Podcast episode
We discuss some of the history of how the Qur'ān came to be ‘the Book’: it started in the oral milieu of the high-octane early Believers' movement, and ended up in written form as something called the ‘Uthmanic recension. Many esoteric things happen along the way.
Podcast episode
We begin our read-through, exploring the philosophic and religious cultures at Athens and Alexandria from the days of Hypatia down to the height of Proclus' career. Come for the prosopography of many extraordinary religious and philosophical characters of late antiquity, stay for Isidore's theurgic bird-imitations.
Podcast episode
Christopher Gill, Emeritus Professor of Ancient Thought at the University of Exeter, takes us deep into the territory of Atlantis, one of Plato’s most puzzling creations.
Podcast episode
We enter the interconnected webwork of a reality where signs are things, things are signs, and everything means everything, but appropriately. Come for the visionary semiotics, stay for the occult sigils.
Podcast episode
We are delighted to discuss what you might call Proclean spirituality with Danielle Layne. Platonic prayer as a way of living, the erotic quest for the Good, and the ever-elusive Platonic Dyad feature in a wide-ranging conversation combining proper philosophical-historical rigour with the true love of wisdom.
Podcast episode
We look further into Proclus' esoteric doings, as a sage whose privileged status is marked by inspirations and epiphanies, omens and miracles. We then attempt a (shamefully oversimplified) summary of some important aspects of his (meta)physics.
Podcast episode
We are delighted to speak with David Hernández de la Fuente on Nonnus of Panopolis, one of the last great epic poets of the Græco-Roman tradition, and a man with a lot to tell us about the interplay between Christianity and ‘paganism’ in late antiquity. Come for the indeterminate religiosity, stay for the esoteric Orphic lore.
Podcast episode
The On Dreams of Synesius of Cyrene is one of the finest pieces of esoteric writing to survive from antiquity. It preserves fragments of the Chaldæan Oracles, conveys fully fleshed-out theories of veridical imagination, dream-divination, and magic based on kosmic correspondence, and gives us other valuable details of antique occult lore. It is also self-consciously an esoteric piece of writing, and seems to be suggesting that it is a polytheist message-in-a-bottle to be read by future generations, once the dark times of Christian persecution have passed. So we read it.
Oddcast episode
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.
Podcast episode
Parmenides is the original philosopher of pure Being. And he learned all about Being from a goddess on a trip through the underworld. Philosophy used to be really interesting.
Podcast episode
We want to discuss the Testament of Solomon, an extraordinary demonological, angelogical, astrological, magical work from late antiquity. But we realise that, to get there, we need to spend some time exploring the earlier reaches of the ‘Solomonic tradition’. So we do. Come for the building of the First Temple, stay for the cloud upon the sanctuary.
Podcast episode
We explore the Theolegoumena arithmeticæ, the ‘Theology of Arithmetic’, our most complete extant arithmological treatise from antiquity. It tells us a lot about Neopythagorean theory of number in the Greek ‘alphanumeric age’, it may be by Iamblichus, and it informs us that the Dyad is ‘Daring’.
Podcast episode
Further musings with Charles M. Stang on the thought and importance of Henry Corbin, on the fate of the divine double in the modern period, and on the necessity of keeping Christianity weird.
Podcast episode
We discuss one of the most anomalous, vexing, and fascinating religious movements in history, the first to span east and west, the elusive but crucial Manichæism, and its prophet, the great Apostle of Light, Mani. The eternal struggle between light and darkness is on, and minds will be blown.
Podcast episode
We discuss the Platonistic Sethian tractates and the movements which lay behind them with Copticist and scholar of Platonistic esotericism Dylan Burns. Ancient texts, methodological distinctions, cosmic catastrophe, and salvation abound.
Podcast episode
With Mateusz Stróżyński as our anagogue, we travel further up the winding ways of Plotinian philosophy as way-of-life and transformative, practical disciline.
Oddcast episode
We continue our discussion of the life and thought of HPB, talking about fraud and enchantment, messiahs and holy fools, and sex, drugs, and theosophy.
Oddcast episode
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.
Oddcast episode
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.
Podcast episode
Plotinus was the greatest philosopher of late antiquity, and one of the most crucial thinkers for the long story of western esotericism. We introduce his amazing philosophy and the basics of his biography.
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