The Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism: religious myth, visionary plants, frozen block universe, & transformation of personal control. Copyright Š 2026 Michael Hoffman (Cybermonk).
I am realizing that instead of writing and then noting Decoding connections during writing lately my date timestamps of particular Decoding realizations occur while monologue voiceover recording the Egodeath Mystery Show episodes. this can be difficult to locate on demand the timestamp and I want to log that timestamp in text but the advantage the good thing is you hear me actually working out and discovering the decoding in real time
but this voice dictation weblog format created on mobile device is it kind of a compromise in between heavyweight typing at the computer vs lightweight realtime voice recording.
for example I believe last night April 15, 2022 during recording the episode is when I talked through the salamander and came to realize I interpreted the right paw touching the (non branching) cap – And also discovered during the show , that the tail is touching the trunk of the mushroom tree.
Also another example I did a very deep discussion of the Mushroom banqueting table in Canterbury, that would really be hard to type well I would have to type fewer words on the computer but I can record a voice recording this very very detailed working out and
talking through the banquet scene with the interpreting deep interpretation of each hand on the table, each hand that’s touching a bowl, who owns each bowl, and re-dosing delayed second dose
working out my argument of why the left bowl was the first dose of Cubensis and
why the artist , using our ESP , we can detect and receive the message from the artist
the artist is indicating , if we read the signs that the artist has left, to indicate that the right hand bowl of Cubensis was just finished probly two hours after the first bowl
through speaking while voice recording, I argued that we can detect that this is not the first trip of the youth, but that the artist does depict & signal indicate that this is the first trip of the maiden.
I believe that talking through with the voice of talking through the art image with the voice is more effective for deep ESP interpretation to read the indicators that the artist has left cues and indications that we are better talking through it as if there’s an image and there’s you and there’s me and I’m talking through the image with my voice teaching you of how to read the image as if I am teaching you a language a foreign language I did a massive amount of that explanation by type
Typing at the computer but it is striking the things that I noticed and I was always complaining of why was I so blind why was I so blind that I did not see this totally obvious aspect because I was too busy being stupid with the overhead the stupefying overhead of the typing burden was making me stupid but I feel like I’m smarter when I’m talking it through with my voice when there is no overhead and I can talk as quickly as I need to with zero burden and it’s all caught on voice recording and then I can slow down a little bit and do voice dictation while still recording which I have done in about two or three times now a very powerful technique
this is a new discovery I have idea development technique that combines writing and fast speaking and audio and slower speaking and reading all at the same time
it is true that I am able to work that out by typing at the computer but it is a different mode of idea development to talk that through during voice recording an episode of the Egodeath Mystery Show. and to the extent that that mode of idea development is effective this means that I will inevitably make discoveries while in the midst of recording my monologue and then I see the date and time stamp to log my breakthrough connection Interpretation I mean that in the sense of the book conceptual revolutions by Paul Thagard that at this time a revision to the theory was made f
or example in my criteria proof evidence article for Brown I made a chapter in November 2020 interpreting the Roasting Salamander Image and I made a mistake that I did not notice that the salamander is touching the mushroom tree and I merely analyzed the image as if the salamander were placed in parallel that’s what I wrote was parallel and that’s not quite right / adequate. yes the shape of the snake with legs Branching is contrast against Branching Mushroom tree but also the mind after enlightenment is shown as the snake with legs is physically connected or the picture of it is connected touching the important word here is touching the snake with legs is touching the non-brand Nonbranching parts of the mushroom tree which can indicate comprehension and affirmation
unlike the incomplete Salamander at the fire which is shown definitely not touching and not comprehending and not affirming any aspect of the Mushroom tree
yes I am able to work out these things but through typing but I failed to notice it why did I failed to notice that touching in November 2020 when I was typing at the computer on a broken keyboard from too much typing and I am accusing the overhead of typing is reducing my perspicuity I propose that I have better acuity and perspicuity when I am talking in a voice recording or maybe voice
dictation then when I have the cognitive stupefying cognitive overhead of having to type on a keyboard.
I am really arguing that my intelligence is the highest with this voice dictation format and in fact
what I have done almost by accident is interesting that during the recording a voice recording during an episode of the Egodeath Mystery Show,
two or three times now I have had occasion to do voice dictation to create and write a written text weblog page while literally recording the voice recording at the same time
this has the advantage of being able to see /read your thoughts in the form of text, without the overhead of typing, and with the ease of speaking, and then I capture it both as a voice recording and as voice transcription To text.
this is very powerful! it combines speaking and text creation, without any overhead (except for making corrections) without any overhead of typing or hand writing.
I do note such timestamps the time and date during recording with my voice, but it would be nice – I should use my webpage that is Intended for exactly this kind of logging
it’s a weblog page I created on computer
I have a little bit of an issue because there’s a synchronization bug losing data; if I edit a web blog post on the computer and also on mobile device, I am likely to lose data.
so for the time being
I need to create a web blog page specifically to be edited on mobile only, not on computer, so that during voice recording as I’m talking through art interpretation and I make observations and I make I make progress on interpreting the artwork and I make a discovery – for example the tail of the salamander after roasting is touching the trunk nonbranching of the tree –
I could then for example use mobile device and use voice dictation to edit that mobile specific web blog page and add a date timestamp there
and make a note at the top of my wordpress pages of “only edit this page with computer” or “only the edit this page with mobile app, else lose data”
This page will help me get clearer on the relationship and content of Samorini’s two articles, along with his Italian book (.pdf).
This page was a bit of a mystery, along with some confusion: there was some info mis-placed here about the 1998 article instead, and this URL is incoherent “Plaincourault trees”.
Anyway I did end up again printing and reading this 1997 Samorini article, around the time I created this webpage.
I was looking for checking my list from February 2021 to check what words that I said need to be moved out of the spotlight and I wasn’t quite finding a page with the words in the title that I was looking for and
I found cross-section of different phrases and words and ideas than I expected
for example “switch from Christianity in the spotlight to Christianity (or Christendom) plus Hellenism should be in the spotlight”
I am recording an episode of the Egodeath Mystery Show right now , and it just occurred to me that the lone word ‘Mushroom’ is no longer usable.
the word ‘Mushrooms’ is no longer usable by me, because in the pop urban dictionary, in practice, the word ‘Mushrooms’ has become completely re-defined as a absolute synonym for Amanita.
just like if I say the phrase Italian pine, that is guaranteed miscommunication and the wrong word because you will be forced to picture a Christmas tree instead of an umbrella pine.
similarly, if I use the word Mushrooms, that is guaranteed the wrong word and miscommunication, because it will force you to picture mentally picture amanita.
mushrooms===đ
that is the absolute extent
it is not Thomas Hatsis’s fault
he’s a confused person trying to straighten out the thinking of confused people and they are all confused
they have all confused each other
and hatshis mistakes himself or being outside of that confusion but he proves that he is embedded in that very same confusion himself because he literally thinks and in fact asserts that in this field the word Mushrooms definitely does not include Psilocybin
he told me that himself
he said psilocybin is anachronistic and therefore the word Mushrooms in this topic field literally is a synonym of the word Amanita
he is completely gone ; he’s lost
he literally explicitly asserts and declares explicitly to me (personal correspondence)
Hatsis literally is arguing explicitly and pointedly he says that the word Mushrooms is in fact an exact synonym of the Amanita and that he is not conflating the words but that they are literally exact synonyms in this field of Christian entheogen history
Hatsis denies that he’s conflating the word Mushrooms and Amanita because he explicitly denies that psilocybin has any role in Christian history and
he thinks that amanita has no role either and that the subject as Letcher says
the subject of mushrooms in Christianity only exists in the popular mind and that in the popular mind mushrooms is an exact synonym of the Amanita
therefore to the extent that hatsus speaks truth that in the popular mind Amanita is 100% synonymous with mushrooms in the Christian context, this means that by definition, per the urban dictionary, it is not possible for me to employ the word Mushrooms in an inclusive sense that includes Psilocybin, because the word mushrooms in fact means amanita according to the popular mind
therefore bizarrely,
I just realized that a major flaw in my article about criteria of proof and evidence and compelling and interpretation is that the current version of the article employs the word Mushrooms as if the word includes Psilocybin in the christian and History context
but that violates the popular definition of the word Mushrooms in this context which by definition excludes Psilocybin and exclusively means đ as an exact synonym
therefore in this field I am incorrect in using the word Mushrooms in an inclusive sense
I have been using language in contradiction of the de facto common English language
I cannot simply use the word Mushrooms as if it includes Psilocybin
I either have to write Psilocybin or write the entire phrase Psilocybin Mushrooms
but I must treat the isolated word Mushrooms as an exact synonym of the word Amanita, within the context of Christian history
Irvin – the Holy Mushroom – bleh i cant stomach wasson allegro baloney denial non engagement; the non-debate, the Wasson avoidance strategy, cover-up story to prop up his direct conflict of interest. An operative for the Salvation Salesmen; are we to have a good-faith debate with bad-faith actors?
Erik Davis – Led Zep IV album commentary, with 1 page on the Egodeath theory
1923 german book translated, greek myth, B&N Press, may be out of print. I totally should’ve bought this. Snap up while in hand. Nice printing. I will go to same store to look for it.
Richard Carrier’s book on Jesus from outer space. I have high hopes for this book.
Fancy deluxe printing of Graves Greek Myth.
otoh read myth sites; glancing at myth sites online has been like the Egodeath Yahoo Group: instantly overwhelming with more connections than I can handle; like rows 2 & 3 of the Canterbury Psalter “mushroom tree/ hanging/ sword” image comic panel, I couldn’t look at them, bc too many overwhelming connections.
almost forgot, colleague is forcing me to read Brian Muraresku – The Immortality Key. bc archaeology chemical = Evidence hunt. Proof = Spot the Entheogen Object.
I dreamed that entheogen scholar Richard Carrier, I was at a house in other room overhearing him talking to another person or two about Hatsis and Letcher, and all his points exactly agreed with my points!
He mentioned articulately all the same points I’ve been making. eg he said Letcher was excusable as a pop outsider, not a solid entheogen scholar.
He seemed like a new gen cohort of Hatsis.
I felt that the field of entheogen scholarship was in good hands.
He realized exactly the situation and was calling for heavy distinction, moving forward, between Amanita vs. Psilocybin mushrooms.
He was the good aspects of sharp ahistoricity scholar Richard Carrier, cast as an astute entheogen scholar.
Fortunately he was recording all his speaking on a cassette deck, so we got it all on dream tape.
Then I started recording my same statements, but a vacuum cleaner disrupted.
Then I was meeting with church guy like by a lake, he needed an extra tape I had.
then i went with church guy to a big church room and he put on my tape playing it before the service, with me talking about amanita madness psychosis overemphasis in the state of the field, criticizing Hatsis and the state of the field.
I wondered why he put on my tape.
No one commented on the content of my recording playing before the church service.
I was heading out, not staying for the service, because my mainstream church became taken over by bunk politics.
But this group was implicitly a large gathering of my collegiate house church, which was solidly bible-focused.
in reality, my recordings of Egodeath Mystery Show were playing; I may have been hearing my own discussion.
I’m sort of annoyed by my failure/ delay to put some images side-by-side, when clearly, it should be crystal clear that there’s every benefit in the world of putting two images side-by-side.
therefore I should do a series of webpages that compare and contrast two images
line up the 10 best images and pair them and do exercises: discuss the common motifs that are common between these two images.
Splayed Index Finger (I, non-branching Eternalism) Separate from Grouped Splayed Middle, Ring, Index (Y, branching Possibilism): It’s an IY Branching Form
[Feb. 23, 2026]
I now am confident about many aspects of his finger segments, since I have honed and refined my reading and studied many hands by various artists in the medieval art genre of {mushroom-trees}.
Certainly, I read his Index finger as, “indicated as separate from the 3 fingers”.
Perfect answer for “Why is Index drawn so F’d up?”
Ans: To separate the Index finger from the 3 splayed fingers.
The Index finger is not only splayed, but a different shape. Within the genre, for literate readers, this is consistent.
The Index serves as I non-branching Eternalism.
The 3 grouped fingers (splayed, here) serve as Y branching Possibilism.
I’m confident now, that that’s the vector to read these 4 fingers from.
Right Branch Cross-Behind; Visually {cut right branch}
In this panel, all 3 trees’ branches under cap (= gills + veil, to depict block time non-branching) have Right branch cross-behind; visually {cut right branch}. Like Dancing Man.
Irvin’s 2008 Book The Holy Mushroom Tries to Force Blue Cap to Be Red Hue and Irvin 2009 SMC Doesn’t Correct Ruck’s Assertion that It’s Red
Irvin 2008 The Holy Mushroom misrepresents the image as extremely red-shifted.
Irvin 2009 doesn’t correct Ruck in Fungus Redivivus appendix of Sacred Mushroom & The Cross when Ruck says about this image: “One example alone should suffice to silence the art historians … a typical mushroom-tree beside him. The mushroom has a red cap spotted with white“
My Tight Crop (Ludicrous-Res) from Zooming at Bodleian Site
Dancing Man you better not let me down, wasting my server space.
This is ridiculous, I might as well use Hatsis’ jpg or my png of it, probably 10% the server size, and a perfectly good crop. It’s the principle of the thing?
But I want *MY* crop!
I found Hatsis’ original PDF of his article, much better than his new formatted page, much more complete.
Would-Be Historian Hatsis Disvalues His Own Articlesâ Publication Dates and Their Content
I don’t mean to pressure Hatsis about his priorities, but I’m surprised and had to do a lot of unnecessary extra work to find his real article and real date and real title.
Scholars in this field have reason to criticize this strange half-removal and degradation of his article.
Evidence for Roasting the Salamander (Hatsis 2013) Date of Publication
Hatsis\ article actual publishing date of 2013: No Later than August 18, 2013 đ yay it’s good to have a more serious date than his “2017”
We Have a Date for Roasting Irvin Article: No Later than August 18, 2013 – that is my official date for the Roasting Irvin article!
oh interesting, he changed the title later! Orig title:
Original Title of Hatsis Article: ROASTING THE SALAMANDER: MUSHROOM CULT THEORISTS VS. CRITICAL HISTORICAL INQUIRY (<= August 18, 2013)
Findings:
His article was PDF with actual footnotes, not a pretty/stupid dumbed-down webpage format with awkward, nonstandard, non-portable (non-citable) “footnote” popups.
His article had two appendixes, both good and substantive, missing now.
His article was not infantilely titled Roasing Jan Irvin; it had a more serious, proper title.
His article is not 2017, as the dumbed-down version states (I was posting about his article years before then (in the Egodeath Yahoo Group: Dec. 24, 2015)); it’s no later than August 18, 2013. I need to cite his article, and I know that “2017” is wrong.
Why does Hatsis treat his article so carelessly, without scholarly reverence? He’s busy. đ¤ˇââď¸
Evidence for Roasting Irvin article actual publishing date: No Later than August 18, 2013 đ yay it’s good to have a more serious date than his “2017”
Interp/evidence: the earliest archive of the home page is dated August 18, 2013:
Hatsis’ PDF is SO much more complete than his truncated web article, I cannot believe it. Important arg’n from Hatsis is hidden ONLY in the PDF, not at his new domains.
I made a couple new captures from Bod lib:
My Capture of the Entire Image at Bodleian Digital Library
“Salamander-Bodleian-Library-MS-Bodl-602-fol-027v.png” 6.5 MB [7:30 p.m. February 16, 2023]
my png version of hatsis’ jpg, that I’ve been using since late 2020:
That’s my derivative, 2nd-gen .png (not .jpg) WordPress gallery copy of the image (linked to my page covering it). Got from Hatsis site’s .jpg, suspect WordPress converted to it .png. Gallery date: Nov. 14, 2020.
I uploaded the dancing man image right when I was starting my huge breakthrough applying my Christmas 2015 decoding (tent. hypoth. that awaited testing) of {right leg} in Dancing Man to successfully decode Eadwine’s leg-balancing mushroom tree (thus fully & ideally confirming/proving my 2015 hypothesis about {right leg} = eternalism-thinking).
Interesting note from Hatsis’ article: “I only have the black and white edition of THM.”
The Holy Mushroom, Irvin 2008
I bet the hyped-color photograph might be taken by Hatsis, in PDF, of the full page. His other images are surely evidently captured from Bod digital lib.
Footnote 27 confirms something I’ve been unsure about, when I constructed an interesting challenge of “even if mushroom, you can’t know psycehoactive, for religious expeirencing” – well ACKSHUALLY, you can! I have! via Eadwine, handedness, non-branching, etc.
Hatsis’ long footnote 27 ends:
“Thus, even if Holy Mushroom theorists did present us with legitimate shroom art, the morsels might denote nourishment, fire kindle, or poison, and not necessarily a psychedelic trip.”
External, upstream link to where I got the image file: (best resolution): Where did Hatsis get this color image or image file? [ans: certainly Bod. digital lib.]:
was key to my decoding of the Canterbury image in 2020, and
my Canterbury 2020 decoding was key to decoding the salamander image’s tree in 2022.
Recognizing the cut… at 5:22 a.m. I just remembered my thought-chain:
At 4:00 am, I thought “But why is there no cut branching stumps on this tree??” At 5:23, I remembered that, as I elaborated exactly what aspect of this tree I decoded today.
At 4 a.m., I decided to zoom and inspect the salamander tree to look for any broken cut branch stumps b/c there were none (I so wrongly thought), and it was bugging me, that morphology lack/deficit/ shortcoming/ omission.
[8:54 a.m. February 16, 2023]: I wonder if by this time of present post, better colors were at hi-res site (no, the above is dull). Compare last night’s fresh capture’s color brightness:
Here’s how sound the would-be historian Hatsis is when putting forth the DUMB argument that the Bestiary mushroom “doesn’t count” b/c “secular” document:
This is an elementary argumentation f*ck-up from “medieval historian” Hatsis. AS IF there’s a hardline distinction between religious vs. esoteric vs. secular, in the Middle Ages.
Hatsis acts like he doesn’t know the FIRST THING about Genre.
Probably chalk it up to sort of political ideology: mushrooms lower scholars’ IQ into the negative.
above: religious art
below: secular art
salamanders right paw touching cap, man’s right hand on head. paw locks-in the orientation: right paw touches left branch of the tree; the right branch of tree is cut
I have never seen fit to note or mention this right side stump before. FAIL!
I didn’t note the stump, because it SEEMED MEANINGLESS, like an accidentally broken branch “stylization”
Today I have now achieved connecting right vs left leg, with L vs. R of the tree.
L vs R motifs in the tree were missing from my analysis of this image, before today.
todo: read my posting, get date from yahoo group post
but this is “secular” art, per the beginner psychedelic witch đśđ§ââď¸
Todo: Canterbury Article: add Salamander image, pointing out the cut right branch and standing right foot
this latter aspect – without yet perceiving former – was the key to 2020 decoding of Canterbury.
its bizarre and strange how decoding works over the years weaving back-and-forth
only in 2022 I finally went back to the 2016 [sic ; xmas 2015] sal image and completed the decoding of it by asking “why isn’t there cut Branch in this image?” and I had failed to see that all the way until 2022!
so working decoding the images crossed back-and-forth between them to complete both images Decoding eventually
left tree branching, right tree non relatively branching, 4:20 am April 13 2022 noticedcut branching noticed explicitly 4:12 am 4/13/22 – note two distinct / both of the archetypal motif branching features are present: 1) added branches/branching, 2) cut branch.
Content Moved from Samorini 1997 Plaincourault Article Page
Has color pictures I gathered, a linked TOC, and section headings, unlike Samorini article.
My page also links to his book (.pdf) that contains a later, Italian copy of the article.
Content to Organize
Today, Feb. 26, 2023, I was improving my original, 2020 Samorini article page, and I experienced the problem of keeping Samorini’s article images and paragraphs differentiated from my enhancements and color pictures and commentary.
March 21, 2022 is the milestone date where I coined “branching-message mushroom trees” in discussion with Brown of Marcia Kupfer’s passage about “youths in trees cutting branches”.
At present [8:17 a.m. February 16, 2023], I know that the breakthrough period was around March 15-May 15, 2022, which would put this posting/page in the middle of that period.
This is my main page about the Dancing Man image.
April 13, 2022: Salamander Mushroom Tree Right Side Cut New, findable title: Salamander Mushroom Tree Right Side Cut (Dancing Man; Roasting Salamander Bestiary Image) https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/04/13/salamander-mushroom-tree-right-side-cut/ In that page, I added the full image from Hatsis site & prep the image for ideal annotated copy/paste.
The above article in fact is where we first [Feb 26 2023 correction: no; third, after Gettings (per Hatsis’ research) and after Bennett (per Samorini’s 1998 article)] and then see the roasting Salamander image in black-and-white – and I added color from copied from Hatsis webpage Article.
[8:36 a.m. February 16, 2023: Samorini cites Chris Bennett in 1995 Green Gold, as the first entheogen scholar to present/publish the image. Samorini’s article is 1st place *I* saw the dancing man/ roasting salamander image, perhaps in 2004 – merely in b/w, not color.]
List of Scholars Who Treated the Bodleian Salamander Bestiary Image
Section added Feb. 26, 2023
Hatsis’ 2013 original .pdf article at Archive.org (arspsychedelia.com home page earliest snapshot), genuinely/originally titled “Roasting the Salamander”, lists as the first esoteric scholar covering this image, before Bennett: a 1987 book by Gettings:
Gettings 1987
Bennett 1995
Samorini 1998
Irvin 2008
Hatsis 2013
Cybermonk: milestone posting at the Egodeath Yahoo Group Dec. 24/25, 2015, conjecturing that {standing on right leg/foot} means relying on eternalism-thinking.
Cybermonk ~Nov. 2020. Confirmed {standing on right leg} = eternalism, by successfully using that hypothesis to decode Eadwine initiation image fragment uploaded by John Lash in 2008.
Cybermonk Spring 2022: Fully decoded the Salamander image. eg. noticed the cut right trunk and which parts of salamander touch which parts of mushroom tree.
And also toward the bottom is the side-by-side Amanita Mushroom Trees versus the psilocybin Mushroom trees.
In Figure 20 (the table) of Samorini’s 1998 article, he includes Roasting Salamander in the Amanita column and of course Plaincourault fresco and one other in that column.
I glean that Samorini & as late as 2008, Carl Ruck still didn’t have the color copy, b/c Hatsis caught Ruck falsely (in typical Ruck fashion) stating that Dancing Man mushroom cap is red & white.
It is totally not red & white, as Hatsis points out. This is a huge WTF error on Ruck’s part. How could this even happen?
But anyway, against Samorini, I note the triangular Liberty cap.
I classify Roasting Salamander as how? I reject these two columns; I would not have arranged data this way, or proposed this breakout (regardless of whether I had the privilege of the color image of Dancing Man).
well first of all we need to give proper attention to the cut right trunk is a major feature.
Imagine two mushroom trees side-by-side with the right hand one depicted as missing.
The roasting Salamander Mushroom tree has a triangular Liberty Cap with spots like amanita, so it combines those two features
In the Canterbury Psalter, an individual Mushroom tree will combine features of four distinct types.
In the front page of Canterbury, they begin by announcing the four distinct classifications of mushrooms.
I have in ~ Nov. 2020 identified the plants which God creates in the above Eadwine panel: left to right: Panaeolus, Liberty Cap, Cubensis, Amanita. {vine-leaf tree} is a 5th Pilzbaum type in the Great Canterbury Psalter.
I used Brinckmann’s 1906 book to extract/develop the concept, to identify the motif, of {vine-leaf tree}, around Nov. 2020.
Golden Munich Psalter’s (from my Feb. 2023 [this week’s] research) “God Creates Plants” panel:
As the top-credibility entheogen scholar, I have in Feb. 2023 identified the plants which God creates in the above Golden Psalter panel: left to right: Panaeolus, Liberty Cap, Cubensis, hybrid Panaeolus/ Liberty Cap/ Cubensis/ Amanita. đ
God creates the plants, and he creates four of them:
In the Great Canterbury Psalter, Eadwine deliberately re-combines these distinct four types, and 5) also he includes vine leave trees, {vine}, meaning non-branching per eternalism experiencing in the psilocybin loose cognitive state.
The mysterious fantastical leaf shape it is meant to be read as a hybrid of Ivy leaf and grapeleaf, representing the general concept of {vine} = non-branching.
Todo
incorp content moved from Samo 1997 Plaincourault article page.
[8:47 a.m. February 16, 2023] – added key words to page title. Added headings/ page structure, fresh capture of Eadwine’s leg-balancing mushroom tree.
Due to its high visual appeal combined with low efficacy, Amanita is forever cursed to be the face of ingesting Psilocybin.
Cybermonk
it’s been surprising how I seem to get better and better results – for voice recordings , very much including leading edge idea development, that is effective for me to listen back to ) more and more easily and quickly, by avoiding certain approaches & certain mistakes, and continuing to work on various aspects
things come together eventually
a constraint in 1995 and now in 2022 is that i cannot, or should avoid, talk loudly for hours every day
It was taking forever to get the medium of voice recording to be as useful for idea development and rapid idea capturing as hand writing and typing.
I tried in 1995 to use voice recording for idea development, and I haven’t really listened to those recordings, because the playback was low quality and inconvenient, and the content didn’t really seem that good – it can’t hold a candle…
I doubt that It can hold a candle to my latest results, but who knows?
I’ll have to produce Episode number -80 (April 12, 1995) and we’ll see if it’s anything there worth listening to.
Technique: have a large assortment of microphone equipment
mix it up and have fun with all the different gear
have various good mike stands/mounts and Mike equipment & various options all available
even if a single setup would work fine, that doesn’t really click with me
my goal is not to get a single setup, but rather to master the equipment in general.
Technique: no pop filter and no monitoring
accomplish that through having extreme amount of r&d experimenting experience and knowing what to avoid, being highly conscious of what will produce bad results and good results at the Mic
The latest thing since maybe 2011 to factor in also is voice dictation; voice to text.
but this page is not about voice dictation for rapid idea capturing –
although there is one exception: my most recent experiment, of doing voice dictation while recording the voice at the same time, which actually proved to be kind of a lifesaver, because the voice dictation malfunctioned and lost data
but I had the full session recorded, and so it went out as a episode of the Egodeath Mystery Show just fine.
And the data (word spoken content) still exists in that form, so I could patch the broken incomplete voice dictation if I wanted.
Technique: stay further from the mics and feel free to use multiple mics and move around a lot
however this is advanced technique
you have to know what you’re doing (performance experience/ mindedness)
have to know all the tradeoffs involved
and know what to try to avoid
be ready to defend the trade-offs the result you have to relax the ultra polished production to enjoy the huge benefits of this mix this mixture of low effort and great content resulting
and great content results and very good and effectively great seeming audio
Technique: always master pronunciation/ elocution/ enunciation, even though constraints will not permit getting some ideal vocal sound in all ways
clean delivery and being in control, to eg:
avoid under enunciation, and avoid over enunciation
avoiding erring in this direction and avoiding erring in the other direction
the more in control, the more experience, it eventually pays off, even though by a harsh judgment, there will always be theoretically improvements that “ought” to be done.
but all things considered, the rewards eventually come together.
Technique: use multiple separate recordings – avoid mixing multiple types of content that would need to be disentangled/ sifted during production
tips and tricks-
changes that I have made that have made voice recording 10 times easier with 10 times better of result and 10 times more effective at developing ideas
after all these years of working on trying to make fast idea development through voice recordings trying to make that work
I finally been able to improve my policies for creating the initial recordings and then improving my techniques of production to be faster and better more automated
by strategic coordination of producing or creating a set of recordings that doesn’t need intensive production repair but that is combines good quality content with good quality voicing and not containing lots of problems that have to be fixed
Technique: avoid junk utterances, and be very silent, very often, while recording
I have learned how to be silent while talking in between words or phrases
don’t say any junk words or make any noise at all
then during production, you’re good to go for automated production, and the results are great.
avoid producing any junk utterances, and go ahead and be quiet as much as you want , as long as you want,
be quiet while recording, don’t insert any junk, and then you are totally good to go for automated production, it’s awesome!
Amanita does not imply ingesting Amanita but rather Psilocybin. that’s true today, and that’s true in the year 1200 by the very same token.
I worked out the solution in a couple of different media in the email reply to Dr. Brown and then talking it through on voice recordings .
it sounds counterintuitive and hard to believe but when you talk it through and work at through the answer is:
due to its efficacy profile, Amanita is forever cursed to be the face of psilocybin use!
Technique: understand that speech at different times of day is bound to sound different
Technique: automatic removal of silence
Technique: stack multiple separate recordings of different type end-to-end, then export MP3
Technique: a reading-based, prompting approach
Trick one: read read my materials or read something else. the funny thing is , I read two sentences and then I stop reading and I do a monologue for an hour, then I read two sentences, and do another monologue for an hour.
it takes only the tiniest bit of reading material and I’ll go off and it is really amazing some of the idea development that I’ve done and discovered worked out ideas that I could never have planned ahead, Like I never would’ve predicted that I would figure out a solid argument of why Amanita is always given pride of place visually yet in all errors it is never used people don’t use it people have never used it and
I actually figured out why this is
By talking it through I actually figured out how we use Amanita without using it , without ever ingesting it , and why this is-and we’re not even aware of it.
it explains the parallel argument by the same token of why we know that in art, Amanita does not mean ingesting Amanita, any more then then we do when we talk about “magic mushrooms” and we draw red and white, but we never ever ingest amanita.
that exactly explains why amanita in religious art does not imply ingesting Amanita!
a head shop decoration of amanita absolutely does not imply in the slightest ingesting Amanita
go to a head shop and count the number of amanita
now go to people taking mushrooms and how many of these customers of the head shop are taking Amanita? answer: 0%
why is that? now package that explanation of why that is , then send it in a time machine back to the year 1200, and you’ve answered your question, Dr. Brown: why amanita in Christian art does not imply ingesting Amanita but rather, ingesting Psilocybin.
maybe I should make myself a voice recording about this but anyway
it seems surprising to me how how well I’ve been harnessing voice recordings lately and
I have to think about why the rewarding success and ease lately
not just good results but every bit as important, ease.
in the past few recordings or episodes I’ve been not only getting great valuable results , but I’ve been doing so more easily produced
these two things go hand-in-hand
and I need to continue heading in that direction
Technique: construct a collection of intro and Outro material so that you never have to spend time on that during routine episodes
avoid the bad anti-pattern I’ve learned that
when it comes production time you extremely do not want to have to listen or search through an entire recording
this is probably the biggest improvement I’ve made, the biggest misstep that I have corrected in my approach
it turns out for ease of production, you absolutely do not want a given recording to contain more than one type of information, That you have to disentangle during production totally avoid any having to disentangle things you absolutely want to avoid that like the plague
you do not want to have to listen to a long in-depth content recording before you ship it! For example to sneeze it is literally better to terminate the recording then to have to go locate the sneeze afterwards if you can do you want to have any junk wanna make sure there’s no junk in the middle of recording always do whatever it takes so that any junk is at the end or beginning in that way here is a reasonable compromise you do have to check the beginning and check the end of each recording but you do not need to listen to the middle that is the key :
avoid having to listen to the middle of a recording during production.
for example if I switch to voice dictation mode while recording speaking that’s OK but I need to start a separate recording to isolate that type of content because it will need special processing during production
but you really want to hand to the production phase you want to handover lengthy content recordings that contain 100% content and not random junk that Hass to be removed and searched during production
that is the worst
you want any junk like the fire alarm going off at the end or beginning but not ever in the middle of a rec’g
avoid mode-switching in the middle of a recording
and so I need to continue breaking ending one recording and starting a separate recording when I switch to a different type of material
you definitely want shorter especially uniform content type the the point is not the length although you get the impression the short length is better but that’s not the point
regardless of the length of the recordings the key is don’t mix Primo Content with other type of material though I suppose station identification is innocuous
I am still forming the dues and don’ts Regarding creating the initial tracking Recordings – this makes an enormous ramification for how hard how time consuming the production process and above all whatever you do do not handover recordings that require sorting out good quality content from material that will be cut I mean look at the difference between
my verbose long freeform episodes and then the massive massive work that I had to do to excise the so-called “core” material from that
you extremely want to do that distinction upfront while recording too hot the core content Recording holt stop halt and terminate halt halt
you think I don’t know how to pronounce words with this stupid voice dictation my pronunciation is impeccable and differentiating words yet this voice dictation still can’t handle it halt and hold our pronounced entirely different
another great thing that has worked very well and things have really come together I could probably rattle off for major changes that have worked together to produce much better content and much less having to sort through and deal with timestamps and micro editing and all that time consuming processing lately I’ve been
Technique: Skip preparation by having a pile of backlog of ideas and reading material to prompt an excess of topics to cover
i’ve only had to do 10% of the preparation as before and then I’ve only had to do 10% of the processing that I used to have to do are used to have to do 10 times as much preparation and then 10 times as much clean up
so what are the tricks I’ve done and pull together lately??
My very latest is backing away from the mic means are no longer chained to one tiny fixed spot were you become all rigid
this does mean accexcepting more hiss
The jury is still out it’s too early to say but:
I really I’m really feeling pretty psyched enthused about this wildly asymmetrical dual miking which should not work at all, yet it’s producing good results so far, depending on what type of speakers I play back on
I thought Max was crazy using stereo and allowing room reverb but-
well I just threw away my the voice dictation just threw away my transcription of course has bad luck playing audio in the background at the same times foolishness
never do what Max Freakout does: use a stereo mic in a reverb room. unless…
but I’m approaching stereo miking differently , and I’ve done a ton of research on it ,
and I really like that-
it’s amazing completely breaking the rules well breaking some of the rules, but I am an expert at the rules , and so even when I bend the rules, I’m doing it at an expert level
I guess I’m enjoying the privilege of being able to exercise all kinds of different options and knowing what the trade-offs are
and I can access different configurations that a beginner would consider bad technique and not feasible
but it all depends , if you know how to play the trade-offs
I know all too well what it’s like it’s awful when you’re locked in one tiny position in the microphone
it’s like being chained with shackles in place
and now by miracle I’m able to do the exact opposite and move all over the place and it doesn’t necessarily sound awful if you just play it right
You can kind of get away with it and get a pass
it really depends on defining what your goal is a friend thought that my result was a failure until I explained that my goals are different than his assumed familiar professional production goals
I am doing live radio broadcast – it defines “success” as a different formula and I have the privilege of accessing different miking configurations different philosophy combination a different combination of philosophies about panning in room reverb and being on axis knowing all of these trade-offs at an expert level enables accessing certain combinations and emancipating from the shackles of being locked into one little rigid position in front of the mic
that intern that freedom that emancipation frankly standing up and standing back from the mic and moving around opens up so much it opens up a different alternate state of consciousness different different breathing different voice different character different tone and mood
as one little example: the much hated pop filter 𥠖 don’t need no stinking stupid 6 inch dumb plastic garbage blocking my head.
know your angles, know your distances
and also frankly strategically plan on one plosive error per five seconds, and then you’re good, as long as you’re not continually plosive popping the mic
and then stand back further back and yell above the hiss
The Egodeath theory 
