Podcast episode
We return to the history of late antiquity in the eastern Mediterranean and central Asia. Momentous events occur, empires rise and fall, and Jews, Christians, and Muslims all suddenly develop new apocalyptic notions. Come for the dry historical exposition, stay for the esoteric divine kingship.
Oddcast episode
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.
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.
Oddcast episode
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.
Podcast episode
We begin to explore the esoteric side of the Qur'ān, examining several case-studies in terms of ambiguity and esoteric themes. It turns out that every letter of the Qur'ān is an esoteric text.
Roots of Magic episode
In our fourth Roots of Magic interview, we speak with Jonathan Beltz, specialist on the scarier side of ancient Sumerian cultural life, the side occupied by demonic entities bringing disease and death. But one entity stands out from the crowd: Namtar, the divine psychopomp whose arrival means ineluctable mortality. Or does it? We explore the world of magical ways to send death packing in ancient Sumeria.
Blog post
In our fourth Roots of Magic interview, we speak with Jonathan Beltz, specialist on the scarier side of ancient Sumerian cultural life, the side occupied by demonic entities bringing disease and death. But one entity stands out from the crowd: Namtar, the divine psychopomp whose arrival means ineluctable mortality. Or does it? We explore the world of magical ways to send death packing in ancient Sumeria.
Podcast episode
We cover some basic territory in introducing the Qur'ān, the holiest text of Islām. We introduce the text, discuss the traditional story of the Qur'ān's revelation, the modern text-critical enterprise of Qur'anic studies, and try to pin down the elusive character of this book-that-is-not-a-book.
Podcast episode
We let the tape run and turn from what our evidence for early Islām is to the scholarship which got us to where we can assess this evidence at all. Fred Donner gives us a window into the academic study of Islamic origins over the last hundred years or so.
Podcast episode
We discuss what little we know and how much we don't know about the nature of the early ‘Believers' movement’, the nature and origins of the Qur'ān, the curious case of the so-called Constitution of Medinah, and what went on during the earliest decades of the Arab conquests. Fred Donner is our guide into unknown territory.
Roots of Magic episode
We discuss the dangerous, liminal space of childbirth and childhood in ancient Egypt. How might the gods, magic, and medicine interact to help make this a less perilous realm? Charlotte Rose has some ideas.
Blog post
We discuss the dangerous, liminal space of childbirth and childhood in ancient Egypt. How might the gods, magic, and medicine interact to help make this a less perilous realm? Charlotte Rose has some ideas.
Podcast episode
We let the tape run, discussing languages, and what ‘the classics’ is supposed to mean, the contrafactual proposition that the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire after the first world war was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century, the question of the ‘wastebasket of history model’ of western esotericism and how relevant it is to the Greater West model, and the magical war being fought for the future, and the need for warriors to get the language right.
Podcast episode
We welcome Matthew Melvin-Koushki back to the show to discuss how we might improve our historical picture of western esotericism by including the vast majority of the surviving historical dossier of western esotericism. There's only one problem: in order to do this, we need to embrace the Islamicate world as a major part of the west.
Blog post
The Bodleian Library in Oxford, one of the world's greatest repositories of all manner of cultural treasures, is currently host to an extraordinary exhibition drawing on its collections. The title is Omens, Oracles, and Answers, and the subject is divination. We speak with Michelle Pfeffer, one of the exhibition's organisers.
Oddcast episode
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 at the beginning.
Podcast episode
With Episode 200 the SHWEP has reached a milestone of sorts. We are in the seventh century, and the world-order suddenly changes irrevocably as a new political force arises from Arabia: the Believers. We discuss three main respects in which the history of Islam is the history of western esotericism.
Blog post
Our castaway is Gary Lachman, prolific author on many recondite and fascinating currents of modern esotericism and, as Gary Valentine, member of the Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Fame. The esoteric island is touched by the presence.
Blog post
2024 was damn esoteric; here's hoping for an even more esoteric 2025.
Podcast episode
We discuss one of the lesser-known, but most esoterically-important, classics of Syriac spiritual literature, the Book of the Holy Hierotheos. Hierotheos was said to have been the teacher of Dionysius the Areopagite, but he wrote in Syriac, and taught a suspiciously-Evagrian practice of ascent to god.
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