Podcast episode
Professor Wouter J. Hanegraaff, head of the Centre for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam, on researching western esotericism, the history of the field, and ‘rejecting the rejection of rejected knowledge’.
Podcast episode
Professor Wouter Hanegraaff expands on the history of Renaissance Hermetism and gives an insider account of the history of the modern academic study of western esotericism.
Podcast episode
We explore the polemics and counter-polemics of Origen's Contra Celsum, with a particular eye toward the use (and abuse) of the esoteric as a strategy of tradition-building, exclusion, and totalising interpretation.
Podcast episode
What do we mean by 'the west' when we talk about western esotericism? In this special episode we discuss what a cogent model of the west might look like, in terms of the history of ideas, and arrive at a radical reorientation (or rather reoccidentation).
Podcast episode
We examine the life, work, and legacy of Vettius Valens, second-century Roman astrologer and author of the Anthologies, the most hard-core practical handbook of astrological practice which survives from antiquity.
Podcast episode
In one of the single most fascinating interviews we have ever had the pleasure of conducting, we speak with Charles Häberl on the Mandæans, a living religious tradition of Mesopotamia, now largely living in a global diaspora, which is the single Gnostic religion surviving from late antiquity. Forget Nag-Hammadi; it's all about San Antonio.
Podcast episode
We dive into the fascinating life and thought of Synesius of Cyrene, Platonist philosopher and student of Hypatia of Alexandria, and Orthodox bishop of Ptolemaïs. Committed Christian or pagan bishop? We'll see ....
Podcast episode
Part I of a discussion of Evagrius of Pontus – ascetic, philosopher, developer of Origen's thought, and mystical writer – with Joel Kalvesmaki. In this episode we cover the life and work of the great sage, in particular his ‘gnostic trilogy’, and discuss the ‘Second Origenist Controversy’ which would decide the fate of his opinions vis à vis Orthodoxy in the sixth century.
Podcast episode
We discuss with Wouter Hanegraaff the history of scholarship of the Hermetica from Reitzenstein's Poimandres (1904) up to the modern day. We question 'the glory that was Greece' and investigate the glory that was Egypt.
Podcast episode
Wouter Hanegraaff has been reading the Poimandres with great attention. Come for the visionary encounter with the divine nous, stay for cosmogenesis-as-love-story.
Podcast episode
So what is magic, anyway? If you think the way magic works is mysterious and occult, try defining what the word ‘magic’ means! This episode discusses some methodological problems with the term ‘magic’, and what we can (and can't) do about them.
Podcast episode
Our discussion with Jeremy Swist on The Emperor turns metaphysical, theurgic, and religious, as we discuss Julian's incredible synthesis of Iamblichean theology and metaphysics, traditional religions, and politics. Come for the pagan counter-church, stay for the transcendent solar metaphysics.
Podcast episode
Plotinus' universe is uniquely full of the human self, which extends all the way from the sucking mud of matter's non-existence to the ultimate profundity of the One's non-existence, and all the existent bits in-between. We discuss some of the ways in which this human metaphysical terrain is explored in the Enneads.
Oddcast episode
We discuss Philippe-Jacques (or ‘Philip James’) de Loutherbourgh, accomplished eighteenth-century painter, polyglot socialite, alchemist, Occultist, healer, and inventor of the cinema.
Podcast episode
In Part II of our discussion with Joel Kalvesmaki we explore the philosophy and mysticism of the Kephalaia Gnōstika, Evagrius' masterwork of mind-bending metaphysical aphorisms.
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