect inspiration for a lullaby.
Good night universe good night
For everything will sleep
until the morning’s light
The wheel has come to rest
The clock has stopped again
You won’t need to dream
Where there is no pain
open up your perfect eye
It will a brand new day
I say good night universe good night
Good night universe good night
The sun has faded but
The hidden comes to light
A blissful empty
freedom from our brain
Sparks inside the fire
And all links in the chain
Until the great breath
Brings us to life again
I say good night universe good night
A rock band's journey into the afterlife, UFOs, entertainment, and weird science.
