Oddcast episodes – The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (SHWEP)
Exploring the forgotten and rejected story of Western thought, this podcast delves into the secret history of Western esotericism. It covers topics such as hermeticism, alchemy, and mysticism, offering a deep dive into alternative intellectual traditions. The show is hosted by Earl Fontainelle and features in-depth discussions and interviews with scholars.
Episodes
Astral Weeks. On the Planetary Order in the West
In this episode we dive into the qualitative time propounded by western astrology. Following the trail of the planetary week, we are led to explore ancient gods, planetary orderings in antiquity, astrolatry, the planetary hours, and more.
Dorka Tamás on Sylvia Plath and the Supernatural
We discuss the short life and extraordinary poetry of the American author Sylvia Plath. Dorka Tamás is our guide into the places where Plath's poetry, emerging from the `high disenchantment' of the American cold war era, strays into the magical fields where poets of all ages receive their inspiration. Featuring a cameo appearance from W. B. Yeats.
William Gallois on the Amuletic Qayrawān in the Colonial Era
William Gallois was looking through hundreds of photographs of the city of Qayrawān, in modern-day Tunisia, from the period of French colonial occupation. He started to notice strange paintings in the backgrounds of these pictures ...
Krista Muratore on the Countercultural Antichrist
In this episode we discuss the figure of the Antichrist as he appears in a number of countercultural movements, notably the Christianities of Böhme and Blake. Krista Muratore is our guide to this troublous figure (who cannot figure out which side he's on) and his long career as a harbinger of the end of troubles. Come for the ancient apocalyptic literature, stay for the B-movies and AI-tycoons.
Crossing Over to the Unseen: Yousef Casewit on Ibn Barrajān
We are joined by Yousef Casewit to discuss one of the lesser-known spiritual masters of the Andalusian tradition, Ibn Barrajān. We explore his life, times, and writings, his extraordinary spiritual practice of ‘crossing over’ into the unseen, and his disquietingly-accurate prediction of the Muslim reconquest of Jerusalem.
Jason Ānanda Josephson-Storm on James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, and Western Esotericism
Jason Josephson-Storm returns to the SHWEP to discuss one of the most influential thinkers on modern western esoteric movements – Sir James George Frazer, author of The Golden Bough – and where, precisely, J.G.F. might fit within western esotericism itself.
Daniel Harms on the People and Books Behind Early-Modern Fairy-Magic
Having laid out fairy-magic as a genre, and discussing some of its characteristics, we are delighted to speak with Daniel Harms about the people and social circumstances behind the texts and practices of fairy-magic.
Samuel Gillis Hogan on Fairies in English Ritual Magic and Occult Philosophy, 1400-1700
Did you know that there is a whole practical and occult-philosophic corpus dealing with the summoning and controlling of faeries? Samuel Gillis Hogan tells us about his research in the archives of early-modern British faerie-magic.
Alan Moore on Magic
Say no more.
Coming Back for More, Part XI: Håkon Fiane Teigen on Manichæan Reincarnation
Manichæism had a very distinctive eschatological theory. Join us as Håkon Fiane Teigen leads us down the Three Paths trod by the Manichæan dead: one leading up to the heavens, one down to the hells, and a third back into incarnation again and again.
Coming Back for More, Part X: Joel Kalvesmaki on Origenism, Evagrios, and the Spectre of Christian Transmigrationism
In Part II of our interview with Joel Kalvesmaki we explore the evidence for what really went on at the Second Council of Constantinople, its ‘anti-Origenism', and what might really have been going on as Orthodoxy tried to police its borders under Justinian.
Coming Back for More, Part IX: Joel Kalvesmaki on Evagrios of Pontos and the Transfer of Bodies
We are delighted to welcome Joel Kalvesmaki back to the SHWEP for an epic two-part third round. In Part I we discuss intriguing passages in Evagrios of Pontos' Kephalaia Gnōsika which seem to pull in the direction of a doctrine of angelomorphic/daimonomorphic bodily transformation.
Coming Back for More, Part VIII: Jonathan Young on Origen of Alexandria
Jonathan Young is our guide into the tantalising evidence as to Origen of Alexandria's reincarnation-teaching. Expect almost-certainties, lacunæ in the evidence, and that kind of indeterminacy which seems to dog Origen's legacy through history.
Coming Back for More, Part VII: Reincarnation in Early Christianity
We look at the evidence for reincarnationist ideas in the early Jesus-movement and into the fourth century, starting with Simon Magus (whose mistress Helen was the First Thought of god, trapped endlessly reincarnating in fleshly bodies) and finishing with Origen of Alexandria (who, if he didn't teach reincarnation, sure convinced a whole lot of people that he did). Featuring a cameo appearance fro
Coming Back for More, Part VI: The Roots of Christian Reincarnationism
We set the stage for a detailed consideration of the evidence for early Christian reincarnationism. Featuring the Bible.
Coming Back for More, Part V: Sami Yli-Karjanmaa on Reincarnation in Philo and Josephus
We dive deeper into the evidence for Jewish reincarnation around the time of the Temple's destruction with Sami Yli-Karjanmaa, who has done the work. Philo of Alexandria and Josephus come under the metempsychotoscope.
Coming Back for More, Part IV: Reincarnation in Antique Judaism
Moving on from the theories of the Pythagoreans, Platonists, and related folks, we turn in this episode to the question of Jewish reincarnation in antiquity. There doesn't seem to be any. And yet ....
Coming Back for More, Part III: Platonism and Reincarnation
Having reviewed the roots of reincarnationism in the west, we move forward in time, looking at the Hellenistic and especially the imperial Roman eras. We then focus in on the inheritors of the Pythagorean/Platonic legacy, the Platonists.
Coming Back for More, Part II: Platonic Reincarnation
In Part II we discuss the reincarnational mythoi and logoi found in Plato's dialogues. These are, in many important ways, the foundational documents of western reincarnationism.
Coming Back for More: The Secret History of Reincarnation in the West, Part I: Pythagoras and the Orphics
In Part I of a thematic series, we begin to explore the long secret history of reincarnation in the west. In this episode we consider our earliest evidence, which clusters around two resonant names: Pythagoras and Orpheus.
James Russell on the Hypnerotomachia in Esoteric Tradition
We penetrate further into the dream-labyrinth of the Hypnerotomachia with James Russell, exploring the book's many early readers. These include a pope, a playwright, and an alchemist. Codes, rebuses, polyvalent images, esoteric architecture, and more meet in the melting-pot of Humanism.
The Strife of Love in a Dream: James O’Neill Introduces the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
We introduce one of the strangest and most nigglingly-intriguing esoteric books of the Italian Renaissance, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. James O'Neill is our guide through nested dream-landscapes, erotic initiations, and weirdly-specific garden design.
Charles Stang and Jason Josephson-Storm on Theosophy and the Study of Religions
What if the scientific study of religions, a.k.a. Comparative Religions, History of Religions, and so forth – the academic discipline wherein the academic study of western esotericism largely finds its home – was founded by, well, western esotericists? In this interview we examine the history of the history of religions with two historians of religions and find the Theosophical Society right there
Sebastián Moro Tornese on Anagogic Music in Ancient Platonism
Music was seen as a crucial tool for the elevation and transformation of the human soul in ancient esoteric philosophy from Pythagoras to Olympiodorus, and beyond into the western esoteric traditions of later eras. We discuss the theory and practice of anagogic music in the ancient Pythagorean/Platonist tradition with Sebastián Moro Tornese.
Michæl Griffin on the Virtues in Ancient Platonism: Painters, Dancers, and Godlike Sages
In the first of a short series of synoptic episodes looking at the esoteric in ancient Platonism as a whole, we approach the scale of virtues, the ladder by which the Platonist sage, following in the footsteps of Socrates, was to practice ascent to likeness with the gods, while still engaging in daily life.
Judith Noble on Magic and Artistic Practice
We explore the intersections of fine art practice and magic with artistic practitioner Judith Noble. Tricksterish subversion as standard.
Levan Gigineishvili on Ioane Petritsi and the Mediæval Georgian Proclus-Reception
We discuss the work of Ioane Petritsi (eleventh to twelfth centuries), a Georgian intellectual whose translation of, and commentary on, the Elements of Theology of Proclus is a historical anomaly in a number of ways. It turns out that everything in Proclus' metaphysics – even the henads – could and did make it through into a Christian work in twelfth-century Georgia. Come for the surprising story
Jonathan Greig on the East Roman Proclus Reception, Sixth to Fifteenth Centuries
We discuss the long, convoluted, and often tendentious reception of Proclus and Proclean ideas in the eastern Roman empire. From late-antique debates about the nature of being and participation, through medieval reappropriations of philosophy, through to the radical debates of Plethon and Scholarios in the final days of the empire, Proclus emerges as a curiously-persistent figure of many guises.
Peter Adamson on the Arabic Proclus
We discuss the translation, adaptation, and evolution of Proclus' Elements of Theology into and through the Arabic and Latin thought-worlds with Peter Adamson. Come for the monotheist Proclus who is Aristotle, stay for the digression on Plethon.
Sørina Higgins on Modernist Drama and Ceremonial Magic
We discuss the Occult in Modernist drama with Sørina Higgins. Yeats, Waite, Williams, Crowley, and a cast of supporting characters appear on the stage. The line between ceremonial magic and dramatic performance gets a thorough rinsing.
Alireza Doostdar on ‘Metaphysical Religion’ in Contemporary Iran
We speak with Alireza Doostdar on his field-research exploring alternative forms of spirituality in Iran. Come for the new-age exorcisms, stay for the the true spiritual significance of The Exorcist.
Karin Valis on Magic and Artificial Intelligence
In our second A House with Many Rooms interview, we discuss the intersections between AI and magic with machine learning engineer Karin Valis. Come for the divination, ensouled statues, golems, homonculi, and alphanumeric cosmology, stay for the techno-magical intervention at the end.
Noah Gardiner on the Pseudo-Bunian Shams al-maʿārif al-kubrā and the Corpus Bunianum
We discuss arguably the greatest magical book of the Islamicate tradition, the Shams al-maʿārif al-kubrā or Great Sun of Knowledge. Turns out it isn't by al-Būnī as everyone thought, though there is some Būnī in there; but it has so much to tell us about Islamicate culture, Sufism, and the ‘project of forgetting’ of esoteric Islām among both Muslims and scholars.
Noah Gardiner on Aḥmad al-Būnī and Islamicate Lettrism
We introduce Aḥmad al-Būnī, master sūfī and alphanumeric speculator, but most famous in the Islamicate world as an authority on magic. We sift the wheat from the chaff and get to the bottom of who al-Būnī was, what he really wrote, and what kind of reception he has had, both within and outside of Islam.
Morwenna Ludlow on Universal Salvation in Christianity
We discuss universal salvation, a perennial idea within Christianity – that all of humanity, or maybe even everything in the universe, will be saved through Christ's salvific atonement – with Morwenna Ludlow of the University of Exeter. Starting from Clement of Alexandria and ending with the current state of play in sometimes-unlikely Christian circles, we explore the long history of an esoteric (
Jason Josephson Storm on the Myth of Disenchantment
We discuss the widespread idea of the ‘disenchantment’ of the modern world – the idea that ‘we don't believe in magic any more’ – with Jason Josephson-Storm. It turns out that the idea is a myth, that the myth is actually a number of complex, interacting myths, and that none of them is empirically-accurate.
Magic, Technology, Art, and Enlightenment: Gillian McIver on Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourgh
We discuss Philippe-Jacques (or ‘Philip James’) de Loutherbourgh, accomplished eighteenth-century painter, polyglot socialite, alchemist, Occultist, healer, and inventor of the cinema.
Ferdinando Buscema on Magic, Illusion, and the Question of a Reality
We speak about illusion, magic, and reality with magical experience designer Ferdinando Buscema. He can make stuff disappear, find your card anywhere in the deck, and read your mind. He is, in short, a magician. But he is also, like Apuleius, Iamblichus, Ficino, and Crowley before him, a philosopher of magic.
Tzvi Langermann on the Sefer Yetsira: Cosmology, Science, and Kabbala
We discuss the extraordinary reception-history of the extraordinary text known as Sefer Yetsirah, the ‘Book of Formation‘. The Sefer Yetsirah would eventually become a foundational text for the Kabbalist movements of the high middle ages, but it was (and is) much more than that. Professor Langermann lays out the evolutions in reading this text from Sa‘adia Gaon to Aryeh Kaplan.
Bojana Radovanović on the Bogomils
We speak with Dr Bojana Radovanović on the Bogomils, a widespread Christian ‘heresy’ – dualist, demiurgic, docetist, ascetic, and esoterically-structured – arising in the tenth-century Balkans and spreading into such unlikely places as Constantinople and even the monastery of Mt Athos. We discuss the who, what, and when of Bogomilism, animadvert as to the why, and even speculate intriguingly on th
Juan Acevedo on Alphanumeric Cosmology
One of the most fundamental and intriguing questions in the philosophy of language is that of the relation between signs and the realities they signify. But what if the signs are letters and numbers simultaneously? And what if these are in fact the constitutive elements of reality itself? Juan Acevedo is our guide in an overview of the history and dynamics of alphanumeric cosmology in the western
Dylan Burns on the Birth of Free Will in Late Antiquity
Is ‘free will’ a given, a constant of the human condition? It might seem that way, but as Dylan Burns argues in this interview, the idea that humans possess a faculty of un-coerced decision-making actually arises at a specific time – late antiquity – and in a specific context – early Christian philosophy.
Dylan Burns on Providence, Fate, and Dualism in Antiquity
In Part I of a two-part series, we interview Dr Dylan Burns of the Universiteit van Amsterdam on the subjects of providence and fate in Greek philosophy, early Christian philosophy, and a number of esoteric currents partaking of both in late antiquity.
Gyrus on the Rise and Fall of the Polar Cosmos, Part II
We continue our interview with Gyrus, starting from Copernicus' demolition of the polar cosmos and exploring the aftermath of this radical decentering of the cosmic structure of the west.
Gyrus on the Rise and Fall of the Polar Cosmos, Part I
We talk cosmology with Gyrus, a man who has looked deeply into the patterning of space across time and culture. Moving from ‘horizontal’, landscape-base cosmologies to ‘vertical’, abstracted constructions of space, we discuss the human patterning of location and movement across a fairly mind-blowing swathe of history. You are where you are.
John Dillon on Stephen MacKenna and Plotinus
Professor Dillon returns to the SHWEP to talk about the life and times of Stephen MacKenna – Irish radical, Modernist literateur, amateur of the concertina, and the first and greatest translator of Plotinus into English.
Peter Grey on the Babalon and Antichrist Workings
We discuss the magickal activities of Jack Parsons, (Marjorie) Cameron, and L. Ron Hubbard in 1940's California with Peter Grey. Rockets fly, yachts set sail, and very, very strange things happen.
Bink Hallum on ‘Magic Squares’
We discuss those ‘magic squares’ that we find in esoteric texts from Indonesia to London, curious grids of numbers often used as astral-magical talismans with integrated alphanumeric mysteries. Bink Hallum has done the research, and lays out the story of the magic square from China to Agrippa.
Philosophising the Occult: Michael Noble on The Hidden Secret of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī
Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī was a Persian universal scholar and theologian, particularly well-known for his tafsīr or work of Qur'ānic interpretation, a mainstay of Sunni Islam to this day. Less well-known is his work of addressative, astral, talismanic ritual, The Hidden Secret. Michael Noble has published a study of this work in the context of Rāzī's thought and of the larger intellectual currents in w
Tatiana Bur on Living Statues, Then and Now
We speak with an expert on the (religious) use of automata in the classical world, in an attempt to enter into the thought-world and technological practice of the ancient theurgists. Come for the living statues, stay for the giant snail-robot.
Sasha Chaitow on Joséphin Péladan
We discuss the life and work of Joséphin Péladan (1858-1918), art-critic, Occultist, playwright, and generally creative freak. Dr Sasha Chaitow is our guide to the fascinating life of nineteenth-century Paris' most prominent avant-garde Rosicrucian trend-setter. Welcome to the salon rosicrucien.
Marina Alexandrova Introduces Madame Blavatsky
We discuss the life and adventures of Yelena Petrovna Blavatskaya, co-founder of the Theosophical Society and one of the most (in)famous and influential spiritual thinkers of the modern age, whose life and thought changed the course of western esotericism (and western history) forever.
RAW! Erik Davis on Robert Anton Wilson (with Eddie Nix)
We introduce Robert Anton Wilson under the guidance of Erik Davis, whose recent book High Weirdness is the most important fnord scholarly approach to the man's life and thought. Occasional insights are interjected by Eddie Nix, friend and collaborator of R.A.W.
Allegra Baggio-Corradi on Niccolò Leonico Tomeo
Allegra Baggio-Corradi of the Warburg Institute guides us through the life and thought of a leading figure of the forgotten esoteric Renaissance, the Paduan Niccolo Toméo. Come for the pagan-Christian metaphysics, stay for the oracular pelican.
Emily Selove on the Magical Book of al-Sakkākī
Emily Selove shares her current work on the fascinating Sirāj al-Dīn al-Sakkākī, well-known Arabic grammarian and little-known sorcerer. We discuss Sakkākī's extraordinary grimoire, the quest for the universal Perfect Man, a theory of language which might unite grammar and magic, and the identity of the mysterious ‘Peacock the Greek’.
Amy Hale on the Magical Life and Art of Ithell Colquhoun
We speak with Amy Hale, anthropologist, folklorist, and writer of weird and wonderful pieces, on the life, art, and legacy of Ithell Colquhoun, one of the 20th century's most important (if widely overlooked) esoteric artists.
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