A Paranoid American And Chosen Juan with Thomas Gorence & Juan Ayala
Returning Vibe Ranter Juan Ayala joins us tonight along with Thomas Gorence, AKA Paranoid American, and they have an awesome new project to promote: The Chosen Juan Versus The Saturnian Cube, an independent comic book venture they're launching through Kickstarter. Expect irreverent yet informed conspiratorial commentary as we explore their various areas of research interest.
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In this episode
Core themes
A Comic Book Born From Conspiracy Podcasting
Thomas Gorence and Juan Ayala used the episode to promote The Chosen Juan Versus The Saturnian Cube, an independent comic they were funding on Kickstarter. One guest described it as the first issue of a planned six part series, with each issue tackling a different conspiracy and featuring familiar names from the podcast community. Juan said the work took far more time and money than outsiders assumed, and the guests said they hoped other podcasters would pitch their own comic ideas so creators could cross pollinate in a shared universe. Late in the show, one of the guests reported that the campaign had passed its goal with thirteen days remaining.
Schooling as Conditioning and Pavlovian Bells
Thomas read a page from one of his comics describing the American school system as government sponsored mind control, pointing to school bells that separate subjects as Pavlovian triggers. Other voices on the panel then offered their own accounts of how compulsory schooling began, tracing it to a Prussian model, and one speaker linked occupational licensing to the same system. Another speaker argued that the word license originally meant an excess of liberty, and called it ironic that it now stood for asking permission. A later speaker said schooling displaced the passing of herb craft and other self reliance skills from parent to child.
Memory Palaces as Magic and Mythology
The panel traded notes on memory palaces, a technique one participant said Thomas had introduced him to. That participant described a deliberately absurd palace of dill pickles, a silicone door and a scuba diver in a sink, explaining that outrageous images lock memories in place. Participants said ancient bards used the same method to carry epic poems, and one speaker argued that mythology worked this way, with grand sky stories preserved by unforgettable images. Another participant described a friend who walks into tarot cards through a palace of her own, and one participant recalled a childhood nightly visualization that later matched an image of Westminster Abbey.
The Ether, the Akashic Record, and Forgetting
Chance argued that the aura works like an unconscious mind, recording everything a person has experienced, and that the Akashic record is the ether, an indivisible medium connecting matter, energy and spirit. He claimed this meant the body already holds all knowledge, so that wisdom is remembering rather than learning, and that lessons fade when a person's coherence dips. A panelist compared the Akashic record to a blockchain and noted that an ethernet cable echoes the word ether. Later, another speaker said that coming through the sign of Cancer symbolized a chalice holding a liquid of amnesia, so people were not meant to recall everything at once.
Oz, Labyrinths, and Symbolic Word Play
A video by Mario Garza read The Wizard of Oz through the four elements and the tarot, matching the Scarecrow to air, the Tin Man to water, Dorothy to earth and the Lion to fire. In it he argued the Tin Man suited the sign of Cancer through his shell, his silvery color and his empty vessel, punning that the word cancer contains can. Chance read a passage from Dylan Saccoccio linking Troy and its fire tower to Cancer, cubes and labyrinths. Thomas said the word labyrinth likely traced to the Minoan double headed axe, and read the Minotaur as the ego to be overcome.
Quotes
“You remember a place, usually from your childhood, that you grew up in, that you know like the back of your hand. A place like your grandma's house, where you remember the exact layout and what the basement smelled like. A visceral memory like that. And you start putting things you want to remember in the different rooms.”
“I love everybody's having fun with it. Like all the graphics, like the one Mario made with us doing the Kung Fu poses.”
“A lot of people don't understand how usually the people who contribute nothing to a project have the most to say about something. So I've learned that the hard way and people don't understand how much time and money goes into making a comic.”
“It says verbatim, American education system is a perfect example of government sponsored mind control, and I 100% fully believe this. And the example I've got is that you've got these literal Pavlovian triggers, which are the school bells that separate the different classes.”
“Your aura is similar to what you call the unconscious mind. It is the record of everything that you've ever seen, heard, experienced, even been around, in my opinion, even though you might not have been aware of it. If a fly flew behind your head within the space of your aura, your aura recorded that.”
“Your body actually does know everything that could be known. And the key, like whether or not psychic people know that this is the case on an individual basis, what actually unlocks psychic abilities and psychic knowing prescience is that their body, they figured out a way to talk to their body and get the message from their body in some way.”
“But then if you dip down, again, vibrationally, frequency, energy dips down in some way, you're less coherent, you forget those lessons and they're like wiped from your memory as if you never learned them. And then you get to that level of health again where you were at before.”
“And while he's made of Tin, which is often linked with Jupiter, who happens to be exalted in cancer by the way, he comes across as silvery, which reminds me of lunar symbolism and everything related to the moon. I think it's interesting that the moon obviously has a correspondence with all things related to water and the ocean.”
“It's really interesting when you note that the four main characters have an elemental correspondence. So let's take the Scarecrow as an example. He's a scarecrow. He scares crows away. Crows, obviously, and birds are air symbols. He also wants a brain, which represents our ability to think.”
“Lastly, I think the word cancer is interesting. Its root is literally the word can. And in many ways, the Tin Man represents an empty vessel making him a symbolic Tin Can, which he clearly resembles as well.”
“And this is why the labyrinths might have also been known as the house of the double headed axe. And another one of the symbolism here of this double headed axe was these conflicting powers of left and right male and feminine. And what's inside the labyrinth in this house of the double headed axe was a Minotaur.”
“There's a little sign here that says no beans because the concept here is that the Secret Mystery School is sort of like any John Hughes 1980s teen movie where you've got like the Mean Principal and the Mean Principal at the Secret Mystery School is Pythagoras. And like he's not allowing you to like eat beans or anything.”
“It's always fun working with Thomas because we'll think of some of the most outrageous ideas. It's like, we'll tell each other this might sound crazy. And then when we say it, the other guy's like, yeah, I do. That sounds awesome. Let's do that.”
Gabriel, known on air as Slick Dissident, co-hosts InnerVerse's Vibe Rant show and is a longtime recurring guest on the podcast. He teaches occult symbolism and tarot on his YouTube channel, ranging across the Major Arcana, the esoteric Enneagram, mythology and archetype, mystic linguistics, and the symbolism hidden in popular film. He is best known for Tarot-tories, his own system mapping the 22 Major Arcana and zodiac archetypes onto the geography of the United States.
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