The Next Lesson in Travel and Magic

This week on Mystical Musings, Jennifer Taylor and Tava Baird continue their ever-expanding exploration of time, multidimensional existence, discernment, and the mysterious nature of consciousness itself.

Following another deeply immersive energetic transmission from Jennifer — amplified by the intentional creation of a sacred stone circle before recording — the conversation launches into what Samael calls:

“The next lesson in travel and magic.”

What follows is a fascinating and surprisingly grounded discussion about:

• The non-linear nature of time
• Parallel lives and multidimensional selves
• Why guides and unembodied beings experience time differently
• The “Michael J. Fox theory” of time travel
• The butterfly effect of energy and consciousness
• How pieces of our energy exist in many places at once
• Reaching across timelines for wisdom, guidance, and healing
• Why information from other “selves” still requires interpretation and adaptation
• The evolving meaning of spiritual insight over time
• Discernment in spirituality, history, and magical practice
• The dangers of rigid certainty and internet dogma
• Why “forbidden books” can still hold value
• The difference between information and wisdom
• Grace, nuance, and personal responsibility on spiritual paths

Samael uses rabbits, bouncing energy, and shifting pathways as metaphors for how consciousness moves through realms and timelines — explaining that embodied humans perceive time linearly only because our brains require that structure in order to function within this reality.

Jenn and Tava discuss the possibility that multiple versions of ourselves may exist simultaneously across different realms, timelines, and experiences — and that wisdom can sometimes be exchanged between them.

One of the most powerful sections of the episode centers around discernment:

• How truth evolves as perspective changes
• Why spiritual information should remain open to reinterpretation
• The responsibility of seekers to think critically
• The importance of reading broadly rather than blindly following authority
• Why history itself is often incomplete, biased, or constantly evolving

Tava passionately discusses the modern tendency toward certainty, censorship, and “approved information” within spiritual communities, arguing instead for thoughtful discernment, nuance, and personal responsibility.

And somehow… amidst all the multidimensional philosophy and existential brain-bending… this episode also introduces:

• soothing sea turtle visualization techniques,
• Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy,
• and a whole lot of laughter

Please remember this podcast is for inspiration, reflection, and entertainment only, and is not medical, psychological, or professional advice.

We are two friends sharing personal experiences and evolving perspectives as we learn and grow. This is not a substitute for your own discernment, inner wisdom, or qualified professional guidance.

Take what resonates, trust your intuition, and seek licensed support when needed, always honoring your own inner knowing and personal truth.

Thank you joining us today, you are a valued member of our tribe!  If you are enjoying the podcast, please consider telling your friends and sharing it on social media.  We would greatly appreciate your support in helping us reach others and spread our messages of worth, openness and exploration. 

Connect with your Hosts!

Tava Baird:   tavabaird.com or https://darkflowerbooks.etsy.com.

Jennifer Taylor:  Amnivara (previously Willow Ridge Reiki and Healing Arts)           https://www.Amnivara.com/

Transcript

"The Next Lesson in Travel and Magic"

Tava Baird: [00:00:00] Good morning, Tava Baird. Good morning, Jennifer Taylor. How the heck are you? 

Jennifer Taylor: I am doing great, and I'm so excited to go back into our conversations that, um, just keep going and expanding and blowing my mind. And welcome to everybody in our Mystical Musings tribe, and thank you for hanging in here with us and going on all these wild rides.

Tava Baird: Yeah, some more information has come through about time, Since we last podcast 

Jennifer Taylor: I can't wait.[00:01:00] [00:02:00] [00:03:00] [00:04:00] [00:05:00]

Tava Baird: Okay, I don't know what it is you're eating for breakfast these days, but whatever it is that is causing Michael to come through with so much energetic intensity that Samael keeps giving me words from that session that just make my insides melt. I, I don't know. Is it a bagel? Are you having Wheaties?

What is happening? 

Jennifer Taylor: You know what? I know what it is. because the last time I did this, and then I did it again this time. So Michael has shown me, and I know I've told you, to make this circle of [00:06:00] stones, like create a stone circle around me. And, then have him guide me through, you know, invoking the directions and, whatever else it is that he- we're setting up when I do that.

And he had told me like a while ago that I- any time I do any channeling, any time I do discernment, I need to be creating that space. But I've been really lazy and like I do that when I do sessions, and I do that when I have like a major thing where I am like, "Okay, I'm really gonna to, sit down and discern or connect or get more information."

But I hadn't been doing it for the podcast because it hadn't really dawned on me to go through all that to do it. And then the last time when we podcasted- Mm-hmm ... I was like, "Oh no, I'm supposed to get the stones." So that's why it takes me a lot longer to start singing because I have to like- [00:07:00] Oh

you know, choose the stones and set them around on the floor and make sure that they're in the right orientation to each other and, then go through that really short invocation that he has me sing and move through. And that I think is why all of the sudden we have turned up to 11. Yeah. 

Tava Baird: It feels like we went from, okay, you finished one level of textbook and now you've graduated to something else because it's like the things that we're talking about now are like, I feel like we've entered Doctor Who territory where it's like-

wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff, and it's much bigger, bigger, bigger picture things than some of the things we've done in the past to get here. And I was just like, "All right, today maybe he'll just tell me how to make an omelet." And instead I've got- A whole page on rabbits and time travel. 

Jennifer Taylor: Oh my goodness.

Tava Baird: And the integration of "and" and "or." [00:08:00] And what he says th- and he even says, "This is the next lesson in travel and magic among the day." 

Jennifer Taylor: Wow. 

Tava Baird: So here we go. 

Jennifer Taylor: All right. And I'm so glad you said that because I hadn't really put together the intensity and the magnitude of what was coming through, and the fact that I had been setting the stone circles- Yeah

until you said that, and I was like, "Oh, no, I know exactly what it is." '

Tava Baird: Cause I was like- Wow ... how, how was, how are we getting one thing six episodes ago that was like, "Yeah, we got this. This is bite-size. We can..." And now it's just like, okay, I really, I think, feel like I need a seatbelt while we're going through those, these conversations.

Jennifer Taylor: Right. 

Tava Baird: Like- Oh, I'm so excited ... we don't know when the next drop's gonna be. So here's what I've got to go along with your lovely song that came through. He said the word "bounce," and then he said, "Let us speak of rabbits, Umshalla. I find them a delight." [00:09:00] Which I found very charming. And then he says, "When moving, a rabbit utilizes a burst of stored energy for travel.

In this way, they are much akin to how magic users and energy workers of your kind may do the same. We have spoken before of the concept of "and," and the societal dangers of "or" if it is not kept in balance and used to feed the and. This is a next lesson in travel and magic among the Dae now that you have no fear of your impact on time."

"How does one use 'and', or the concept of 'and'?" Imagine and is in quotes here, guys. So "how does one use the and with or in conjunction? How will one integrate?"[00:10:00]

Couldn't have just been a ham sandwich order. Had to be that. All right. Which means we probably better go back and talk about the new information that came through about time because he just said, "Since you now have no fear of your impact on time," and we haven't mentioned what that is yet. 

Jennifer Taylor: Yes. 

Tava Baird: okay.

Last episode. If you haven't listened to the last episode yet, this is going to make no sense to you, but I'll do my best. Um, oh, heck People in the car, just go listen to the last episode please. Anyway, um, while we were talking about time and realms and things like that in our last episode, Jenn asked a really good question.

She said, and I'm calling it the Michael J. Fox theory, okay? If you guys are old enough to remember, like, Back to the Future, he got into a [00:11:00] DeLorean, went back in time, and then realized that if he didn't get his parents together, he was gonna fade from existence because his parents would have never met, and therefore he never would've been born, right?

And Jenn asked a really good question last time, which was, how careful do we need to be if we are visiting former places and former selves while in dreams, while in liminal space, while in healing spaces? Like, if we are one of these people who time slips and time travels, how careful do we have to be so that we don't negate the existence of certain things in the now?

And I was really surprised because Samael was just kinda like, "Yeah, don't worry about it." I mean, like he didn't say that, but he was super casual about it, and just kinda at first brushed it off and said he was much more worried [00:12:00]about what our current perception is of the past, and the power of story that we hold in the way that we talk about the past.

And then he started talking about stuff that I just was not processing well. I should probably also tell you guys this. When I first started on the podcast, he would talk slowly and I would write down everything he said, and then we basically had a recording of pretty much anything he said in writing.

My work with him since probably the end of last summer has become increasingly where he talks all the time when I have no notebook around. Like, before I used to have a hope of a notebook. Now there's no hope of notebook. He is increasingly just going times so [00:13:00] quickly and on such high-level concepts that I struggle to put what he's saying into words, especially when he frequently takes conversational dance breaks to just start speaking in Hebrew or Greek or Amharic or whatever else is on his beautiful, angelic mind at the moment.

Um, so he came through with all of this stuff, and I couldn't keep up And so when I was trying to answer Jenn's question, it just came out as a pile of gook. And Jenn actually did a beautiful job of saying, Well, maybe what he means is, you know, it's super important the way that we frame information and that we don't get too bogged down in the past because that might impede how we view ourselves on our current path, [00:14:00] and the worth and value that we give ourselves while doing divine work going forward.

And I was like, Yeah, that sounds brilliant. Let's go with that. Right? So that's what we did. The fact that I had faltered so badly in being able to bring through what he wanted me to bring through really bothered me. So, so I really wanna make sure I do a good job of representing the information he's trying to bring across.

And in the moment, I was not doing a good job. So I asked him if he could please go back to that topic while I was in sort of a quiet, meditative space, and he was gracious enough and did so. And so here is a hopefully better articulation of what he meant. The Michael J. [00:15:00] Fox idea is that time is linear.

That's how we perceive time as embodied humans in this world, for the most part. We go, I'm gonna do A, and then A is going to lead to B, and then B is going to lead to C, and there's no going back to A, right? Unless you have a DeLorean- ... and you're in a movie with a big budget and Michael J. Fox. By the way, Michael J.

Fox and I share the same birthday. 

Jennifer Taylor: Oh, nice. Along 

Tava Baird: with Ker- along with Kermit the Frog and Natalie Portman. Anyway, um, not that you needed to know that in any way, shape, or form. But it makes me affectionate towards Michael J. Fox, plus I love him in Shrinking. If you guys haven't seen Shrinking, do so. Anyway, um, Harrison Ford's amazing in it.

S- God, am I out there today. So time. Samael says that unembodied entities do not see time in a linear [00:16:00] way. It is necessary for us in an embodied form to have this view because that's sort of, that's the way that we process information. And there is a lot of what we can see that happens or appears to happen on its surface linear- linearly for us.

You plant a seed, then you see the shoot come up and the roots go down, then it turns into a plant. A, and then B, and then C. But he says that when you are not in your body here, when you are an unembodied, such as Samael, or you are not currently embodied, you see that time is actually moving out in multiple directions at once.

And the diagram that he had drawn that showed a circle with a point where it touched a bigger circle with a point where it touched a bigger circle, he said that is a [00:17:00] more accurate map of how time moves if it was represented in two dimensions on a piece of paper. What we actually need to do is take that diagram and repeat it over and over and over and over again as it's shifting.

It's more like a sphere and it's always shifting and it's moving in different directions. So that viewpoint of time is what allows an entity like Samael to be in multiple places and in multiple worlds and doing multiple things at once. And we've actually seen evidence of that. We've seen him standing here talking to me while he's doing, making gestures that are reflected somewhere else.

I know because I've heard from people that he is speaking to multiple people all over the world at the same time, right? I am not the special one here. Gosh darn it. [00:18:00] So the thing is, if you change something, everything in time is always changing. But if you don't look at time in a linear fashion, then making a small adjustment essentially somewhat dissipates the effect, right?

Because you're going out. It's more of closer to what I guess we think of as the butterfly effect being. If we drop a drop of water, it's going to have a thousand effects. Everything that we do has a thousand effects. And if we go back in our view in time, they don't really have back and forward. They have a multiple, God, I hope I'm doing a better job this week.

They have multiple versions. So the idea that if we don't do A, C is never the result isn't really true [00:19:00] because we are here and our energy is elsewhere at the same time. I'll give you another example that might help. We also think that all of our energy is contained within our body, right? But that's also not the case.

So Michael J. Fox's character, I think it was Marty McFly. Marty thought that all of Marty was in Marty, and that if Marty didn't get Marty's parents, who had somewhere in them the energy that would create him into a particular circumstance, that he would never come to be. The thing is, is that you have already come to be and are currently being in multiple places.

There is a thread of your energy that connects you back to the divine. Not a very thick one, or you'd remember too much, and you wouldn't be able to process this existence in a [00:20:00] way that was a discovery of divine pattern. There is some of the energy that you left with your child when you kissed them goodbye and sent them off to school this morning.

There is energy in that pair of pants that you donated to the Goodwill two weeks ago. There is the energy that you left in your dream last night. Hopefully not too much of it, or you might end up haunting yourself, right? There is the energy that you left on your coffee cup when you last took a sip of it.

Your energy is constantly moving and being places, and you're honestly calling it back a lot to you as well, right? If we try to sit down in a human brain and keep track of all of the places that our eir- energy currently is and the effect that it's having and what it's doing, our minds would freaking explode.

We can't do that. We have to s- really stay focused on the huge chunk of our energy that is here or in [00:21:00] the vicinity of our material body, and we just kind of go with that. We're just going with that because that lets our brain function in this particular realm. So what Samael was saying was that we don't have to worry so much, and in other words, please don't worry so much about every single life and every single place you've ever visited in the past because you are visiting and revisiting things, or other versions of your energy are probably bonking into those like pool balls all the time, and we are still able to move forward here.

We cannot keep track of a human brain of all of our effects, but human brain is what us listening to the podcast and being on the podcast today are currently saddled with, or at least this portion of our energy is saddled with. So he's kinda like, "Don't worry, [00:22:00] kids. We'll keep an eye on the ninety-- nine hundred and fiftieth dimension for you.

Y'all just continue on ahead and have your ham sandwich, right? It's gonna be fine." We can't keep track of all of the eventualities, and we don't have to worry that if it's so big that it's going to impact us, the guides are also there to help us navigate that. I hope I did a better job. 

Jennifer Taylor: Yeah. 

as much as I can understand of what that is, it sounds like this is... It's pretty much the way that you had described it when you had described it on a Marco. So, I think there's another question that I realize I have for him based on the idea that, we have parts of our energy in, lots of different timelines, lots of different, places at the same time.

[00:23:00] There's a, like, theory, I guess, that I've heard that essentially, we're living, really all living parallel lives. That essentially all of the lives that we've had are really, like, parallel to this one. they weren't really past lives and there aren't really future lives.

There's just kind of which one of these lifetimes we're currently bringing our consciousness and focus in. But that we're actually living all of these lives simultaneously. So I wanted to kind of put that out there, and see if that, resonates. And part of that, 

There's a woman, and I can't remember her name, but she does work with, past life things. But she works with the idea that essentially they're all in different realms that we're not currently tapped into right now, and that you can actually, connect with... Like let's say you just made a [00:24:00] major discovery of, "Oh my goodness, this is who I am," or, like, I just discovered Omnivara, for example.

And I'm like, "Oh my goodness, I remember. I remember." I can take a moment and consciously send to the 'me' that's searching for this the wisdom and the information of the discovery of Omnivara.

And I can also reach into the future. Let's say I'm trying to figure out how, how to do something or what's going on. I can also reach across to the 'me' that's already figured it out and receive information that way. So it's like you can help the versions of you that are still looking and searching, and you can also, reach out to the versions of you that have- already figured out the best way to do this and receive information that way.

And I feel like I have done that. and whether my interpretation of it is [00:25:00] correct, I definitely have had the experience of sharing information with a version of myself that didn't quite have it, and feeling like I was receiving guidance from a version of me that already had figured it out.

So I would be fascinated to see what his interpretation of all of that is. 

Tava Baird: All right, so this is interesting. He said when you were starting to talk about the parallel things, he said, "That is closer, yes. It is also a matter of the focuses of percentages, so to speak." W- we may have to get into that later.

And then in quotes, "Most," okay? "'Most' of you is a simplification of the process.'" I think what he's talking about now is I was trying to figure out, okay, well, wait a second, if my energy is scattered everywhere, is most of me here? Like, am I the prime source right now, or am I a [00:26:00] subsection of a bigger energy somewhere?

Right? Like, is the me that I perceive as me, me, or am I a toenail clipping to a greater me somewhere else? You know, like Yeah. How, exactly? And so he's trying to say... He said it is also a matter of the focus of percentages, so to speak. So I think what he's trying to say with that is it's hard to quantify an exact h- there's not 100% of me where he's going to go, "Tava, you are actually 20 6% of your energy.

And th- you know, uh, there's a 47% over in Canada right now." Like, that's a little too exact, right? and so I can't really think of myself as a percentage or a part of it. And he also talks about "most" being in quotes, that if I try to think about most, that's a simplification of the process. And then you used the word best, and he said, "Best is also relative.

[00:27:00] Information can absolutely be shared." But he wanted to caution us that while sometimes other versions of ourselves may have figured it out, often they are farther along or have a slightly different view of the process that allows us to figure it out in our current state. That doesn't mean that they necessarily have the end result.

So, because end also is sort of a linear timeline concept. So imagine that, you're a scientist working on problem here. Okay. And there's another scientist working on the same problem in Japan, and there's another scientist working on the exact same problem in Seattle, okay? Imagine that the Seattle scientists just started their work.

and imagine these are all versions of you. They can reach out to [00:28:00] the 'you' in Virginia and the 'you' in Japan and say, "What information do you have?" And both of those who are further along in the process, say Japan's been working on it two decades and you've been working on it, you know, one.

You guys can give a ton of information to the you in Seattle and say, "We've got two decades worth of analysis here. See if this helps you." And the one in Seattle goes, "Thank goodness. Hallelujah. Let me bring that in." But that we should add the disclaimer that the Virginia 'you' and the Japanese 'you' are in different environments doing different things in, uh, with a different background.

And Japan might say, "Now, Seattle, I don't know that this is exactly gonna work the same way in Seattle because your life and your applications and the water problem that you're trying to do in [00:29:00] Seattle is in a different environment from how it's been tested in Japan. Take that caveat." So in a similar way that we're reaching out to other versions of us, when they say they figured it out to us, they have so much more information that it absolutely looks like they are at the end point.

But because they are in a different environment and a different timeline, and they've interacted with different energies, that aspect of ourselves has differences and environmental differences that are different from where we are sitting right now. So we need to bring that information back and then go, "I need to keep in mind that when I try this experiment here, alterations may need to be made because this person was working what I consider to be four hundred years ago and without certain equipment that I have access [00:30:00] to.

This person was doing it, you know, nine moons away in a different dimension." Like that you might need to make adjustments because only you are exactly where you are with the particular bundle of integrations of the energies around you. Japan, you might have never known Keith Seattle you might never have known your child, right?

So because they are also on their own, they are a product of what they interact with. So I think what he's trying to say to us is you absolutely, if you have the ability to do this, part of your discovery of divine pattern, if you have the ability to reach out to these things, that is a unique journey that most humans can't make or even conceive of doing.

You know, like [00:31:00] probably if I went into my grocery store right now and there were 100 people in the grocery store, and I went up to each one and said, "Excuse me, can you tell me how often you time slip forward to your former self?" I'm probably gonna get one or none, right? So what you're doing is a unique form of work or a very specialized and rarefied form of work that you were like before you became embodied, you probably went, "I have the ability to do this.

Wow, what insight to divine pattern would that bring if I went down and became embodied and put this to work?" It'll make Michael do the tango 'cause he's so excited about all that divine pattern coming back that isn't going to be able to be replicated by anybody else. But we in our brains, we are trying to conceive of a multidimensional way of existing while [00:32:00] the necessary processing for that has been limited by the fact that we are in this realm.

equivalent to when I first started working with Samael, I wrote everything down, and now it feels like I am trying to type out on an old typewriter what a super computer is feeding to me, right? the processing speed is vastly different. So we and our listeners are people who are really working to look beyond the boundaries of the visual box that we find ourselves in as humans, but we have to understand our human limitations are going to inform that.

And that's okay 'cause after we die, we're gonna be back seeing this where we're like, "W- look at me at the center of a swirling vortex," and I remember all my past stuff and all my future stuff, and I know the 99 realms in which I am currently dancing, and I'm interacting, and I'm gonna [00:33:00] do the tango with Michael, you know?

So I hope that helps. 

Jennifer Taylor: Yes. I think it does. it makes sense the idea of even though I've kind of remembered or I've tapped into that information, it's gonna have to be different, and that's actually been my experience where I- Had, had this experience where I brought back this part of myself, this like shaman self and kind of woke it up, and I know you know all about that.

Yes. And- Yes, 

yes ... 

there was a sense of I have a knowledge, like a lot of what's coming through with Amnivara and the lessons and the guides and the things are things that I've done before in other incarnations. it's like I'm tapping into that information.

But I'm having to take that and figure out how do you do that now? You know, I'm not in an indigenous society in the Andes. You know, I'm in a [00:34:00] really different place. How do I bring that through in a way that's applicable and is, potent now and is something that resonates with people?

You know, it's still the same information, but it has to be adapted to this space and time and, this incarnation. And so It definitely resonates the idea that, you can get that inspiration, but it's not gonna be done exactly the same way.

Even if you're somebody that sees exactly how it's done, in another realm of version of yourself, it's gonna have to be adapted to your situation and your space and time and what you're bringing through uniquely in this. So, I'm not necessarily meant to do exactly what I was doing then, but bring- Right

through that energy in a new way. 

Tava Baird: exactly. And he just said, "Interpretation of static information changes." [00:35:00] And we see this over and over and over again. Imagine that you do get a bit of information from a former self of yours, right? You do have to adjust it and figure out how is this applicable on the path that the me that I am aware of that is right here, whatever percentage of that is, it doesn't really matter.

But how do I utilize that on my current conscious embodied divine path? We have seen- many, many, many times that Samael will give us piece of information. We write it down. Essentially, it appears static. it's staying still, right? like he said, what was the phrase you really liked, when you were editing last week?

It was like, "Hope is the greatest form of magic," or the greatest of magic. Or hope is the 

Jennifer Taylor: strongest magic, I think. 

Tava Baird: Hope is the strongest magic. Okay. So we have... A lot of times he will give us something like that, and we go, "Oh, that's so nice," right? And we [00:36:00] feel it, and we like it, and we write it down, and we, talk about it a little bit, and then we kind of set it aside.

And then six months pass, and suddenly something happens . And one of us goes, "Oh my God, do you remember that thing from six months ago?" And we go pull out this piece of information that hasn't changed. He hasn't repeated it or necessarily given us anything more to elaborate on it. But now, based on the circumstance that we are in, it hits differently, informs differently.

It is applied differently. And we go, "Oh my God, I totally know what Samael was talking about." And another six months pass . And silly us would come to discover that the last huge discovery we had was not as big as the one we are currently having. No, it's 

Jennifer Taylor: like that was just a piece of it. 

Tava Baird: That was just part of it, and it just keeps expanding.

and that's [00:37:00] one little phrase or one little piece of information. If you are constantly moving places through time, or what we think of as time, and connecting with your other selves and your other energies and the energy of your guides, and they are also constantly connecting with other entities, so their energy changes as they learn.

Any one little bit of information can be revisited again and again and again and again in order to look at it in different ways. And so I think we also have to be careful that if we do reach out to ourself in Japan and take something that is what feels like light years ahead of us and bring it back and apply, we also don't forget that that application needs to be revisited again and again and again.

And at some point, we may [00:38:00] wanna reach back out to Japan because Japan might go, "Hey, that thing I gave you two weeks ago, my bad. It turns out that when I was looking at it, I was only seeing it in two dimensions, and it's actually in 10." And that will then inform what we had. History, we see this with history all the time.

As a person with an archeology background and, someone who loves history, and I know there are historians out there listening to this, and I hope you will agree with me on this, our knowledge of history is only as good as our recent discovery or our recent find. And we misinterpret shit all the freaking time.

there are things that we don't know what they are, and so we put them in a category, or we have a hypothesis or a guess. But then a lot of times those misinterpretations are often compounded where one writer writes about it four hundred years [00:39:00] ago, and we assume that they were correct, so we cite them as a reference, and then someone cites us as a reference, and then God forbid it shows up on the internet, right?

And so we can compound truths, but we also can compound fallacies in our search for truth. And we have, in my humble opinion, way too many people who have such a linear view of things and such an embodied view of things that they go, "Well, I looked this up, and history says that this is absolutely the way it happened, and so that's the answer, and I can't believe you didn't know that."

The internet is literally dripping with this stuff, and it makes me so mad because, A, did you read every book on this subject? B, do you not realize that most books on this subject are written by the privileged few who have access [00:40:00] to time to write and platforms to publish their book on, right? History is written by the victors.

It's written by the most powerful. There are millions of voices who never got a book putten out-- put out. And so we have to take all the history that we read and understand that this is our best effort at this time. If I may get up on a slightly larger soapbox for a moment. 

Jennifer Taylor: I'll 

Tava Baird: make the squeaking sound of me pulling it over.

Okay. One of the other things that ticks me off, and I see this all the time by people who really want to establish themselves as knowledgeable on the internet, is I see articles like, "Ten books to never read when you are starting out in witchcraft." Do I crack these things open? Yes, I do, and [00:41:00] it's sad for my blood pressure rating, okay?

Any information we have is good, right? Even if it's simply information that says this person was horrible, and we need to not pay attention to them in our own opinions, or this person wrote this 200 years ago when their society, in their society, the society that they were raised in, concepts that we have today of equality did not even exist, and they were doing the absolute best they can.

Sometimes I see authors on those lists who were foundational people in the pagan community. Now, would I follow word for word what they do today? Absolutely not. But [00:42:00] I am practicing today, and my job as a pagan is not to blindly follow every single word that a previous pagan put down. If I wanted to do that, I could go back to church people, right?

I could find myself a building in my community where somebody was going to read to me the exact same sermon in Latin that had been read for two hundred or three hundred or even more years, and follow it to the letter without thinking for myself. The point of being pagan is to be able to have good judgment and to connect in your own way with your divine self and the divine around you, in my humble opinion.

When you put out a list for people who are exploring the pagan path that says, "Never look at these people," what you are doing is scaring them away from opportunities [00:43:00] to apply discernment of their own. A, how do I know that that list maker is somebody I would want to listen to? Perhaps they are somebody who, if I met them in real life, I would go, "I don't think your judgment's that great," right?

And I will tell you, the people that I respect most in the pagan community are the ones who read all the shitty books and put Post-its on them and come forward and say, "I need to let you know about this book. This person is misogynistic. They are racist. I think that their stuff is completely made up.

I have paper marked with a Post-it note all of the things that I don't agree with." That doesn't mean that reading that book and figuring out where your own [00:44:00] Post-its are isn't going to help you understand where your morals are versus theirs. There is still a benefit to reading that awful book, if only to go, "Holy Krakatoa, I would not recommend this to people in my circle."

But that doesn't mean that you should try to wipe it out. If we took out all of the references to things that we thought were bad from circulation, then there would be no discussion. Then we're looking at burning books in the street. I read all the crappy demonology books so people who trust me can and I don't say, "Don't ever read this."

I say, "I think this is crap. You know me pretty well. It'll be a really pr- pretty wild ride." [00:45:00] But it is still part of our information in the human world. Somebody believed it enough to write that book at one point, which means that it should still be accessible for people who have a background where they believe they can discern.

Now, if you are brand new at something and you have absolutely no ... Like I know this last weekend, I called up a friend of mine who was raised Jewish, and I said, "I just found an entire branch of my family tree where everybody appears to be Jewish, and I know absolutely nothing about the different branches of Judaism, how they relate to one another, their history, how people practice today.

I need a 101 course." And she went, "No problem." Right? I went and I found [00:46:00] somebody who I trusted, who, uh, who I know whose morals are in alignment with my own, and asked them to start giving me resources so that I could then discern. I had a place to start, right? But am I going to take every bad book off of the reading list for the future?

No, because reading both the good and the bad, if I am in a knowledgeable place of discernment, could be really helpful to those that I then advise. Okay, soapbox going back. Done. 

Jennifer Taylor: It always cracks me up when I see something where they're like, "Never do this. Never read these things," and I often wonder, I'm like, is that actually a ploy by the people who wrote these books to get people to [00:47:00] read them?

And I don't remember who this is. Somebody told me this, and it's possible it was you, that their parents had taken, like, all of the classics that you would really want your kids to have read, and they put them in this, locked, curio and said, "No, you are not allowed, you are never allowed to read these things.

These are not for you. You cannot read these books," and locked it, and then put the key somewhere where they knew, the kids knew where it was. And they, and I think they said their brother would sneak and unlock the curio and sneak out the books, and read all of them because- Oh, my God

they were forbidden. You know- Right ... it was like, whatever you do, do not read these books." And so it always cracks me up when I see things like that where they're like, "Just don't read this. Just don't," whatever, and I'm like, "Is this actually, like, a psychology ploy by the people who make these things 

Because it's like [00:48:00] that, that kind of teenager or young kid kind of thing where it's like the first thing you wanna do is whatever somebody just told you not to do. Right. So that always cracks me up. So I was thinking about that when you were talking about, you know, "Don't read these books."

It's like, "Well, now I wanna know what's in those books." 

Tava Baird: Right. Right. Exactly. And, you could go down this path so much. The other thing that, makes me a little crazy at times about the internet is that people think that once something has been discovered, all of us are immediately informed, and that is absolutely not the case.

I'll give you a really good example that happened this week. Okay. So back when I was a teenager, when I was first starting out on my pagan path, somebody gave me the Marion Zimmer Bradley book, The Mists of Avalon, right? It's a very famous book. I'm sure a lot of you listening have heard of it or read it.

It's a massive book. If you [00:49:00] are a 13-year-old, person in I guess it would've been the mid-'80s, who was into fantasy and was frantically trying to get your hands on anything that looked like it had magic inside it without your parents knowing, this would've been a fantasy book that you picked up.

It was a bestseller, right? And but it was one of the first places that they talked about, like, there was, you know, Morgan Le Fay was in there, and the idea of Avalon, and an isle of witches, right? And I loved that book. I absolutely did. And over the years, I passed that on to book, on to other people.

So it turns out that while I was online the other day, I come to find out that apparently ... Now, Marion Zimmer Bradley has passed on. But turns out that after her death, one of her children basically accused her of child molestation, [00:50:00]and all of these abuse allegations came out, and there's this whole story.

And I mean, it's bad, people. It's bad, right? And of course, you go, "Ugh," because, A, that book, you know, it's very hard for us to separate good art from bad people, right? That book was foundational for me. It was the book, it was the first time I had ever read a fantasy book beyond A Wrinkle In Time, where the

A Wrinkle in Time would have been the first one. It was probably the second fantasy book I ever read that had major female characters in power. And second, that actually talked about Celtic witchcraft, Or what I perceived Celtic witchcraft to be at the time. It was, it meant a lot to me, and now I come to find out that the author oh, [00:51:00] boy.

So I can't tell you how many people I'd recommended that book to over the years. But what I also found jarring is the fact that apparently these accusations were made, like, I guess a decade ago or s- but I don't sit around in the evenings and Google the names of the, every author that I've ever read and look and see if there are charges being brought against them.

Don't. I'm just not also on the internet that much. so what I find all the time is that there are people going, um, "Well, how did you not know about this?" And I'm like, "Do you have any idea how much information's out there?" You know? Like, I'm trying to, like, run things in my day-to-day life.

When I find something out like that, that I read or, God forbid, recommended an author whose background at the time was not known and that I didn't know, [00:52:00] you know, I'm having, I'm having some grief right now, man. But I, we all need to keep in mind that we need to give each other a little bit of grace in terms of what information is available to us, and that we also need, in my opinion, to have a wider berth In terms of, I'm just going to take this information blindly, you know?

So I spend a huge part of my days calming people down who read something on the internet. And when you used that word discernments a couple of times earlier, that discernment is a major thing that we have to cultivate all along, and we also have to give each other grace as other people are forming their own discernments.

Um, I am not perfect, and will never be, [00:53:00] but we're all doing our best. 

Jennifer Taylor: Yep, absolutely. 

Tava Baird: So- Well, 

Jennifer Taylor: yeah, I feel like we have probably brought this episode to a close, I think. Yes. Or we can maybe, uh, sing and bring everything back to a nice settled place. 

Tava Baird: Would be great, 'cause now I'm fired up, Jenn. I know. We 

Jennifer Taylor: need 

Tava Baird: to- 

Jennifer Taylor: My soapbox, my soapbox made me too- We need to calm Tava 

Tava Baird: down

we need to calm me down. 

Jennifer Taylor: Calm the Tava. Everybody 

Tava Baird: send me a little tiny bit of... No, no, how about take a little bit of this energy and use it for a good purpose? Um, because- Yeah, don't worry, 

Jennifer Taylor: I'll calm the Tava. 

Tava Baird: She'll calm the Tava. She'll pat my... What do... Sea turtles, have you ever tried to calm down a sea turtle?

Jennifer Taylor: I have not. Okay, that- 

Tava Baird: I would 

Jennifer Taylor: like to ... 

Tava Baird: that may need to be the episode title, have you ever tried to calm down a sea turtle? I was on my honeymoon with my husband, and we went to a sea [00:54:00] turtle, like, preservation place in the Caribbean. I can't remember exactly where it was. But they showed us how you could take a baby sea turtle and turn it on its back and stroke its neck, and it will go from flippy, flippy, flippy to, like, a really slow flip, and then its little eyes will close.

Oh. They love to have their, under their necks massaged. Oh. Um, so yes, I just had this mental picture that your song is going to flip me over on my back and stroke my little sea turtle neck- ... until I stop flapping my little fins. Um, and then maybe when we come back for part two, I think it might be fun to dive into this "and/or" nugget that Samael gave us, if you're up for it.

Jennifer Taylor: Sure, yeah. Absolutely. Well, sounds good. Well, I will attempt to calm the sea turtle. I think just even the image of having a sea turtle and flipping them over and rubbing their little neck [00:55:00] and watching them just relax, like, that's- That's calming and soothing just in itself, just imagining that. What a cool, like, self-soothing bringing yourself back down technique.

Yeah. Do- we can just call it, yeah, calming the sea turtle, where if you just imagine- Stroke the turtle, people ... yeah. It's like you know, when you get really worked up, just imagining yourself as a little sea turtle and being flipped over and just stroke it, you know, just relaxing like that. Just that image- Mm-hmm

in itself I feel like could be kind of a powerful, uh, self-help tool. 

Tava Baird: And now Sea Turtle Stroking by Jack Handy. Do you guys remember that- ... from Saturday Night Live? 

Jennifer Taylor: Yes. 

Tava Baird: Saturday Night Live, if you're not up on it, used to have this, I think it was in the '90s, used to have a segment called Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy, and it always started with, like, a nature picture in slow motion and this really chill music.

Like, it was going to give [00:56:00] you a meditative thought for the day, and the thoughts were always insane.

Jennifer Taylor: Oh my gosh, I haven't thought about that in so long. 

Tava Baird: Oh, sea turtle. I'm sorry, you guys, if you're in the car listening to this and you're on the way to somewhere where you had to be calm, and I just did a Tava rant. But, um, yeah. 

Jennifer Taylor: That's okay. We're, we're gonna calm the sea turtle now. Mm. Every- bring everyone- Flippy, flippy, flippy

back into a nice centered, grounded place. All right. So let's see what Michael and, I'd usually Samael, will have to say to bring this time together to a close.

Tava Baird: [00:57:00] [00:58:00] [00:59:00] That was so lovely and soothing. Thank you. I feel like we should put some sort of warning at the beginning of this episode. If you are trying to be calm, do not listen to Tava in this episode. Skip. 

Jennifer Taylor: I don't know. I think they could feel it coming. They could decide- Ooh ... whether they wanna keep going or not.

Tava Baird: Maybe we need to put in, like, a sound effect as I start getting fired up that's like a truck backing up, like, beep, 

Jennifer Taylor: beep, beep. You did actually make the sound of dragging over the soapbox. Okay. So in, in fairness, there was fair warning. 

Tava Baird: Um, apparently you weren't the only one calming me down because listen to this from Samael: "Keep this in consideration.

Because it is written does not mean it must gain power. Information is not your God. You are your [01:00:00] God. Information aids the divine being in much the same way that an angel informs the host. You may have your holy books, the words of teachers revered, the scrolls that opened your eyes in this incarnation.

But they are artifacts of the faith of you, signposts on the pilgrimage of your true self, candles on the path to the temple where you reside. I am the Word, Umshallah, but even I am not the All." 

Jennifer Taylor: Very nice. 

Tava Baird: That's Samael's way of saying, "Calm down, kid." 

Jennifer Taylor: there was a lot in there. Thank you. 

Tava Baird: So, so 

And we hope you all have a week that is in balance, and peaceful, and full of good mentors [01:01:00] and good information for your journey 

Jennifer Taylor: And discernment and peace. 

Tava Baird: Absolutely. See you soon.