Members only: Storytime: Reading the Hermetic Kyranides, Part II
We try to explore the Kyranides at large, but end up digging into section ēta of Book I for an hour. We had no choice: there was a hoopoe.
The Podcast
The main SHWEP podcast is a roughly-chronological historical narrative: it starts way-back-when and moves forward from there. However, Episodes 0-4 are introductory materials. If you are a newcomer to the podcast, Episode Zero introduces the concept behind it. If you are a newcomer to the history of western esotericism, check out Episodes One, Two and Three, which provide a lot of useful background. If you want to skip the intro and start exploring the nitty-gritty of the history of western esotericism, start with Episode Four and go from there.
If you want to explore further, be sure to check out the SHWEP Oddcast, which features interviews with specialists that have not yet been integrated into the main SHWEP chronology.
Free and members-only | Members-only | Title list
Members only: Storytime: Reading the Hermetic Kyranides, Part I
We dive into the very complicated layering of texts which makes up the Kyranides, and explore the prologue, written by the unnamed East Roman compiler, which tells us a lot about the `authors' he compiled, and about why their work is esoteric. Featuring Hermes Trismegistos by way of Mesopotamia.
Episode 217: Three Ancient Sages: On East Roman Magical Books
Looking through the lens provided by three central figures of the western esoteric tradition -- Hermes Trismegistus, Apollonios of Tyana, and King Solomon -- we discuss three important East Roman magical books whose influence echoes from the end of late antiquity until the present day.
Episode 216: Gerasimos Merianos on East Roman Alchemy in Late Antiquity and Beyond, Part II
We delve further into the laboratories, workshops, and even state coffers of East Rome with Gerasimos Merianos. East Roman alchemy becomes mathematised. The parameters of alchemical secrecy change. We encounter our first alchemical con-men. And Michæl Psellos showcases his ability to see which way the wind is blowing, this time in the realm of high-stakes alchemical politics.
Episode 215: Gerasimos Merianos on East Roman Alchemy in Late Antiquity and Beyond, Part I
In Part I of a two-parter we explore the contours of East Roman alchemy from the seventh century onward. Gerasimos Merianos is our guide to the many and varied authors writing in the alchemical genre aside from (but including) the great Stephanos. The roots of the western alchemical tradition lie in the east.
Episode 214: The Horoscope of Islām and The Alchemical Stone: Maria Papathanassiou on Stephanos of Alexandria, Part II
In Part II we explore two of Stephanos' works: the astrological piece entitled Apotelesmatikē pragmateia, with its katarchic ‘Horoscope of Islam’, and his influential, vexing, and beautiful alchemical work, On the Great and Holy Art of Gold-Making.
Episode 213: Philosophy and Occult Sciences at Constantinople: Maria Papathanassiou on Stephanos of Alexandria, Part I
We speak with Maria Papathanassiou about Stephanos of Alexandria: the last known Platonist/Aristotelean philosopher trained at Alexandria, a politically-connected courtier at Herakleios' Constantinople, a Christian, an astrologer, an alchemist, and more.
Members only: Jonathan Greig on the Question of Universal Salvation in Maximus
We let the tape run and explore the possibility that Maximus had an esoteric doctrine of universal salvation, centring the conversation on two passages from the Ambigua, which seemingly contradict one-another. Things remain, appropriately, ambiguous, and universalist vs. anti-universalist readings of Maximus will continue to flourish. Jonathan Greig delineates what is at stake.
Episode 212: Esoteric Orthodoxy in East Rome: Jonathan Greig on Maximus the Confessor
We head back to Constantionple with Jonathan Greig at the controls, to discuss the quintessentially Orthodox mystic, Maximus the Confessor. Late-Platonist apophasis meets hard-core ascesis, and Maximus follows the theology where it wants to go, sometimes to his own cost.
Episode 211: Introducing the Apocalypse of the Pseudo-Methodios, with Christopher Bonura
Christopher Bonura introduces us to the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodios, a seventh-century Syriac prophetic universal history. Come for the Arab conquests reflected in Christian revelation, stay for the apocalyptic Roman emperor.
Episode 210: Jewish Apocalypse in the Seventh Century: Martha Himmelfarb on the Sefer Zerubbabel
In this interview we explore a crucial document of seventh-century Judaism: the Sefer Zerubbabel, an apocalyptic ‘future history’ allegedly written in the past. The Temple will descend, the evil Armilus (son of Satan and a statue) will wreak havok, and two messiahs will arise to redeem Israel.
Episode 209: Touraj Daryaee on Zoroastrianism in the Seventh Century and Beyond
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.
Episode 208: Ahab Bdaiwi on the Rise of Shī‘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.
Episode 207: Ahab Bdaiwi on ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib, his Family, and the Origins of Shī‘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.
Episode 206: Seventh-Century History for Students of Western Esotericism
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.
Episode 205: Introducing the Qur’an Part III: Qur’ānic Texts vs. the Qur’ān
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.
Episode 204: Introducing the Qur’ān, Part II: Ambiguity and Esoteric Themes
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.
Episode 203: Introducing the Qur’ān, Part I: Revelation, Text, and History
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.
Members only: Fred Donner on the History of the History of Early Islām
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.
Episode 202: Fred Donner on the History of Early Islām
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.
