Recently posted

Oddcast episode

Samuel Gillis Hogan on Fairies in English Ritual Magic and Occult Philosophy, 1400-1700

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

Episode 208: Ahab Bdaiwi on the Rise of Shi‘ī Esotericism

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

Episode 207: Ahab Bdaiwi on ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib, his Family, and the Origins of Shi‘ī Islam

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.

Oddcast episode

Coming Back for More, Part II: Platonic Reincarnation

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.

Blog post

Dan Levene on Late-Antique Jewish Magic Bowls, Skulls, and More

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

Alan Moore on Magic

Say no more.

Listen to the Introduction

An introduction to the podcast, discussing briefly what we mean by ‘western esotericism’. This episode also answers the burning question, ‘What’s so “secret” about The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast?’ and features a short quiz to test your knowledge of western esoteric history.

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