Podcast episode
With the Arab conquest of Sasanian Persia, a new religion enters the west. Once the great religious Other to the Græco-Roman world, the Zoroastrians are now part of the story of western esotericism. We explore their extraordinary religion with Touraj Daryaee.
Roots of Magic episode
We explore the ancient Mesopotamian ritual-series known as Šurpu with Frank Simons. This interview is a window onto very, very ancient magical practice, but has a surprising amount to tell us about magic today.
Oddcast episode
We delve further into the learned fairie-summoning tradition with Samuel Gillis Hogan. Fairies evolve into non-human persons, the mainstream and fringe news take an interest in research into fairies, and the methodology for studying a world-view in which fairies are obviously real is discussed.
Oddcast episode
Did you know that there is a whole practical and occult-philosophic corpus dealing with the summoning and controlling of faeries? Samuel Gillis Hogan tells us about his research in the archives of early-modern British faerie-magic.
Podcast episode
In Part I we looked at the political events leading up to the formation of the Shi'a. In Part II we see that it did not take long for things to get very esoteric. Come for the programmatic esoteric hermeneutics, stay for the occult sciences.
Podcast episode
We pick up from our last episode, where geopolitics and esotericism met in the crucible of Roman, Sassanian, and Arab political struggles. Ahab Bdaiwi threads the labyrinth of the earliest historical sources for the birth of the movement within Islām which came to be known as the Party of ‘Alī, or the Shi‘ā.
Blog post
We speak with Dan Levene, expert on the ancient Judæo-Aramaic incantation-bowls, on the bowls, the skulls, the Talmud, and what all of this tells us about late-ancient Judaism in the Sasanian empire and beyond.
Roots of Magic episode
We speak with Dan Levene, expert on the ancient Judæo-Aramaic incantation-bowls, on the bowls, the skulls, the Talmud, and what all of this tells us about late-ancient Judaism in the Sasanian empire and beyond.
Oddcast episode
The Iraqi Shiite movements known as the <em<ghulāt or ‘extremists’ held many ‘extreme’ theological and cosmological views, none more so than their belief in cyclical reincarnation into a range of entities from rocks to exalted superhuman entities. Mushegh Asatryan is our guide as we explore the texts of the earliest reincarnationists of the Believers' movement.
Oddcast episode
Manichæism had a very distinctive eschatological theory. Join us as Håkon Fiane Teigen leads us down the Three Paths trod by the Manichæan dead: one leading up to the heavens, one down to the hells, and a third back into incarnation again and again.
Oddcast episode
In Part II of our interview with Joel Kalvesmaki we explore the evidence for what really went on at the Second Council of Constantinople, its ‘anti-Origenism', and what might really have been going on as Orthodoxy tried to police its borders under Justinian.
Oddcast episode
We are delighted to welcome Joel Kalvesmaki back to the SHWEP for an epic two-part third round. In Part I we discuss intriguing passages in Evagrios of Pontos' Kephalaia Gnōsika which seem to pull in the direction of a doctrine of angelomorphic/daimonomorphic bodily transformation.
Oddcast episode
Jonathan Young is our guide into the tantalising evidence as to Origen of Alexandria's reincarnation-teaching. Expect almost-certainties, lacunæ in the evidence, and that kind of indeterminacy which seems to dog Origen's legacy through history.
Oddcast episode
We look at the evidence for reincarnationist ideas in the early Jesus-movement and into the fourth century, starting with Simon Magus (whose mistress Helen was the First Thought of god, trapped endlessly reincarnating in fleshly bodies) and finishing with Origen of Alexandria (who, if he didn't teach reincarnation, sure convinced a whole lot of people that he did). Featuring a cameo appearance from Paul of Tarsos, the world's best-known gnostic.
Oddcast episode
We set the stage for a detailed consideration of the evidence for early Christian reincarnationism. Featuring the Bible.
Oddcast episode
We dive deeper into the evidence for Jewish reincarnation around the time of the Temple's destruction with Sami Yli-Karjanmaa, who has done the work. Philo of Alexandria and Josephus come under the metempsychotoscope.
Oddcast episode
Moving on from the theories of the Pythagoreans, Platonists, and related folks, we turn in this episode to the question of Jewish reincarnation in antiquity. There doesn't seem to be any. And yet ....
Oddcast episode
Having reviewed the roots of reincarnationism in the west, we move forward in time, looking at the Hellenistic and especially the imperial Roman eras. We then focus in on the inheritors of the Pythagorean/Platonic legacy, the Platonists.
Oddcast episode
In Part II we discuss the reincarnational mythoi and logoi found in Plato's dialogues. These are, in many important ways, the foundational documents of western reincarnationism.
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