➡ The text is a conversation between Juan and Dr. Carla Unescu, a researcher and explorer. Carla shares her experiences of exploring ancient temples, often located in challenging terrains. She also discusses her encounters with strange phenomena during her explorations. Juan and Carla also talk about the role of women in ancient mysteries and how they have been overlooked in mainstream narratives. Carla’s work can be found online and in her book, “She Who Hunts”.
➡ The speaker shares their experience of climbing a mountain, where they encountered beautiful views and challenging terrain. They discuss the history of the site, which was once a place of worship where people brought offerings and statues to honor the goddess Artemis. The speaker also mentions the mystery surrounding the rituals performed there, as well as the energy they felt at the site. They express a desire to share more about this powerful divinity and the ancient practices associated with her.
➡ The text describes an exploration of an ancient temple site, filled with remnants of pottery and statues. The temple, now in ruins, was once grand with a red roof and columns. The author discusses the importance of respecting these sacred sites and not removing any artifacts. They also share their experiences of hiking and the thrill it brings, despite the potential dangers.
➡ The text is about a challenging expedition in Greece, where the author and her friend Sandra navigate through rocky and thorny terrains without any hiking paths. They use various resources like excavation reports, Google, and museum maps to find their way due to poor documentation of the area. The author gets lost for three hours due to a wrong turn and struggles with the heat and lack of water. Despite the difficulties, she continues her exploration, driven by her passion for history and the desire to share her findings with others.
➡ The text is about a woman’s adventurous journey exploring temples in western Greece. Despite the physical challenges, she finds joy in discovering and photographing these ancient sites, some of which are not well-known or easily accessible. She also discusses the various names and legends associated with the goddess Artemis, explaining that these names often reflect local legends or characteristics of the area. The woman also mentions the importance of respecting local beliefs, such as those about nymphs and pan, and the casual attitude of the Greeks towards her solo adventures.
➡ The text discusses the dangers and experiences of hiking alone in Greece, particularly near the temple of Artemis. The author shares personal experiences of feeling drawn into the unknown, hearing things, and feeling presences, especially when meditating. The text also explores the concept of places holding memories and the power of sacred geometry in architecture. It ends with a discussion about the transformation of the goddess Kybali into Artemis of Ephesus and the power of these deities.
➡ A sacred statue of an ancient mother goddess was carried in a ritualistic manner into Rome, symbolizing her power and importance. This goddess, predating Gaia, is believed to be one of the oldest and most powerful deities, with her earliest depictions dating back to 12,000 years ago. The Vatican is built on top of her temple, suggesting her influence and significance. The discussion also touches on the balance of masculine and feminine energies, the role of women as community leaders in ancient times, and the transformation of this goddess into various other forms, including Artemis.
➡ The text discusses the role of certain individuals in ancient societies who were seen as able to move between different worlds. These individuals performed rituals and ceremonies, often involving self-castration and adopting a different lifestyle. The text also explores the idea of altered states of consciousness, achieved through meditation, ingestion of substances, or through the use of sound and dance in specific locations. The author suggests that these practices, which may seem strange to us today, were an integral part of worship and spirituality in these ancient societies.
➡ The text discusses the symbolism of Greek mythology in modern rituals, focusing on the figure of Medusa. It explores the paradox of Medusa as a monster and a protector, and how her beheading is seen as a symbol of violence against women. The text also discusses the symbolism of horns as signs of power and wisdom, and how they have been demonized. Lastly, it touches on the duality of gods and the balance between nurturing and strict parenting.
➡ The text discusses Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and war, and her symbols, the owl and Medusa. It also talks about how Athena was originally a goddess of wisdom, but later became a goddess of war when the Athenians adopted her. The text also mentions the depiction of Leonidas in Hollywood and the existence of female warriors in Persian armies. Lastly, it introduces Carla’s ongoing project on Artemis of Ephesus and her nomadic lifestyle for research purposes.

I mean, I’m in this dilemma, you know, Juan, because I’m. I’m a researcher, right? So. And so my skeptical brain goes, no, that can’t be right. There are. There are some, especially if I sit down to meditate a little bit, which I usually do. There are times where there’s some very, like, powerful kind of vision things, or I think I hear something or it feels like someone’s coming up behind you, and then you open your eyes. So a part of you goes, no, I felt that. Or someone touched you. I was in the cave once. That was.

It was a little bit freaky. You know what I mean? And so when I left that cave, I was like, no, someone was right behind me and touched me. But how do you. How do you say that? Like, I write that out and maybe one day I’ll put it, like, in a little. In a story. But that’s not an academic thing to say. But I do. And I’m learning to. I’m learning to trust my instincts more and more that these places have memory. Welcome back to the show. We got doctor Carla Unescu with us today. A long time guest, crowd favorite, real life Indiana Jones.

How are you, Carla? It’s been a little bit. I’m good. I’m good, thanks. You know, somebody called me, like, in Diana Jones, somebody was like, you know how Indiana. Because, you know, Artemis. His name is Diana. Was it you? Yeah, was me. I called you. I called you Diana Jones because it fits, right? I mean, Juan, you have baptized with that name, my friend. Yeah, it’s fitting, right? Because we have to be inclusive of women, too, so. And I’m an Indiana Jones fan. I love Tomb Raider, Lara Croft. So I feel like you’re doing something like that where you’re going around these old temples quite literally.

I mean, people should. People should follow you. Before we get into it, Carla, can you let people know where they can find you and your work? That way they can look at these videos that we’re going to be talking about, where you’re scaling, maybe not scaling, but hiking mountains and or hills. I don’t know what you want to call them, but where can people find your book also? Okay, so they can find me anywhere online at Artemis experts, like, on all social media platforms. And then my book is she who hunts. They can find that anywhere where they buy books, Amazon.

Or they can join the Artemis Research center, which is the website where I post courses and workshops. We just did a workshop last night, actually, on the gorgon, which was a lot of fun. We do, like, a free monthly workshop, and anybody can join. And last night we did the gorgon, and it was pretty crazy. It was pretty awesome. So I feel like it’s fitting, because this is where I wanted to start talking to you about. And I’ve been diving into some other stuff, some other researchers, and they’ve been talking about. Right. The Medusa. Medusa, which are the guardians of temples, essentially.

And I don’t know. Have you ever heard of Madea? Of course. So apparently that’s where we get the word medicine from. From Madea. This. I heard her referred to as the first alchemist, and she was, again, part of this secret cult of mysteries that would she. I did an episode with. With Gabe and Homie Romy behind the scenes on the Patreon and I, we use some crude words, but essentially she was mixing drugs in her women areas, right. And she was using this instrument that she would insert it and then take it back out. And the initiate would have to.

Right. Lick the substance off of that thing. I don’t know if you’re familiar with what I’m talking about. Well, okay. I don’t know that. I don’t. Hmm. How do I say that, Juan? I don’t know that that isn’t the primary source. Okay, so the guy that I’m drawing from is drawing from a secondary source. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So she was this witch doctor, whatever, with this weird cauldron. Not the traditional cauldron that we all know and love, but this concept of women in the mysteries. And I. They’ve been. How does it. They’ve been in it for a long time, but it feels like they’ve been thrown out, kind of.

Sort of cast out like you have Mary Magdalene, which allegedly, again, from this other source might. It’s extracurricular. Extracurricular. She was also into that sort of mystery, and this guy says that she initiated Jesus. I mean, it gets very heretical and blasphemous, but there’s a reason why it’s sort of been cast out from the mainstream. Like women have been stripped away from. The reason is. Juan, what are you. What are your thoughts, Carla? Because I feels like you’re going around trying to find out, are you being initiated right now by visiting all these sites? So it has become.

It has come up several times in conversation that this is more of a pilgrimage than a research trip. So a lot of people have come up to me and go and said, oh, you. Are you really enjoying this pilgrimage? So I think about it like a research trip, or certainly I thought about it when I started, and my whole thing was, Artemis is this powerful goddess, as, you know, more powerful than people think, and she’s been dismissed and blah, blah. So I’m going to go and find all her temples. I’m going to build a google map.

I’m going to take my own pictures. I’m going to make it up there. I’m going to show you what’s up there. And then what I want to also want to do is write a little blog for each, basically with the history and maybe a little bit of the adventure getting there. And then I realized that to get to, like, 90% of these places is insane. Is insane. So there’s so many of them are abandoned. Many of them are just a pile of rocks. Almost all of them are up in the mountains. Like, up in the mountains, high at the top of mountains or almost at the top of mountains.

And so I have to climb sometimes for a couple hours to find it. And it’s not like this one that you just watched. It’s. It had a pin, thank God. But the pin is not really like people. Some people have just randomly put pins in places. Yeah, this one. So we get to this plate, and this one actually didn’t even make it into the history books one. Okay. We found a statue of this temple at the museum. When we were visiting the museum nearby, and one of the museum people were saying, oh, yeah, this is the temple of Artemis Epicrita.

And I was like, well, I’d never heard of her. And they’re like, yeah, she doesn’t really make it in the history books. And I was like, okay, where is her site? So they tried to explain it to us. We found the site because there was a hotel nearby who had an image of the view from the site. Okay. So we had some idea of the town, that it was nearby. I had kind of a pin in the vicinity. Okay. We asked locals. Nobody knew. We finally found this one shipper. Dude, that was like, oh, yeah, you just got to climb up the mountain.

I mean, this is clear. This is always the same thing. Climb up the mountain. And you could see in this video how many times I go, oh, I think it’s up there. Yeah. And it wasn’t up there. And then I’m like, yeah. And one of the things that the iPhone doesn’t really show you, so I don’t know, I might invest in a gopro or something, is it doesn’t always show you the incline or the decline. So if I’m up at the top, you can’t see the steepness of what I’ve just climbed or the steepness of what I’m climbing.

Like, sometimes I’m climbing on all fours because earthquakes have knocked around the site. So it’s just pure rock and bush. So I’ve crawled under bush. I’ve crawled through bush like, like. And it’s like greek flora is basically just sharp needles, you know? You know when you watch, like, I don’t know, sleeping Beauty and they have those throne, those thorns. Right. It’s like walking through that stuff. So you get scratched. One time I was when I went to the temple of Apollo and Basai, which I haven’t posted yet, there’s a big temple of Apollo Basai that is really protected.

And then up, up, about an hour hike is a temple of Artemis. Okay. To get there, I had to go through so much of this thorn bush that I had an allergic reaction to the scratches. And my hands swell and my feet swell. So my friend was, like, freaking out. And anyway, we put Benadryl and we took a lot. So I think it’s become a kind of pilgrimage. And you see at the end of this video that I found that, that skull with the horns. I don’t know if you watched the whole thing. It’s a bit long.

I skipped around. I didn’t see that. But that’s gnarly, though. Yeah. At the very end. Yeah, it’s long. I usually like to keep them about five minutes, seven minutes. But this one I just thought, you know what? I’m just going to share, like, because this took me a couple hours. So 13 minutes was the best I could squeeze out. And I wanted people to see, like, how when you have the gps, even if you have a pin, because incline. Sorry. Look at that view. It’s beautiful there. Oh, my gosh, it’s so beautiful. But you see how you keep going up and you get the same view, right? So silly me thinking, oh, yeah, I’ve got the view, so I should know where to find.

But as you go up the entire mountain, you have the same view. And so I’m climbing higher and higher and higher, and at one point, I just hit a wall of rocks. And my gps was like, oh, it’s like you could see that you’re like this far away. You know what I mean? But there’s just no way to get up there. And so I am literally climbing rocks sometimes. But at the end of this one, I had kind of felt bad that I didn’t bring. This was the first time I felt bad I didn’t bring an offering, you know, and I was up there and I think you saw some of the holes in the ground and things like that, which is kind of creepy.

And actually I was gonna, maybe I should share with you what that would look like. I don’t know. I can’t skip on here. This is lame. I can skip on the phone. I know. Yeah. You don’t have these anywhere else? Is it just instagram? I have it on TikTok, but I don’t know that you could skip there either. I think so. Let’s see. Yeah, so, cuz, yeah, cuz you kept mentioning like this pilgrimage and I’m like, iscu getting initiated as we speak by going and visiting. Because you got to put yourself in the. Because what is a pilgrimage? Well, pilgrimage is a journey, right? That you go to find sometimes sacred, esoteric knowledge we’re talking about.

These were the mysteries, these were the deities of the mysteries of that time. So you’re quite literally following the footsteps of these ancient people. And it was difficult for you to go up there and climb. Imagine people back then carrying these statues. I don’t know how they did or they did it up there or what, but they had to get on. They took them up there. The statues? Yeah, yeah. At this site alone, they found at least 500 figurines and statues. This site alone, so many, and many had been stolen anyway, so they think maybe like a thousand.

Imagine a thousand of them want. And what do these look like? Is it like these? Yeah, actually, so you see these three ones that I’ve got here? Oh, my gosh. Right there. Those first two and then this fifth one here. So these are three of the best that they found. That were the best preserved. So they found about. Is that me? Yeah, that’s me. Artemis expert. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I posted them everywhere. And, and so they found about 500 of these, Juan. About 500 of them. And these are big. They’re like, they’re kid size. They’re like, I don’t know, a four year old.

They’re about 3ft tall. And so I said to them, I go, where are, so if you found 500, where are they? And they said, well, the problem is that we have tiny pieces or small pieces of many of the others. So these are the best, these three. And then they have some smaller ones, of course, were the best preserved. So we’re putting these out forward. But basically they had to put together everything they found and that’s how they counted them. But they have them in the back rooms, which I said to them, actually, wouldn’t it be amazing to do an exhibit where you have all of these put all over a couple of rooms? Like, that would be really cool.

Light some candles, invite some women, and you’ve got a whole thing happening there, you know, but maybe that’s just my dream. Well, have you ever invoked any, how were they worshiped? I mean, were these statues? Because from what I’ve heard about, like the. And I don’t know what the greek version would be, the name of it, but. Right. The Egyptians and the Mesopotamians, they had the opening of the mouth ceremony, which was essentially invoking deity into a statue or something and worshiping it. Because deity is so perfect, you can’t put your eyes upon it or else you would cease to exist.

You would die. So they would use this medium, this filter, which would be statues or whatever else. Do you know how they would worship these deities? As far as their ceremony, do we know anything about. I mean, I know there were mysteries, but do we know anything? We do. So I don’t think that they press. So we don’t have any written records that they practice with the egyptian practice in that way. I would, they did a few things. They, they brought these offerings and they put them in a huge fire, which is interesting. So let’s say on the way to up to the temple site.

So they’d have to climb up the temple site. On the way up, there would be these shops, these terracotta shops that had all different shapes and sizes of the goddess. And you could see a bunch of them at the corfu. Corfu museum. So on your way up, you would either bring a sacrifice or an animal or food, because the goddesses love honey and cakes and sweet things. And. Or you would pick up one of these terracotta statues, which are kind of cheaply made. But anyway, they’re made with these molds. We have tons of these molds. And you would bring these up to.

So you’d hike this whole thing, you’d bring them up to the temple. You’d make your offerings, which means that you would put them in a pile somewhere. So the priestesses would say, okay, this is the pile that’s going to be burned. And then they would burn an amount of these votive offerings as sort of like a melting or a melding offering to the goddess, which is kind of fascinating in a way, because it’s like, wow. The statues that you see there, though, those three, those are more like offerings in the sense that someone paid to have those sculpted and then offered them to stand inside the temple or, like, around the temple yard or outside.

So these were more like. So these three. There’s a debate. There could either be representations of young women. Sometimes parents would offer a statue that looked like their child or represented their child in order for their child to be protected. So these are a little more expensive. This, I mean, so these, like, this one, for example, to me, looks more like an Artemis. So sometimes they would do the shape of Artemis, like the huntress, and would offer that as a gift to the temple. So there’s lots of that. And then there’s, of course, some really interesting and sometimes a bit weird animal sacrifices.

Some of the sites practiced live animal sacrifice, which is kind of devastating, I think, to us, which is they built a fire, perhaps the fire where they had first thrown in the votive offerings, the terracotta ones, and then they threw in the live animals. So, yeah, that was probably not great. But a lot of that happened, you know, before 500 bce. And I think slowly, as people started becoming more sensitive to the animal condition, they started killing them on the altar and letting it bleed over the altar. So lots of things happened up here. But other than that, there isn’t much.

So we know that they went up there at night a lot of the times. We know that they carried torches up there. So they obviously, they carry torches to get up there. We know that they built fires at night, this kind of stuff. But other than that, as far as the mysteries themselves and what those miss. So, for example, in this mountain, we have Artemis epicateia, which means Artemis, the dominant one, the dominant of all the world. So that’s a really powerful divinity that’s up on this mountain. And she is said to be the controller of the entire region.

And so I thought, well, that’s a really powerful divinity, and yet no one is really talking about it. And when you go up there, Juan, these cracks in the earth that I tried to film go so deep, like, it’s a little spooky. It’s a little like, you know when you watch those movies when people are in forest looking for things or cave diving and things like that, and, like, stuff isn’t. I don’t know, it was. It had, like, a weird kind of feel. So I think you’re absolutely right. When you go to different sites, different sites have different energies, and I think it’s based on what was sacrificed there, what was offered there, perhaps how it was either destroyed or abandoned.

This one was destroyed in third century BCE. So and then it was excavated. And, you know, once they found the figurines and left behind. So I like to take people on this with me because I don’t know how many people see all these shards here. Look at all these shards that they just left there. This is like, is that pottery or something? Or part of. Yeah, or part of a statue or part of terracotta. So it’s like you can, when you look at them, they’re just flat pieces. And so archaeologists will leave a lot of that on site, either because it’s not the right date.

Could be like the roman period, or they don’t know where it goes or things like that. But once you’re hiking up and you start seeing just shards everywhere, you know, you’re getting close to a temple site. So this is the temple itself here that we’re looking at right now. Yeah. And you know that it’s a temple because you see that kind of hexagonal. It looks like a triangle, but it’s really like a hexagonal or a yemenite. Five. Yeah, a five sided shape. And for some reason they had these on the front wall, on the bottom front wall of the temple.

And no one can really explain why the shape, but it’s kind of an interesting five sided shape. And see, what you see here is just the foundation. But I would. But the temple was twice as large, and it had a front yard and a side garden. So what you see here really is just really the remnants of how much larger it was. And it was 1012, 15ft tall. You know, it had a pediment, it had columns, it had a roof, a beautiful red roof. I mean, to me, I mean, I can see it when I go there, but it’s very hard to imagine how cool and beautiful it was.

And you see all the stone back here. So that’s all earthquake eruption, like when stones come out of the ground and move around and shift around. Right. And that’s probably what cracked the bottom floor. And so here, for example, is the entry to the holy of holies. So you would have had to step over this to enter into where the cult temple would have been. Whoa. That’s crazy. Yeah. And so they left that in there. I don’t know why they leave some stuff in there, but anyway, they did. You could see that there was doors in there to not get cursed, Carla.

I mean, I don’t take anything. People say to me, oh, do you take pieces from? I never take anything from a site. I don’t take anything, first of all, because as a historian and an archaeologist, you don’t take things, but also because I don’t know that the goddess wants you touching her stuff. Do you know what I mean? Like, and when you go to sacred sites, you probably shouldn’t take stuff with you, but. And then here you could see, okay, so there’s pieces that are still left on the floor. Usually archaeologists don’t see it as having value, but here, like the phone, does not do justice to how deep this thing goes.

It’s gotta be at least 20, 30ft deep because I couldn’t see anymore, right? So who knows what’s fallen in there? Like, I need one of those long cameras. You know, the ones that they like, that are like a wire, like that. They fish out in the plumbing like a plumber’s camera, you know, they say, I want one of those like stick in there. And then I was walking and I’m like, holy crap, there’s another crackhead into the foundation here. So they left this, they left this piece, which is, I think, where a column either stood or a statue stood, I don’t know.

And. But they left that standing, which means that it’s probably deeply ingrained. And they didn’t want to totally, because if you pull this out, the whole thing might come falling apart. Right? Because you can see that it’s beside kind of like a grove. And this one too, when you look into it, it’s like 20, 30ft deep. Except this one, if you were a tiny human, like a twelve year old, you could probably go down in here for a little bit. Well, were they using, were they using caves? Because, I mean, I know caves have again, that womb of symbology.

Were they using these caves? Cab, maybe this is why they picked this area, because it had caverns underneath of it. Like, what are your thoughts on that? You know, I don’t know. I mean, that’s a good point. We don’t have any sources that tell us anything about this site. That’s primary source. You know, like when we talk about Delphi, for example, and how they had the cracks underneath the earth and methane gases came up and they had all that. I mean, I don’t know anything about that here. Oh, I see what you mean. Now it’s taking us back, is it? It didn’t, it didn’t show you the horns that I found the horns.

Oh, there it is. There it is. Okay. So I walked away and look at this thing, Juan. I mean, look at the horns. Speaking of the horned goddess. The horns, you know how rare it is to find a fully intact senior ram skull like this? Really? Usually you find it broken and so I offered it to her and I left it there. And someone said to me, you know, Carla, you’re a Capricorn. And so the goat is my. I didn’t think about this. The goat is my thing. And they’re like, this looks like you offered yourself there, to be honest, you know, which is kind of weird, because I did not think about that.

You, what is the weirdest experience that you’ve had? And, Carl, I want you to be safe when you’re going to these places. Do you have a buddy? Do you have a satellite phone? Like, what do you have? Because first of all, you should get the head mount for the GoPro so you can have your hands free in case you fall, so you can catch yourself. But have you ever heard of. And this is fitting, because the pan effect. Have you ever heard about that before? I don’t know, though. I think I know what you mean. Okay, go ahead.

So pan right. We know pan. The poofed little man. Yeah, the fun guy. Yeah, fun guy. The pandemonium panic. There’s this phenomenon that they say it’s called the pan effect. And what happened, by the way, your video is 1333 minutes here. So there’s a synchronicity. But the, the pan effect is this effect that takes over experienced hikers, seasoned veterans of climbing, where they get this overwhelming feeling of fear, of panic, and they jump off of the mountains. It’s called the pan effect. Now there’s speculation as to why it happens, how it happens. Are they actually seeing Panasone in real life? What is it that overtakes them and makes them do this? And again, when I’m, when you’re out here, what’s the weirdest experience you’ve had? Heightened synchronicity.

I mean, you found this skull, but have you had any other incidences where you’re like, this is freaky, or I feel, you know, a certain type of energy. Are there any cryptids in this area? Like Bigfoot or, or anything like that? Okay, okay, where do I start? So I know what you’re talking about, this. Okay, this pan effect. So I have this. I have this whenever I’m somewhere high where I want to jump off. And actually, my friend who sometimes travels with me, and she was traveling with me here, says that’s one of the reasons why she doesn’t like to hike, because she has this draw to jump.

And actually, to me, to be honest, now we’re going into a little bit of a weird mystical space. To me, I think that’s what proves that we are, in a way, in an avatar here because so many of us experience this need to jump almost as though it’s fun and we want to try it. And the soul is like, who cares? Just jump. Do it, do it. So I’ve had this since I was a kid, but I don’t. It’s not panic and it’s not fear. It’s like desire. It’s like wanting to fly. So when I go back to Canada for a month now, Juan, you know, I’ll be jumping out of a plane with my son.

Okay. Because I need to feel that feeling for real, you know, in a safe environment. What I thought you were going to say about pan is this sort of the way that we. We talk about Runner’s high, which I sometimes have when I. When I used to run back when I was playing roller derby. When I hike, I do sometimes get, like, a hiker’s high. I don’t know if there’s a term for that. Wherever you’re just filled with, like, adrenaline, you know? And, like, I think I say it in the video sometime, and it happened to me once when I got lost for 3 hours, which was not good.

Sometimes you see your destination and where you are and you just want to plow. You just want to, like, climb the rock, plow through the bush, go up or go down or whatever. And there’s this desire to go, go, go, which could be quite dangerous because especially in Greece, it’s just rock and thorn everywhere. You know, they don’t have, like, hiking paths. They don’t have anything. You know, it’s. It’s actually shockingly disappointing in that way. So I don’t always hike with a buddy, but this time I did, and my friend Sandra came with me. And so what she does is she helps me map.

She helps me figure out. So we talk about. We use excavation reports. We use, like I said, what we can find on Google. We use the museum. Sometimes we use maps at the museum because the stuff is so badly documented. So badly documented, people go, oh, is there labels? There’s no labels. There’s no labels. There’s nothing. There’s nothing. People, I mean, we could barely get labels in museums. Sometimes in museum, you will have an entire museum full of stuff, and it’ll have just a small thing that goes second century bce, and you’re like, where was this found? What.

What is. Anyways, so. So, yes. So sometimes I do get that, and I have to be careful. But I’m going back on another expedition in April, and we are actually going to hit three of the sites we could not reach because, well, one of the sites was just totally impossible. I have to climb. I have to get climbing gear, like you say. I’ll probably have to get a GoPro. You know how much a GoPro is in Canada? One. Well, that. There’s your first problem. You’re in Canada. But I’m sure, Carla, if you reach out even to.

I know you have a podcast as well, or, shoot, we can even set something up for this here. We can set up like a link where people can send you, you know, a donation or something. We’ll set it up after and I’ll put in the description or something. That way we can raise funds. And because you’re so this is something like, I’m an armchair occultist, right? I read about the occult and I’m here and I’m just like, they’re into magic. But then here you are going out into these places where they were conducting said rituals in real life, like, you’re doing real stuff.

So I feel like it is right, preserving history and showing people something that would otherwise be lost if it wasn’t for you going out there. So again, it’s not like, hey, give me money. Just because it’s like, hey, give me. Send money, donate money if you want to learning, have more videos and up the production quality of, you know, like, whatever. Like, just so people. So we’ll set that up and let me plug my stuff here as my armchair occultists. Occultist Monday, homunculus edition. 88 pages of homunculus tj ojp.com. and I have the other journals, comic books, all that stuff, tJ ojp.com, where you can learn about occult and esoteric stuff.

But I’m not visiting temples like Carla is because I’m not that badass. So. But yeah, I think you should. And even invest in a helmet. I mean, I don’t know, it’s just. Well, I did get lost. Like I said, I did get lost at the end. You know, it’s funny, Juan, because you know how I feel about Apollo. So I. Apollo, he has this massive temple at Basai, which is on this mountain, right? And it’s covered and it’s protected and it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful temple. And I’ve posted some videos on my TikTok of it. But then if you go up, like I said, you go up maybe about a kilometer or two, you still have to climb higher.

There is an abandoned Artemis temple and a little aphrodite one as well. So I went up the first time. They’re like, oh, yeah, they gave me the keys, which is really. Sometimes the PhD does help me because I was like, I’d really like to see the Artemis temple. And they’re like, okay. And I, they asked me, whatever, what do you do? Blah, blah, blah. So I showed them my card, whatever, and then they said, okay, we will give you the keys because it’s closed, that section. But there’s snakes up there, there’s scorpions up there. You have to be very careful.

Blah, blah. I’m not afraid of snakes or scorpions, really, because, I mean, I see them a lot. They wiggle out of the way, right? They run away. And so I was like, yeah, okay, don’t worry. I got my water. I got everything. I took about a half an hour, an hour to climb up there, and it did. There’s no signs, nothing. I mean, that’s really frustrating. Again. So I made my way out there, based on, again, pictures on my phone. My friend is sending me maps anyways. But I got up there. I stayed up there for a bit, but when I came back, I thought, not very brightly, that I would take kind of a shortcut coming back because I could see it.

And I took a different route back and won. I was lost for 3 hours. I ended up on another mountain. At the bottom of another mountain, I ran out of water. Not smart. I mean, I could just see the office people going, another dumb tourist. Okay, not smart at all. I did have my friend, so I did have, I do have wi fi with me, and I do have my phone. I have like a carried kind of thing. And so I texted her and I was telling her where I am and things like that. But the problem wasn’t so much that, but the heat.

Like, you know, I don’t know what it is in american, maybe 100 Fahrenheit, 98, 99 kind of thing. And it wasn’t only that, but it was the bush, like, so you kind of get lost trying to avoid the bush and make it to where you’re going, but then it never ends and there’s no path and you can’t get through. And anyways, and a part of me while I was out, so at some point, I got really super angry at myself for being dumb, but also a bit at Apollo. I was like, are you screwing with me because I made fun of your temple? Like, you know, because sometimes the heat makes you a little nuts, right? And I have to say that, like everyone, I probably spent some time praying to the goddess to help me get home to help me.

Not. I mean, I could. I mean, it’s safe enough in the sense that you could sleep out there. There’s no predators, there’s no monsters. The snakes are not poisonous. There is, apparently. They have one kind of poisonous snakes, but they’re quite rare. But the problem is that the heat never goes down. So even if you, let’s say, fall asleep and say, you know what, I’m gonna wait for night or maybe just rest for a bit, it’s still super hot, so it’s in your best interest to get out. Right. And so I figured. So I was like, okay, on one of my maps I saw a riverbed and I thought, oh, you know, a riverbed will take me somewhere because usually there’s stuff on the riverbed.

And as I followed the riverbed, I saw that the temple of Apollo was on the riverbed. But one, I was at the bottom of a mountain and the riverbed had 10ft levels going up because they’re trying to hold back a flood, right? So they build these kind of steps, right? And it’s dry. There’s no river. I mean, because it’s June and Greece, there’s nothing, there’s no water. So I had to literally climb and then, so I would. So I would do this to myself. I would say climb to and rest for like ten minutes. Climb to and rest for five minutes, you know, because there was like 50 of them going up in this heat, right.

And I. Yeah. And there was a lot of other things. I hit a fence anyways. I couldn’t get over the fence and I finally found a hole in the fence. I got under the fence. So you do some stuff out there. I actually have some video that I took just because I was just frustrated where I’m crawling under thorn bushes and I was like, you know, maybe I’ll share that on my patreon because I don’t want to really share how. How dumb I was for doing that. But that one wrong turn. So instead of turning this way to go where I came from, I turned this way.

Thinking it was a shortcut cost me 3 hours. So you’re absolutely right that I do have. I did have my friend with me there. But you know what? Even if she would have said, and they were wonderful when I, when I got back and when I kind of finally made it, they had frozen water for me. All of them. They were all like, are you okay? Anyways, they were really great, the people that were at the site. And my friend was there, she had gone to tell them, you know, my friend is out there. She’s kind of finding her way back, but she’s tired, she’s thirsty, she’s exhausted, blah, blah, blah.

And I also have to be grateful for, like, my physicality, in a way, because there were some times where I was like, I’m just not getting up. Like, screw it. Like, I’m just gonna sleep, you know? And then, you know, no, that’s not good. You gotta get up. So. But they were really great about that. But, yeah, I think that you’re, you’re right in the sense that it’s important to go with someone. It’s important to have the Wi Fi with you. But then I thought to myself, even if they came to find me, they knew where I was.

Let’s say they. I, because I would send my location, you know, you still have to wait there and then you still have to hike up there. I mean, I don’t think they’re gonna carry me. And it’s not like they have helicopters or, like, and this is all in one island that you’re doing all of this, because I know you showed a map the other day where you were showing, like, the different. Is this all one island, or is it multiple islands? Like, where exactly is this? This one is in western Greece. So it’s west southwest part of Greece.

So it’s some, it’s places like Patras, Corinth, Miseni. So we wanted to go, because it’s summertime, we wanted to go where there would be no tourists, are very little tourists. And so we picked sort of the western part of Greece. So it’s mainland, I would say at some parts, we were close to Sparta, so it’s that kind of area. And I would say that we visited about three to four temples a day. Some of them are on the locations of ancient sites, so they’re quite easy to get to, but they’re not greatly labeled or advertised. So it’s like we knew there.

For example, at Corinth, she had two temples. Two temples. And all that you see if you go to Corinth is the temple of Asclepius. And then you walk around and you see, oh, on the site, there’s two temples of Artemis. And so I photograph them and I’m going to put them on the map and all that kind of stuff. So that stuff is fun because it’s easier in the sense of you’re not climbing, but some of the rarer parts are difficult. And, like, for example, I wouldn’t take people up there. Do you know what? I mean, like, people say to me, oh, I’d love to come with you on some of these things.

And I said, well, I mean, some of them are really, really difficult. And so you get scratched. You, you know, you, you know, you injure yourself. I injured my knee, I injured my ankle. You know, I mean, it’s not really like tv, you know, it kind of feels like it’s like Indiana Jones where you got a stuff, you’re like, oh, my God. So I would like to take people to some of the temples that are less aggressive, but in as far as. What do you see when you get there? Some places, like I said, have a really interesting energy, so I try to meditate every time I’m at a place, especially the ones that took me a long time to get.

Although sometimes you get eaten alive by flies, but that’s all right because you’re by yourself out here. I mean, this is essentially remote areas. Yeah, totally by myself. So in some way, it’s really beautiful. In another way, I film because it makes me feel like I’m talking to someone as I’m doing it. Right, like, you know, you’re thinking out loud. Oh, my God. This one too. We were on the wrong mountain before we found that one. This is the temple of Artemis at Lafria. And again, a question, Carla, because something that’s always confused me, and I probably asked you before, why so many different.

Can you. Can we call him Artemi? Because, you know, plural? Because there’s Artemis, Apricotia, there’s Artemis of Ephesus, there’s Artemis. This is another Artemis, I think I read in the caption, the Artemis of. That’s Lafria. Laughter why so many? Is it the same Artemis? But is it different facets of that goddess? How does it work with them? And how. How do they each get their own head? How many are there? I would say that there’s hundreds of them. So I have a list of all of her names. Hold on, where’s Artemis names? I know you can’t see it on my phone, but, like, it goes on and on and on and on and on, like.

Like hundreds. Yeah. And these are not all, these are just the ones that we’ve kind of found and some of them that are in private. These are all her names. And it’s things like, for example, immortal, the stormy one, the uncultivated land, the leader of the pack, the hunt, of course, the hurler of javelins, the keeper of arrows, the. The river goddess, she who delays death. I mean, so the reason why she has, so she’s the same goddess, but she, but I would say kind of like these are her last name, let’s say, is based on some kind of a village legende or tribe legend.

So usually some kind of an event happens in the village or there’s something really beautiful there, a beautiful tree, a beautiful river or something. And they name her based on that characteristic and they create these stories about her there. And then what happens, which is even more confusing, is that these villages or the people of these villages move around Greece. So they take the goddess, like, so for example, they take the goddess Artemis Limnia, which is the Artemis of the marshes, and they take her up in the mountains where there’s no marshes. So historians go, well, I go, when I first got there, I was like, how can Artemis of the marshes be up on top of a mountain? So then you have to trace back who is the people that lived here? Where did they move from, you know, and then they built, so they take her with them and they built another temple.

But they keep that name. So it can get really confusing. It can get really confusing. Ancient Greeks, let’s say. But even pre Greeks and post Greeks didn’t really care too much the way we care now about like the specificity of something, you know, and they shared. They shared, like if they, like something about Aphrodite, they put another temple right beside her or they gave Artemis some of those characteristics, like, you know, they like to blend and share. And so that makes us harder to understand. I don’t know if you answered it the, are there any legends surrounding these mountains or any like cryptids that you would know of like a goat man, which, which would be kind of sort of like a panasone or something that again, because I listen to a lot of stories of like the missing four one one or people who go into these areas that, who knows? I mean, those caves you saw might be portals to Hades or what we know I’m standing, you never know.

And maybe I’ve always said that the people who go missing in the four one one, you ever, have you ever lost something and you find it? Like one time I lost my wallet and I couldn’t find it for the life of me. And I’m like, man, where the hell is my wallet? It ended up being a, in my truck between the center console and the seat just lodged up in there. And I think that what if people, these missing 411, that’s just what they are. Like they’re here somewhere. They just are lodged up between, you know, some rock somewhere where you miss it if you’re looking.

I’m saying, like, or they fell through a portal. I mean, I like that idea too, that they, as far as stories, I would say the most popular stories in the mountains would be something like pan or nymphs. Nymphs are quite popular up there because water, like Sweetwater, is very rare. And so wherever they have a river or some kind of a spring, there’s always nymphs associated. And nymphs are not always nice. In fact, they’re almost never nice. And you want to be super careful that you don’t offend them. You want to be super careful. And this idea of, like, pan, too.

There’s a lot of goats up there. There’s always goats up there, but, but no other, like, cryptids in the way that we think about. Like, that’s an american thing. I think it’s a very american thing. Now, as far as people being lost up there, absolutely. First of all, the Greeks don’t care. It’s my favorite thing. And a weird thing about them, they don’t care. Like, oh, you’re a girl going up into the mountain. I’ve gone to places and they don’t care. I don’t know how to explain it. Like, okay, bye. Like, they have no, they don’t do the thing like, oh, be careful out there.

I mean, at the place where I was at the temple of apollos, because they’re a tourist face, right? And they, you’re buying tickets and they gave you the keys. It’s a very different story. But if you’re passing by a village before you start hiking and you ask them, hey, where’s the temple of Artemis? And they’ll go, oh, it’s at the top of that mountain. And you’re like, okay. They’ll be like, okay, so they don’t care. They don’t watch for you. You’re very much on your own. So the fact that people might have fallen or gotten lost or in fact, this summer, lots of people died hiking the mountains in Greece, at least a dozen of them.

Now, they were reported by their spouse or friends or whoever, and they did send out people to look for them and recover the bodies. So if somebody goes and puts in a police report, they will come looking for you. But if no one knows that you’re missing. And sometimes this is my dilemma. I have to be very careful that I tell people where I am, right? And like, if I’m hiking alone and like, and sometimes that also holds me back from going deeper into spaces like, I’ve been in caves where I want to go deeper in the cave, and I have to come to that threshold where it’s like, okay, Carla, what is a smart thing to do here rather than the draw? You know, you’re drawn into the darkness, right.

But a part of me goes, not so much something will happen. But if you break an ankle inside that dark cave and you don’t have Wi fi or whatever, things are gonna be bad. I’m gonna really have to crawl on my arms. So. But there are. I would say that there are some. Like I said, there are some. It’s a very powerful land. There are times when I would say. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know how to say this as an academic, but I would say that there are times where, like, I hear things.

One, I was gonna ask you, or heard any spooky voices or anything like that, like drawing. Drawing you in. The nymphs are known for that, for, like, kind of trickster, and pan is also known for that trickster, like, and I, you know, energy, that archetype of the jokester. So, yeah, I was gonna ask you, because I just recently saw a Nick cage movie where it was kind of, sort of what you were mentioning earlier about the dolls, where they would tie the doll to the actual person in a sympathetic, magical way. And whatever happened to the doll, it was kind of, sort of like mind control through the occult.

He would do stuff right with the dolls, and they would affect the real person. So there’s right parallels there with the occult and the using figurines in there. But in the movie, the main character would hear voices every now and again, kind of, sort of calling to her. She had this clairvoyant aspect to her where she was able to solve crimes and see numbers and words as they. As she saw things. So I was gonna ask you if you ever did hear anything. But I don’t know. I thought it was a little bit too woo woo.

If. But have you. I mean, you’ve heard stuff. I mean, I’m in this dilemma, you know, Juan, because I’m. I’m a researcher, right? So. And so my skeptical brain goes, no, that can’t be right. You know? So there are. Yeah, there are some. Especially if I sit down to meditate a little bit, which I usually do. There are times where there’s some very, like, powerful kind of vision things, or I think I hear something, or. Or it feels like someone’s coming up behind you, and then you open your eyes, you know, and so a part of you goes, no, I felt that.

Or someone touched you. I was in the cave once. That was. Yeah, it was a little bit freaky, you know what I mean? And so when I left that cave, I was like, no, someone was right behind me and touched me. But how do you, how do you say that? Like, I write that out and maybe one day I’ll put it like in a little, in a story. But that’s not an academic thing to say. But I do. And I’m learning to, I’m learning to trust my instincts more and more that these places have memory. Maybe that’s a good way to put it.

That’s maybe not too woo woo, but that they have a memory. And sometimes I will know something is a temple or a sanctuary before I’m even really checking my phone, because there’s just a vibration off of it. But then, of course I’ll check my phone and then I’ll check my notes and then I’ll check the size. And so one of my favorite ideas is the concept, because the Greeks, the Romans, all these people, you know, you had the Pythagoreans, which saw number as a sacred thing. Well, pythagorean palaces. The concept is that, that you, if you build a place, a temple, that’s why the Pentagon is a Pentagon.

And all these, you know, all these different, if you build a building to a certain geometric specification, you are able to elevate that space to a different realm. Essentially the same can be said the opposite. You can suppress around. So think about cookie cutter houses, etc, etcetera. But this would fall in line with what you’re saying when you go into a catholic church, you feel the theory, right? It’s all about theurgy. You feel that connection to that other side and these temples. I’m sure that you were wondering, why is it a five sided shape? Well, it serves its purpose not only to be able to come, in my opinion, communicate with, with the other side, angels, angles, if you will.

I think that there’s something I said about that, but yeah, absolutely. When you’re stepping into these places and they are built to certain standards and a lot of the time it’s to, in my opinion, revere that deity. If it’s Artemis, if it’s Apollo, if it’s whoever. And they can manifest themselves easier in some sort of way. And I said, things hold memory. Yeah. Blood magic is very powerful. So think about what’s on the ground there. And as far as you know, have there ever been any humanity sacrifices at these places? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. There has been human sacrifices.

Absolutely. In fact, that most sites, I would say, depends how far back they reach. The original sacrifice was human sacrifice. And so, yeah. And not only that, but yeah, you know, the human pillar aspect, sometimes maybe when they were sealing these temples up, that last pillar, they threw in a person in there and they’re like, all right, see you later. And they, you know, they put. And you know what? Now that you say that about the church, I’ve been to a couple of churches that were built on top of Artemis temples. There you go. And what’s creepy is that they use the large stones as the four cornerstones of the church.

And I was so angry, like, so, so angry, because in a way, it’s like, these are the cornerstone. Like it’s that manipulation, right? It’s like, we know there’s power here. We’re going to take this power and we’re going to put it as the four cornerstones of our church. And then we’re going to sit, we’re going to squat on top of this land that we took, and then we’re going to dismiss your goddess like you are a pagan or whatever. Right? You don’t understand. And we’re going to absorb all the energy. And it’s fine that you say that, because just now I was watching a documentary on the goddess, and they were talking about the Vatican and how the Vatican is built on top of a goddess temple, that underneath it, there’s like a black stone of the goddess.

What? And that. Yeah. And that, the way that it’s shaped like a u is a shape to, to, uh, what is it called? To contain power, to not let it out. So, uh, this woman I have to look up. I’ll send you some so stuff. The Vatic Vaticanum was also the site of Phrygianium, a temple of magna Mater, goddess Cybele. Whoa, that’s wild Kybali. So that’s Kaiba Lee. That’s the great mother. Wow. So here, let’s see here. You look it up. Heroku side. Oh, my God. One, we have to do a whole thing on Kybali because right here, these powerhouse.

Yeah. What in the world? So the, I did see, this is the first time I’m ever learning about this. So the anatolian mother goddess, she may have a possible foreign in the earliest neolithic, and she is Phrygia’s only known goddess, national deity. So the te. That’s crazy. And can I tell you who she becomes in Ephesus? Well, so they transform to. So she becomes Artemis of Ephesus. Right. Oh, really absorbs the characteristics of Kybali. Yes. And actually, at all the temples that I’ve been to so far, I mean, from museum collections, there’s always that sitting statue of Kybali.

So I did a whole episode on her on the podcast. She is fascinating, Juan. Fascinating and a power. She was such a powerhouse that when the Romans. The Romans brought her into Rome, okay, they carried this massive, colossal statue of her in this ritualistic way that it was seen. She was seen so sacred that she was not allowed to touch the ground. So all of these priestesses and then a bunch of soldiers and other people were carrying her into the. Into Rome. Is this a lion? Yeah, those are lions. There’s always. That’s one lion, but there’s always two that she’s got.

Is she a giant? She is. I don’t know. I don’t know. She is one of the oldest, most powerful, um, mother goddess. She’s the original mother goddess. She predates Gaia. She is a force to be reckoned with. A force. Um, and there’s a great, great deal of. Of history. I mean, you saw that statue that you just scroll by, which is, they say one of the earliest depictions of her, and it’s like 12,000 years old. Juan, like, which one? The one. Is it the clay looking one? This one? Yes, that one. Whoa. And they found that in Turkey.

And this is related to her. See how she’s got the two lions on the side? 6000 BC. So it’s 8000 years old, perhaps even 10,000 years old. And. Yeah, so that is the earth. So then, you know, as you know, Greeks and Romans and everyone else do they make her more pretty? They make her more acceptable. But that is one of the earliest depictions that we have of her. And this is very. Her physicality is very much that mother goddess. Right? Like, in the sense of nature, earth. Not that women look like that 8000 years ago, you know, because food was very different.

But it’s because they didn’t look like that, that they made statues like this, because this was really about abundance of earth. Right? Like, this is earth. Earthen, yeah. So is it an accident? Of course not. That the Vatican is built on top of one of the most powerful goddesses. So she is in Anatolia, she’s in the Mediterranean, she’s in the Middle east, she’s everywhere. Okay. So this whole area worshipped Kaiba li and she has this power, and suddenly we’ve got the Vatican that builds its space on top of her temple. Yeah. That’s not. So that’s not a mistake? That’s not a purpose? No, it’s not a mistake.

And I think we were talking about this at the beginning, like, when we were talking about Medea and Pharmacea and magic and the fact that. I mean, it’s a. It’s my belief that women had always been leaders of communities back then. Leaders of magic, leaders of mysteries with men as. As their partners and their consorts and their priests. I mean, Kaibali has male priests, although they often, they always emasculated themselves and they castrated themselves for her. And so I think, like, what we were talking about is that as patriarchy comes up, right? And that’s a long story of sort of, you know, the change of, let’s say the change of power.

Then all of this mystery power, dark feminine stuff that was used for good becomes devil worship, blah, blah, blah. And then we get into what we were talking about, the beheading of a piece of art. So out of here, this is a perfect segue because, right. I. The fact the picture that you’re painting is like, hey, all these sites are forgotten. There’s, you know, some record of it, but we don’t really know. We have, you know, sibel that the, the Vatican church is built on, but nobody know. I know that. But here this goddess is transformed, transmutated, whatever, into Artemis and I.

And so she’s got many different faces. And I’m just thinking about, you know, the Babylon and all these other goddesses of secret societies and things of that nature that maybe are like a nod to this. And if they’re not as important as, you know, the picture that you’re painting, that they’re almost forgotten and neglected, why then do we have stuff like this where NASA is literally naming their Artemis mission? And the way I’ve heard, I heard this professor, I forgot her name. Her name is Paula something or other. Anyways, she’s been making her rounds and she talks about UFO’s and stuff like that.

There was this one particular clip that she was talking to this guy and he was asking her about rituals. And if you think of, again, as we’re gonna get woo woo here, but if you think of a launching of a rocket, it’s a ritual, it’s a fire ritual. You’re. You’re sending this large phallus into the firmament or whatever. It’s piercing. It’s symbolic, right? The womb, the big goddess, all that. And she was talking about the aspect that they were using greek, the size of these rockets. But not just any greek, ancient greek, which is, again, there’s different levels of greek.

You know, there’s some that are more forgotten than others. And then she was saying that it’s all, again, a cult related, that the reason that they do this is. Has an occult connotation to it. Now, NASA, speaking of the mother, the divine feminine, Jack Parsons was trying to do what in the desert? He was trying to invoke Babylon and incarnate her into this reality. And he was one of the founders of NASA. I mean, so NASA and the occult are closely tied together. And he thought that he was saving reality. He said there needs to be a feminine balance.

So here I am, drawing this entity from the other side to balance out reality and save it from. From imploding in on itself. And some people think that he. He did do that. I mean, I do think that there’s something mystical about sending a rocket into space. And I’ve always been fascinated with space. There’s lots of mystery. And we know the ancients were into, you know, the cosmic realm. I mean, that those are not as far fetched as I think people might first think they might be. And I absolutely agree that the masculine and the feminine have to be united.

And in fact, the ancients did that because up until the Greeks, like before the Greeks, there wasn’t this division of gender that is just so dual. You know, I mean, this duality of male female that becomes sort of the thing that really separates us all is really invented to keep us separated. Right. Because as a human, you should have both of those aspects of yourself. Right? I mean, that’s. The balance is defined, those two aspects. So it wouldn’t surprise me that someone, perhaps, who’s into mysticism realizes, oh, yeah, I think I have to balance these two things in order to achieve whatever it is that I want to achieve.

And actually, this is why I love Artemis so much, too, because I feel like she is the balance of masculine and feminine, because she has these signs of herself, you know, as huntress. Sometimes she’s quite vicious, as we’ve talked about before. She doesn’t, you know, and then protector of children and mothering. So. And I think, actually, that might be why she was so popular. I was saying to my friend, I mean, I haven’t done it yet, because it’s going to take. This research that I’m doing right now, it’s going to take me a couple of years.

But I bet you if we count the temples that we found compared to the temples of Zeus or Poseidon, or whatever. We are going to see that actually God there, there. I would say 70, 30 more goddess temples than God temples. And I would say that Artemis has a huge chunk of that, of those temples because there are much less male temples, male God temples than goddess temples, right. Much less, significantly less. Are there any instances where she’s a hermaphrodite, not Artemis? No, but there are actually more hermaphrodites statues in museums than we are led to believe.

Very, very celebrated aspect of humanity that have been found at different excavation sites. I’ve taken pictures of them, though I haven’t recorded it all in a statistic way. But I would say that every now and then I will, I will, like, I would say, let’s say we visited, I don’t know, 2030 museums, and out of that, I would say in 20 of them, we would have found a few hermaphrodite statues. Because I think for the ancients, that body, that physicality embodies, like, perfect balance. You know what I mean? Where I think today we see it as a.

I don’t know, some people see it as a negative or whatever. You know, there’s people that have prejudice against people that are born with both biological sexes like that. Well, there’s. I from my studies that I’ve done the some, for example, the Timukwa, which were the, the indigenous people here in Florida, they had a certain level in their society that were called the. The two spirits, and they were the hermaphrodites, where not hermetic, but men dressed up as women. Right. And they were. There were trans, essentially. And they were the ones that could interact with, because they had very strict laws on interacting with death, pollution, corruption, and then life purification, everything else.

If you touched one of them, you had to go that way. If you touched another one, you had to go the other way. And these two spirits could dwell in both areas. They were seen as this liminal in their caste system, as this liminal hierarchy or something. You know, they could, they could clean up after the dead, but they could also purify the, the bones afterwards, right. And clean them up and give the offerings to the gods and stuff like that. So maybe that’s perhaps why it’s. It’s been demonized, because they’re seen as these people that can travel between both worlds in some sort of weird way.

Yeah. I mean, I think. I think for, you know, unfortunately for us, we live in a society that’s been really polluted by christian white colonial thought. And I think when those Christians. Right, like, when when doctors or the medical in, you know, industry found these babies, you know, they. They had these preconceived notions anyways, and they had no knowledge of ancient history or the occult or anything. But I think as you dive deeper into the ancient world or in the indigenous world or any other time period, you start to see that actually those civilizations understood the awesomeness, right? Like, the incredible opportunity and the rarity.

Like, they embraced that in a much different way than, like, dismissing it or disregarding, you know what I mean? Or hurting it or whatever it is, right? Because even for Kaiba Lee, we were talking about her. Her priests had to castrate themselves and had to dress as women and live these women. And they did this by choice, like no one forced them to. But again, it was not so much about be a woman as much as it was in order to enter this space. You had to have a particular performance, a particular way of living, you know? And so it wasn’t just like, I’m a priest, it was a whole way of life.

And so these priests volunteered. I mean, in fact, they castrated themselves. Like the ritual is, you did it to yourself. No one did it to you. No one forced you. No one held you down. They drank a drink and they had sort of an ecstatic party, but they. They did it themselves and they were happy to do so. So, you know what I mean? Like, for us, I think sometimes it’s hard for some people, it’s hard to wrap their minds around that today, I think. But what a world. Like, what a, like, what a different. You have to shift your mentality so much to be part of this ancient world.

It’s fascinating. So before we get into cutting body parts off the. I had another question for or another insight, because, like, you were talking about when you meditate at these places. Yeah, maybe, perhaps. And I don’t know if you’ve tried or not, you don’t have to tell me, but a lot of the times they were ingesting certain substances to entered altered states of consciousness, and that’s me. So maybe you’re getting a residual of, like, you’re almost there, but you need to go to the other side in order to see these, because I don’t know about you, but I’ve always talked about the, you know, shadows in your peripheral vision.

If you think of, like, the peripheral vision, it’s almost like an altered state. It’s not really there, but it’s there. And. And there was this video that I saw on tick tock where it had a dot in the center. And then it had, you need to focus on the dot. And on the side, it had different faces of different politicians and different people in power. And the longer you stared at the dot and he’s flipping through all these different faces of these politicians and people in power, these elites, their faces would get more and more grotesque, and it’s almost like.

But. But as soon as you would look over to their face, they’d be normal. But if you focused on the dot and you let your peripheral, you know how it blunt kind of sort of blends in, they would start to get demorphed. Now, again, I don’t know if it’s the brain trying to process what it’s watching, but it falls in line with, like, all the reptilians are actually demons, you know, in disguise. And, you know, you’re seeing these things in your peripheral vision. And I think it’s got something to do with that. And once you ingest these substances, which we know that they were doing for rich religious purposes, we know that the freaking church was also doing it, that’s when you’re able to really blast off into the other sphere of things and interact with.

I mean, I don’t know if you’ve done that or not, Carly, you don’t have to tell me. I have not put me in trouble. No, I will be very honest interest. I haven’t. So I. I have not done that. I. So I. You know, I mean, I was a real, like, goody two shoe kid, you know, and I haven’t actually done anything. I was a designated driver for a long time. But I watched that movie, that documentary about mushrooms, and I really started thinking about mushrooms as that gateway to do whatever. Yeah. But I have not had the chance to do any of that.

And of course, I wouldn’t. So I wouldn’t do that on a site just because you have to stay safe, right? Like, you got to think, like, I’m a woman. I’m out here on my own, and I don’t have enough trust in men, right? Like animals, maybe, but I don’t know who else, you know, you passed out somewhere. It’s the real monster. There’s a shepherd walking. I mean, to be fair, no one. I haven’t felt any fear from any men up in the mountains. But anyways, I wouldn’t put myself in that vulnerable state. But I do agree with you.

So I would say that without anything when I meditate. And I was saying that to a friend yesterday because she’s a bit more into the woo woo stuff, and sometimes I need that because I’m a bit too much in the academic brain. So I was saying to her, I go. When I meditate on some of these sites, all I feel is like a gush of power. Like I’m filled with power, I’m filled with memory, I’m filled with stuff, like, I don’t have to do anything. You know, sometimes you have to ground, you have to, you know, you go through these meditation process.

When I’m in Canada, it takes me a while to sink into something. And I said to her, it’s like a tap opens up. So anyway, we had this conversation about sort of the spirituality of that. Now I can only imagine if I did take something that was natural but, you know, alternative in some way. I could only imagine what that might. Or even in the case. Like I said, there’s a couple of caves I’ve been to that I go to regularly just because I don’t have to do it. I just have to stand there and the visions come.

Like, power comes, you know, things. Things just happen, you know, so I can only imagine. I think I agree with you. I just haven’t had that trust or that opportunity to do that. Right. Yeah. It’s just something that came to mind when you were saying that. And I think that’s. And they were for sure you’re right. They were for sure doing. They were for sure practicing ecstatic dance in which that in itself can become, you know, like drug like sound. Drumming. Drumming can really alter. Right. The caves of Kaibali. Actually, one, they picked specific caves. I mean, this is how intelligent they were.

They picked specific caves because the sound that, from the drum that echoed off the walls created such a vibration in your body that it made you. It altered your state of mind. Okay, so even when archaeologists would go in there and start talking, they noticed that in their bodies, they would either start feeling fear or ecstasy or whatever reaction they had because of the vibration of the sound off the cave walls. So imagine the ancients practicing on a weekly basis with drums and singing and sound in these caves that then altered their consciousness when they danced, drank, of course, partied, whatever they did out there, because they used to have a blast.

Right? So, yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. I think that that is a part of worship sometimes, is to step outside the rational brain. Yeah, this is the. The original EDC back then. And I mean, I know because I come from. From a pentecostal church, which they’re real big into the worship and the dancing lost alia running around speaking in tongues. So, I mean, I’ve been in that world of worship and. Yeah, it’s just something that I thought about when you were talking and speaking of cutting body parts off. Last rage, I feel. Last time I had you on, we talked about this statue that was really interesting and it was kind of Medusa esque, had these tentacles, had these horns.

And people were freaking out because, again, it looks satanic statue decapitated. Now, I know you mentioned the gorgon earlier and that you did a talk on it, and I was doing an episode with slick shout out to slick dissident. And I learned that when Medusa is beheaded, Pegasus flies out. Yeah. Pegasus and Chrysler and Chris, his brother. Yeah. So what have they done here? Have they solidified? Right. So we’re talking about modern rituals using names of greek goddesses and greek, you know, ancient greek names on these rockets. What kind of ritual have they just solidified by cutting off the head of the Medusa looking figure? I mean, I mean, and we talked about goddesses with horns.

And actually, I think that horned goddess episode is one of people’s favorites on the podcast. On my podcast, too. I think we talked about it on both of ours. And so the lack of knowledge about horns as symbols of power is so it’s such a, like an irksome thing. I mean, I think that what they did here is really just. And the artist had said to leave it like this. She said not to fix it because it really exemplifies the violence against women. You know, it really exemplifies this sort of ignorance and fear and that in order to solve the so called demonists, the thing that they decided to do was cut off her head.

And like you say about Perseus, if this is a Medusa figure, nothing has changed in 2500 years like the sort of slaying of the monster woman, the scary woman, the powerful woman. It really is a misogynistic symbol. And I think that’s why she said, leave it. She said, I’m not gonna fix it. I’m gonna leave it. Because it’s a testament to that violence and it’s infuriating and sad. Yeah. The head, I don’t know what to do. Yeah. And this has been immortalized in the stars. I mean, this is something. Oh, yeah. And the. The head is such an interesting concept because, and I’m just wondering who has the.

So here’s horned Moses, and the horns symbolize wisdom, symbolize divinity, right? Yep. They symbolize. They have different symbols, but it’s been demonized by the church because. Right. The church does what the church does. And I’m just wondering, does he? Yeah. If you look up horn Zeus, you will find him with horns. Dionysus has horns. Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh, yeah. He does. Yeah. Interesting. Lots, lots of. Lots of egyptian gods have horns. I can’t remember the name of the ram God of the Egyptians right now, but. So this was a symbol of power. That’s Alexander the great with horns as well, because again, a symbol of power.

If you. Yeah, no, sorry, the coin. If you think about even the Vikings, the so called Vikings, or the Norse, for example, who had those two kind of horns on their heads, is that Alexander the Great? Yeah, it is. Alexander the Great has horns. So this is what I mean, the level of, like, I can only say ignorance. And by that I really mean like a lack of knowing. Right? Like the level of not knowing that horns are not. Or maybe the brainwashing that horns are sort of signs of the devil is so intense. It seems apparently in Houston, Texas, no offense to the Texans, but certainly to some there, that they decided to chop off her head and like make this statement.

So what can I say about that one? I’m wondering who has the head and if they’re using it for divinatory purposes because, I mean, they gotta. They gotta be. They have it in the center of some room and it’s divinating to them at every night because it seems like the head, right? The head of John the Baptist, the Templars, the terafim concepts of oracular heads. So, I mean, what would the head of what is. Cuz Persis keeps the head of Medusa, right? Uses it as a weapon afterwards. And everyone has it on their shields, right? Athena has it on her shield.

The Spartans have it on. Leonidas has it on his shield. The Spartans have it on. Because remember that the head of the gorgon has always been a protection symbol, a symbol of power and protection. So it’s a weird paradox that we have here. How can the head be a symbol of protection while at the same time you just said that this is a monster. And it’s an interesting paradox of how the monstrous can also be the protector, right? And I think we’ve talked about the fact that Medusa kills no women, right? She only kills men. She only turns men to stone.

But that’s because it’s only men that go into her cave to try and chop off her head. You would just leave her alone. Right. And just don’t go in there. But that’s such an interesting concept that the right that the, the destroyer can also be the protector. And, I mean, that’s also part of, of a lot of dilemmas with people and their gods where it’s like, well, if God is so powerful and so good and why would he let evil exist in this reality? And I think that’s a dilemma that a lot of people face when it comes to their religion.

And I of their deity. You have the yahweh of the Old Testament, this very angry, righteous God, and then you have the New Testament where he’s like, a little bit nicer and not so blood lusty esque, right? Like, oh, give me all your kids. Sacrifice them all. Yum, yum, yum. And then afterwards, it’s like, we’re good. You know, it’s like there’s the duality. And, I mean, that’s, that’s to be said, right, though kind of, sort of hermetic in a sort of way, where you have the nurturing aspect of women and then the more masculine, rougher side of, of man.

And, for example, me, my kids listen to me more than they listen to my wife because, and because she, you know, when they cry to her show, it’s okay. It’s okay when they do something wrong. And I’m just like, you know, you need it. You need to be firm and strict. So I’m the father figure. And that’s why having a father figure is also so important in a household, because these kids take advantage of that mother instinct of wanting to care and, and being gentle, right? And I have two sons, so I don’t, I don’t have a daughter.

Thank God, I don’t have a daughter because I’ve seen what my sister has done, and I don’t want to deal with anything like that. So, you know, I’m rougher with my, you know, I like having boys because I can be rough with them and throw them around, stop them around a little bit, and, and they’re boys, right? They’re just like, they’re, they’re, they’re like little fluffs of dirt running around, essentially, is what they are. My little one, he’s two years old. He was, he went outside and I guess he found, like, a dead beetle or something.

And he was walking around the house with, like, we didn’t know what he was doing. And then, like, we call his name. His name is Noah. And he turns around and he just had, he’s just holding a dead beetle. Just walking around the house holding a dead beat. It was the funniest thing because it’s like, you know, they’re boys. Like there, he’s just being a boy, just holding a dead bug in his hand. So. But, yeah, this. Yeah. I never thought about it like that. Where the destroyer is also the protector because she’s literally on their shield.

You said in Sparta. Yeah, in Sparta. Leonidas of Sparta. If you look up his statue, he has the medusa’s head on his shield. Wait, that was a real character from the movie 300? Yeah, of course. Yes. That’s a historical figure. Oh, there it is. So that’s the statue right there that you see this? No, you got it in the. Yeah, but you gotta find. I have side pictures of it. But if you look at his shield, they don’t. So his. Maybe they don’t have the side, but yeah, this. If you can find the side of his shield.

Mandela, maybe that’s a traditional one. No. Hmm. This is small, though. No. Yeah, that’s not it. That’s not it. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he has the triangle. And I’m thinking of Achilles in Corfu. But Athena has it, obviously. Athena has Medusa on her shield. I am pretty sure Leonidas and other. Other heroes, like invasives and stuff, you will find lots of. Lots of, like, trojans and other greek heroes that have Medusa on the shield. Athena, it’s a. Athena for sure, has her on her shield always. And she has her on her chest always. That’s a complex sort of image.

That’s how you know when it’s Athena is that you see her either covered like in a snake, Aegis, or she has the head of Medusa on her chest, which is a complex image because actually, there’s a lot of theories that talk about how Athena and Medusa are the same person. They’re two sides of one coin. That the Athena Athena warrior side is the more, let’s say, masculine. I don’t always like using that. And that the medusa that she wears always on her chest is sort of that dark feminine wisdom, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. So there’s lots of theories about that because almost everything, almost everything, almost every single statue of Athena has Medusa on her.

And her shield has Medusa on her. But I thought Leonidas did, too. But certainly like greek heroes who have, like the Greeks who fought the Amazons, for example, if you look at some of their shields, they have a medusa or a gorgon on there as well. So. And then that’s the other symbol of Athena is the owls. Okay, so Athena. And then the owl is her word. Her birds of wisdom, it said here. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. So why do. Originally. Originally she was the goddess of wisdom, right? She later becomes the goddess of war when Greece.

When the Greeks or the Athenians take her on to represent their city, then she becomes a goddess of war and justice and all those kinds of democratic things that come. Yeah, yeah. But originally, the owl is her first symbol because she was the goddess of wisdom and intuition. So again, another goddess that has been sort of Iman removed from her original position and given more masculine because she looks kind of like a man here. I mean, if you. Yes, that’s right. That’s right. She is very. She is purposely androgynous. And in fact, Aeschylus has a play in when Orestes is trying to escape after killing his mother, blah, blah.

And Athena plays judge and jury. And in there, Aeschylus, the playwright, gives her these words where she goes, I am not. I don’t have a mother. Zeus is my father. In fact, I just. I just pub. I just posted a rant on TikTok about how Athena does have a mother. But now we’re going into a whole other. But basically what the Greeks did is they were like, no, Athena doesn’t have a mother. She’s born out of Zeus’s head, therefore she represents man. She’s our goddess. We’re taking her. She’s the goddess of war, blah, blah, blah, and she becomes this figure.

Yeah. I thought for sure that. I’m wondering why the bohemian grove, right, they. They worship this huge owl. A lot of people, I think. I’m pretty sure that they say it’s related to her. I. Yeah, to Athena. Which, again, would. Would. Why are all the wealthiest of the. Of the world worshipping the owl of Athena? I mean, again, maybe, perhaps they’re hiding something behind the scenes when it comes to the divine feminine, which is something that’s hidden and has been taken away from us. And I thought. Yeah, I thought Leonidas was fake. That was a Hollywood part of the.

Hollywood. I mean, the representation of Leonidas is Hollywood. Absolutely. I mean, he was, you know, the Greeks are, you know, 5ft tall back then and not muscular in that way. And certainly he had lots of lovers. Among the 300 Spartans were very much male lovers of males, as were women lovers. I mean, there’s. There’s a lot of, like, history that we know that didn’t make it into this film at all. I would say that this depiction of Leonidas here is probably the most toxically masculine we’ve seen, that this is part of rage. You know, it’s like.

So I don’t know. What was he like in real life? We don’t know because the sources that we have say he was a leader and a hero and it’s true. And he was a spartan and certainly he lived violence and he was a soldier and he was a hero and blah, blah, blah. Of course, you know, they’re defeated, right? Like the Persians plow right through them and eventually win that war. So. Yeah, but, but did you know, actually in my latest episode one, I talk about the Amazons and one of the things that my research dug up was that actually the Persians were recruiting female warriors and female soldiers.

And so many of them joined up that they had their own battalion, really, of like giant women. In fact. Yes, women. Women warriors. Women writers, women fighters. And in fact, the Greeks, when they won the last time, I think I can’t remember which war. Now, when they won, they, how do I say this? They kind of feminized the persian statues to make fun of the fact that some of their, some of their warriors were women. But anyway, that’s a whole long story that I go into, but, yeah. And the Amazons, you know, the Amazons really did exist, of course.

And they didn’t really lose either. But anyways, that might be a story for a different day. Yes, yes. The Persians were open to women joining their army. Isn’t that fascinating? And training. Wearing men’s clothes and fighting. Yeah. So the concept of, again, these giant amazonian warriors isn’t too far fetched and that’s not another Hollywood creation that’s interesting. No, no, no. I mean, the Greeks tell us about them. But I think for a long time archaeologists, just again, we’ve got white colonial christian archaeologists who when they first uncovered the stuff went, oh, that was probably fantasy of the Greeks.

That’s the problem with that. Right. And no one challenged them until now. With DNA evidence and more digging. We’re finding all these women buried with their horses and their weapons and we found in the Scythians around the Black Sea and we’re finding all of these women warriors and it’s like, actually, I think the, I think the Greeks were just telling us their stories. Yeah. I mean, a little propaganda stories because they say they want everything, which isn’t really true. But, but the Amazons were absolutely real. Like, the Greeks probably didn’t call them Amazons, but. Yeah, but these female warriors that came in to fight.

Yeah. Yeah. I’d like to have you back on to talk about that. And women giants and I think I had sent you something about. I think I sent you something about that a while back about these warriors. But, yeah, I’d like to talk about that next time that you. Come on. Did you have any closing thoughts, Carla, where people can find you anything you want to leave the audience with before we get out of here and. Hmm. Well, I’m continuing the mapping project, so hopefully they find me at Artemis project, Artemis expert and things like that, because I’m going to continue this mapping thing.

What else am I doing? I’m writing the book on Artemis of Ephesus. I hope to have it out by the fall. And then I’m kind of a nomad, you know, on. I’m traveling a bit, mostly looking at museums and hiking to things and doing stuff. And I think I’m going to be a nomad for a couple of years to finish this project and finish my research. And then we’ll see. We’ll see what the goddess has in store for me. Being a. Living your best life out there. And hopefully you stay safe. Carla. We’ll set up a link.

I don’t know if you have a paypal or something. We’ll put in the link so people can fund the war. Hopefully send a few bucks. Doesn’t have to be a lot. And check out Carl over on her channel. Links down in the description. And guys, make sure TJ ojp.com get your copies of the occultist Monday. I just put out the newest 88 page homunculus edition version on there. Make sure to find that. Also have the comic books issue one, issue two, creating art, everybody. So make sure to support that. Patreon.com, the one on one podcast, tj ojp.com.

and as always, Carla, you were great. I enjoy our conversations. You’re actually doing something out in the field, which I admire and is awesome. And I think the preservation of. Of history is important of knowledge. And we thank you for that. Carlo, thank you for coming on again. Just fun and always. Everyone will catch you on the next one.
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