Alan Moore on Magic
Say no more.
Oddcast Episodes Themed "Alchemy"
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.
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.
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.
