Oddcast episodes – The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (SHWEP)

In this episode we discuss the figure of the Antichrist as he appears in a number of countercultural movements, notably the Christianities of Böhme and Blake. Krista Muratore is our guide to this troublous figure (who cannot figure out which side he's on) and his long career as a harbinger of the end of troubles. Come for the ancient apocalyptic literature, stay for the B-movies and AI-tycoons.

Jason Josephson-Storm returns to the SHWEP to discuss one of the most influential thinkers on modern western esoteric movements – Sir James George Frazer, author of The Golden Bough – and where, precisely, J.G.F. might fit within western esotericism itself.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In Part I of a thematic series, we begin to explore the long secret history of reincarnation in the west. In this episode we consider our earliest evidence, which clusters around two resonant names: Pythagoras and Orpheus.

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.

Music was seen as a crucial tool for the elevation and transformation of the human soul in ancient esoteric philosophy from Pythagoras to Olympiodorus, and beyond into the western esoteric traditions of later eras. We discuss the theory and practice of anagogic music in the ancient Pythagorean/Platonist tradition with Sebastián Moro Tornese.

We explore the intersections of fine art practice and magic with artistic practitioner Judith Noble. Tricksterish subversion as standard.

We discuss the long, convoluted, and often tendentious reception of Proclus and Proclean ideas in the eastern Roman empire. From late-antique debates about the nature of being and participation, through medieval reappropriations of philosophy, through to the radical debates of Plethon and Scholarios in the final days of the empire, Proclus emerges as a curiously-persistent figure of many guises.