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July 25, 2022 - Conspirituality

04:43

Bonus Sample: Listening to Teal Swan’s Mom and Dad

Some of the most valuable material that comes to us from Paula Marino's Open Shadow film of 2017 is an extended interview with Swan's parent's, the Bosworths. They speak about Swan's sensory sensitivity as a young child, and how that morphed into a staunchly independent but sometimes isolated social life. They describe Swan's secret runic writing, their belief in her capacities as a medical intuitive, and discuss the gaps in psychiatric care that failed them all when her mental health needed help. This episode examines this interview, and then cross-checks some aspects against the account of Swan's childhood friend, Diana Hansen Ribera.Here we have the unique insight into parents speaking vulnerably and transparently about their baffling child—which means we can really lean into the primal material that pre-exists the charged questions about whether Teal Swan is running a cult or encouraging suicide. What we find, between the accounts of the Bosworths and Ribera, is a collection of commonplace phenomena: high sensitivity, parents learning as they go, the intrusion of internet pornography, and a likely abusive figure who was too close to the family. In this episode, Matthew and Julian discuss the mystery of familial memory, idealizing vs. pathologizing children, the appeals of fantasy as a mode of relief, whether the Satanic Panic was a collective cry for help to resolve commonplace domestic and community abuse, and the possibility that cult formation is a social form of post traumatic play. Show NotesOpen Shadow — Paula MarinoDo You Cry Easily? You May Be a 'Highly Sensitive Person'The science behind why some of us are shyStudy: Pornography does not cause violent sex crimesWhen Children Act Out Sexually: A Guide for Parents and Teachers1607: Growing up with Teal Swan - Diana Hansen Ribera“Forbidden Games”: Post-Traumatic Child's Play — Lenore TerrValerie L. Dripchak (2007). Posttraumatic Play: Towards Acceptance and Resolution. , 35(2), 125–134. doi:10.1007/s10615-006-0068-y -- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	Hello Conspiratuality listeners.
	This bonus sample comes to you from our Early Access Patreon collection called Swan Song Series, in which we examine the historical and cultural roots that inform and fuel the teal swan spectacle.
	The full version of this episode will show up on this feed sometime in the future, but if you'd like to hear it now and support our growing research and publishing initiatives, please pledge $5 a month at patreon.com slash conspirituality for access to this and hundreds of hours of bonus media.
	When she would start to use these colors, these crayons and color pictures, she described, I remember at that point, that, oh, that's the color that's by you or that's the color that's behind her.
	We didn't know what an aura was.
	We were not in that world.
	We had no clue what she was actually seeing when she was looking at either one of us.
	Colors emanating around our body and different colors for different people.
	Really slight differences she could tell that she later figured out had a lot to do with.
	A person's temperament or their mood or their health or health particularly and we've watched her heal people and and I can say that as a She's worked on boss.
	Yeah, she has on me, but I mean any dad would say anything Yeah, but to watch her work with people who come in with some pretty significant long-term chronic illnesses and come away either
	Saying I'm well or saying or her telling them, you know, you need to see somebody else because here's you're talking about this issue in your body, but here's where your problem is pointing to a pancreas or to a longer and then have that and then have that yeah have those people go seek medical Western medical attention for trauma or, and sure enough, she's right.
	And I think going to see the psychic that we went to, she was really good.
	I recognized Teal right away.
	I mean, it was one of those weird things.
	We drive all the way up there, a fox crosses the road as we're driving in.
	That's Teal's spirit animal.
	And she was like, Oh my God, Mom, it's a fox.
	And we got in there and the woman, I was so skeptical, I've got to be honest about that.
	And she said to me, You're going to get very cold because there'll be a lot of spirits in the room.
	And I remember thinking, Yeah, sure.
	Yeah, I mean, we have science backgrounds.
	Yeah.
	And so I get in the room and she hands me like two blankets and I'm holding them in my lap and she and Teal start talking about what they see and what it's like and all of this and it's like they're kindred spirits and by the end of the time I had both blankets wrapped around my ass freezing and it was really for me again for both of us it was a world that we you know we heard about it but it wasn't one we ever really interacted with
	All right, so here's where the Bosworths are empathizing with their daughter to the extent of a kind of familial teal-pilling, really, it seems.
	Julian, what comes up for you when you hear them moving into this zone?
	I'm going to keep sounding like the grouchy skeptic here.
	I mean, to me, this is precisely why Being informed about universal human cognitive vulnerabilities to things like confirmation bias or cold reading, Barnum statements, and like the narcissistic specialness that all of this can kind of serve, I think it's really valuable just to know about this stuff.
	In my experience, these kinds of personal anecdotes are a dime a dozen in New Age circles, they're usually taken as Undeniable evidence, because how else do you explain that there was a fox or that the room suddenly felt cold?
	It must be the thing that it is claiming to be, rather than some sort of, you know, just process of how you interpret things.
	I think, well I know that when you look at these kinds of claims carefully, they tend to evaporate, they're ethereal.
	It's a trick of the mind, and all of us are susceptible to these kinds of tricks of the mind, and certain people are very good at exploiting those vulnerabilities, even when they're sincere, and they don't really realize that that's what they're doing.
	They say, we'd heard about this world, but we don't really interact with it.
	Well, now you've stepped over into that world, and it's largely a self-created world that relies on all of these sort of cognitive vulnerabilities and slippery interpretations.

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