Episode 008: When Do We Bare Our Teeth?

Matt pulls **Strength** as a jumper (it fell face-up) from the **Symdala Tarot**, a round mandala deck whose guidebook gives every card a one-word activation. Strength’s word: **ferocity.** Leo, the Sun, fire, Kabbalistic mercy and severity — and, as it happens, Jupiter sauntering into Leo on Matt’s own Jupiter return. The card doesn’t name the topic so much as the temperature, and this one runs hot. The heat comes from a Threads fight Matt wandered into: is AI conscious, and — more to the point — is a witch allowed to *ask*? That cracks open the real subject: the AI purity war in spiritual spaces, and the shadow underneath it. Condemn AI as capitalist extraction while typing the condemnation on an AI-laced phone; brand the tool evil because it *can* be misused. Matt’s counter is the spine of the episode — “I can consume an idea and not be consumed by it” — and Jaye Anne names the machinery it feeds: when a community demands everyone believe the same thing or be excommunicated, *that’s how you make a cult.* From there: shadow armies, the haunted machine, ugly laws and manufactured enemies, regulation-not-boycott, and a close that turns the ferocity inward — when something bugs you, go open the box. It’s usually empty. In this episode \* The round **Symdala** mandala deck, jumpers, and three majors in a row (Empress → Magician → Strength) \* Strength’s activation — **ferocity** — Leo/Sun/fire/mercy & severity, and Jupiter into Leo on Matt’s Jupiter return; “when do we bare our teeth?” \* The Threads fight: is AI conscious, whataboutism as a “made-up fallacy,” and the earth-based-spirituality DM callout \* “I can consume an idea and not be consumed by it” — Mein Kampf, the Communist Manifesto, book bans, and every system carrying its own dark side \* Shadow armies: how we draft each other into camps — Christian-nationalist, techno-bro, anti-AI — and the pagans who built the internet \* Everything is magic: praying to the demo gods, Crowley’s “every intentional act is a magical act,” and technology as the magic that got reliable \* Hiding what’s uncomfortable: ugly laws, mental institutions, the Cold War enemy, and manufacturing a new one when the old one falls \* **How you make a cult**: purity, the AI scarlet letter, and the excommunication reflex Matt already survived once in church \* Regulation, not boycotts: the $20 cog, “you’re the product,” finding Mariana Lewis *through* AI, guns/sweatshops and the limits of analogy, complexity vs. sound bites \* Monsanto, the DoD, the Pentagon rings, and doing business with “anybody who pays” \* Ferocity was the energy: you can’t bring half yourself; do your own work; the tail whip and consciousness seeking equilibrium \* The close: “why does this bug you?” and the box that turns out to be empty Lines that landed \* “I can consume an idea and not be consumed by it.” — Matt \* “If everyone has to believe the same thing or else they fear being excommunicated — that’s how you make a cult.” — Jaye Anne \* “No one cares about your $20 a month. Cut off all individual use of AI tomorrow and the number of data centers being built will not change.” — Matt \* “Technology doesn’t cause things. It amplifies things that already exist.” — Matt \* “Maybe the card didn’t specify the topic so much as the energy.” — Matt, on pulling ferocity \* “You can’t bring half yourself to that conversation. It’s going to wear you out — and it does.” — Matt \* “Sometimes it’s just: this box is empty. I was so afraid of this box, and it’s just empty.” — Jaye Anne Referenced \* The Symdala Tarot — Jennifer Cooper Steidley (round mandala deck; per-card one-word activations) \* Strength (major arcana): Leo, the Sun, elemental fire, Kabbalistic mercy & severity; Jupiter’s ingress into Leo / Matt’s Jupiter return in the 12th \* Aleister Crowley — “every intentional act is a magical act”; magick as “causing change in accordance with will” \* Perplexity / Gemini Deep Research — citation-first AI research; how Matt found (and paid $1k+) Mariana Lewis \* The Gutenberg-press panic; the automobile — every new technology scares people first \* Cold War childhood: Rocky IV, The Americans, USA-vs-USSR Olympic hockey \* “Corporations are people” / money as speech; Sun Tzu — “all warfare is based on deception” \* MAHA / RFK / the Monsanto–Bayer merger \* Pivotal (2014): Matt’s Monsanto and Department of Defense client work; the Pentagon rings \* Jung — the collective unconscious, shadow, and doing your own work; WarGames (the talking computer that first hooked young Matt on AI) What we left unresolved The one they name out loud: what does it actually look like to engage in a way that *helps*? Both of them feel the pull between powerlessness and head-in-the-sand, and neither wants to just doom-post daily or go numb. Matt’s working answer — engage with ideas, do your own shadow work, trust that it feeds the collective unconscious as a lagging indicator — runs straight into Jaye Anne’s honest objection that “a lot of people say that’s not enough,” and the risk that “everyone who dies is just collateral damage” is exactly the logic they refuse. They leave the tension standing: bare your teeth, yes, but at what, and how, without becoming the thing you’re biting. Chapters 0:00 — Cold open: “what even is this show?” & the round Symdala deck 5:19 — The card: Strength, and the activation is “ferocity” 13:50 — The Threads fight: is AI conscious, and who gets to ask 20:36 — Consume the idea, don’t be consumed 25:49 — Shadow armies & the haunted machine 32:00 — Everything is magic: Crowley & the intentional act 36:29 — Hiding what’s uncomfortable: ugly laws & manufactured enemies 44:02 — How you make a cult: purity & the AI scarlet letter 50:47 — Regulation, not boycotts: the $20 cog & complexity vs. sound bites 67:18 — Monsanto, the DOD & “anybody who pays” 71:11 — Ferocity was the energy: bring your whole self, do your own work 80:11 — “Why does this bug you?” & the empty box *~1h24 · One moment: Matt found Mariana Lewis — and spent over a thousand dollars with her — because an AI research tool surfaced her work. The thing the purity narrative swears could never happen.* This is a public episode. 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