December 30, 2025

The Eighth Annual Report of the SHWEP

A merry Yuletide to all, and best wishes for the Gregorian new year!

Well, Gentle Readers, it has been an interesting year here at SHWEP H.Q. We have been covering the important historical events of the seventh century vis à vis the history of western esotericism, and it turns out there was more going on in the seventh century than I had thought. Although we only managed to crawl from Episode 200 introducing Islām to Episode 212 on Maximos the Confessor, in terms of the numbered podcast episodes, we packed in a lot of material. There is a bit more to come from the seventh century – having introduced Maximos, we are going to stay in Constantinople for a bit longer to discuss Stephanos of Alexandria, and also explore a few more occult-science-related activities going on in the New Rome in that period and onward – but really it’s time to head into the eighth century. Expect a lot of action in the eastern Mediterranean – the rise of esoteric Islām in a zillion different flavours, the founding of the talismanic city of Baghdad and of the ‘Abbasid Khalifate, the beginning of the translation movement by which Arabic became the third great classical language of the west, and much more – but don’t be surprised if some western European thinkers start to re-enter the discussion as well – what history of western esotericism could be complete without a thoroughgoing investigation of John Scotus Eriugena, the great Irish master of apophatic Latin writing, or a look at the potent culture-magic set in motion with the foundation of the ‘Holy Roman Empire’?

We started 2025 with Episode 200, and that ‘sode, along with our further coverage of Islām and the Qur’ān, have received a lot of very gratifying feedback from listeners. The deep history of all three Abrahamic cousins (as ‘Alī ibn Abi Ṭālib is said to have called them) is shockingly little-known, perhaps especially among the very people who think of themselves as belonging to these faiths, and while the projects of forgetting have their own unique contours for each faith, I think in the case of the third cousin, Islām, it’s not just a case of forgetting, but of active disinformation being spread with a liberal digital trowel for the last 25 years or so. Cool heads need to prevail here; the amount of low-effort, pseudo-historical cobblers being spewed about Islām really is staggering (among some Muslims, be it said, but especially among the anti-Muslim ideological campaigns afoot in various places). We are glad to be able to get into the serious scholarship on early Islām, and many thanks to the scholars who generously donated their time and effort in that direction (to Fred Donner in particular, who kindly invited me into his home for a chat about the earliest evidence for the rise of Islām as a cultural-political movement).Going forward with the history of esoteric Islām in 2026, things are going to get more mystical, occult-scientific, and just plain oogly-boogly but also just plain elegant from here on in.

Speaking of misinformation about the origins of the Abrahamic Cousins, thanks go out to Moshe Shoshan, professor of Rabbinic literature at Bar-Ilan University, who very patiently set me reading-lists, critical commentary, and even met me for a zoom call, all with a view to straightening me out on a bunch of stuff I had wrong in Episode 143, where we introduced Rabbinic Judaism. This is the religious milieu which most Jews nowadays call home, and which is absolutely essential to understand if you want to understand things like the Kabbala, which we most certainly do want to understand here at the SHWEP. All of that hard midwifery on his part led me to go back and re-record the episode, with many corrections, better bibliography, and so forth, so big thanks there. Going back and re-doing episodes is a colossal pain, but when you gotta do it, you gotta do it.

Okay, 2025 saw the beginning of two new initiatives at the SHWEP: I refer, of course, to RoM and CB4M, or the Roots of Magic podcast and the Coming Back for More series of Episodes.

Keen listeners who read last-year’s annual report might remember that a one-off interview with Daniel Schwemer, Akkadianist extraordinaire and a principal investigator at the MagEIA project in Würzburg led to a lovely arrangement whereby I get to interview all the fellows, researchers, and other magic-studying folks working at that project. Well, this year that series sort of grew and grew, and was becoming a little bit lost in the tangled growth that is the SHWEP blog, so we set up what is in essence a third SHWEP podcast, entitled Roots of Magic, available in all the usual places as well as at www.shwep.net. I was able to attend the annual symposium of the MagEIA project as well, where I had a great time, innumerable fascinating conversations, and my mind roundly blown by the amazing work being done there, so that was a 2025 highlight. Thanks and greetings to all the scholars who showed me such collegial hospitality, and apologies in advance for the pestering that is to come.

The Coming Back for More series is something that just came about while I was thinking about the question of reincarnation in western cultures: there seems to be an awful lot of it (in our post-Theosophical era, belief in reincarnation along roughly-Sanskritic lines has simply become a normal option for westerners, but I’m talking about the home-grown reincarnationism, as it were), and it seems – especially in the era of Abrahamic hegemony – to have always been more or less an esoteric option, countervailing against the mainstream eschatologies on offer. The more you look into this history, the more it demands investigation, so I thought I would do that. I hope listeners have found the results interesting so far; a lot of this really is secret history, not only inasmuch as the evidence is often polyvalent, but inasmuch as relatively little scholarship devoted to reincarnation in the west has been done, considering what a fascinating subject it is and how many people have believed, and still believe in it.

Highlights of 2025? Well, first of all, let me take this opportunity to thank everyone who contributed their time and expertise; this year probably involved more emailing and organising than any year previous in terms of finding just the right specialists for just the right interviews, but, boy howdy, did it pay off. I can pick two absolute favourites, although the bar was very high. The interview with Alan Moore in the House with Many Rooms series was sterling stuff from one of the few remaining Living National Treasures of Britain, a man who will be remembered, I predict, as the most important magical thinker of his generation. Just when you think you’ve got this magic business all straightened out, here comes Moore, casually dropping jewels that make your head spin around (in a good way). Also superb was Christopher Bonura on the Apocalypse of the Pseudo-Methodios; when you can catch someone who has been working on a text for ten years, has just published an important monograph on said text, but who still isn’t sick of talking about said text, you are on to a winner, especially when they are a congenial and fluent interlocutor as is Christopher. I would single those two out as my absolute favourites of the year, but there have been some other doozies, and not a dud in the lot, as far as I’m concerned: speaking with Martha Himmelfarb is one I can now cross off the bucket-list, plus it’s a great interview, Gideon Bohak returning to the podcast in Roots of Magic was a delight, Jason Storm, Sam Gillis-Hogan on the fairies, I could go on.

As always, huge thanks, too, to the SHWEP members, sine quibus non. Thanks to you, presumed listener, for following us along this historical labyrinth. Let’s hope that 2026 is, if anything, much less interesting than 2025. But whatever the fates decree, I wish you the choicest blessings and bounties in the new year to come.

Stay esoteric!