Oddcast episodes – The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (SHWEP)
by Earl Fontainelle
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Recent episodes
Krista Muratore on the Countercultural Antichrist
May 6, 2026
Unknown duration
Crossing Over to the Unseen: Yousef Casewit on Ibn Barrajān
Apr 24, 2026
Unknown duration
Jason Ānanda Josephson-Storm on James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, and Western Esotericism
Nov 12, 2025
Unknown duration
Daniel Harms on the People and Books Behind Early-Modern Fairy-Magic
Oct 8, 2025
Unknown duration
Samuel Gillis Hogan on Fairies in English Ritual Magic and Occult Philosophy, 1400-1700
Jul 30, 2025
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| Date | Episode | Description | Length | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5/6/26 | ![]() Krista Muratore on the Countercultural Antichrist | 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. | — | ||||||
| 4/24/26 | ![]() Crossing Over to the Unseen: Yousef Casewit on Ibn Barrajān | We are joined by Yousef Casewit to discuss one of the lesser-known spiritual masters of the Andalusian tradition, Ibn Barrajān. We explore his life, times, and writings, his extraordinary spiritual practice of ‘crossing over’ into the unseen, and his disquietingly-accurate prediction of the Muslim reconquest of Jerusalem. | — | ||||||
| 11/12/25 | ![]() Jason Ānanda Josephson-Storm on James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, and Western Esotericism | 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. | — | ||||||
| 10/8/25 | ![]() Daniel Harms on the People and Books Behind Early-Modern Fairy-Magic | Having laid out fairy-magic as a genre, and discussing some of its characteristics, we are delighted to speak with Daniel Harms about the people and social circumstances behind the texts and practices of fairy-magic. | — | ||||||
| 7/30/25 | ![]() 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. | — | ||||||
| 6/20/25 | ![]() Alan Moore on Magic | Say no more. | — | ||||||
| 6/14/25 | ![]() Coming Back for More, Part XI: Håkon Fiane Teigen on Manichæan Reincarnation | 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. | — | ||||||
| 6/12/25 | ![]() Coming Back for More, Part X: Joel Kalvesmaki on Origenism, Evagrios, and the Spectre of Christian Transmigrationism | 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. | — | ||||||
| 6/12/25 | ![]() Coming Back for More, Part IX: Joel Kalvesmaki on Evagrios of Pontos and the Transfer of Bodies | 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. | — | ||||||
| 6/11/25 | ![]() Coming Back for More, Part VIII: Jonathan Young on Origen of Alexandria | 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. | — | ||||||
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| 6/10/25 | ![]() Coming Back for More, Part VII: Reincarnation in Early Christianity | 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. | — | ||||||
| 6/9/25 | ![]() Coming Back for More, Part VI: The Roots of Christian Reincarnationism | We set the stage for a detailed consideration of the evidence for early Christian reincarnationism. Featuring the Bible. | — | ||||||
| 6/8/25 | ![]() Coming Back for More, Part V: Sami Yli-Karjanmaa on Reincarnation in Philo and Josephus | 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. | — | ||||||
| 6/7/25 | ![]() Coming Back for More, Part IV: Reincarnation in Antique Judaism | 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 .... | — | ||||||
| 6/6/25 | ![]() Coming Back for More, Part III: Platonism and Reincarnation | 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. | — | ||||||
| 6/5/25 | ![]() 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. | — | ||||||
| 6/4/25 | ![]() Coming Back for More: The Secret History of Reincarnation in the West, Part I: Pythagoras and the Orphics | 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. | — | ||||||
| 5/7/25 | ![]() James Russell on the Hypnerotomachia in Esoteric Tradition | 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. | — | ||||||
| 4/23/25 | ![]() The Strife of Love in a Dream: James O’Neill Introduces the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili | 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. | — | ||||||
| 1/8/25 | ![]() Charles Stang and Jason Josephson-Storm on Theosophy and the Study of Religions | 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. | — | ||||||
| 11/27/24 | ![]() Sebastián Moro Tornese on Anagogic Music in Ancient Platonism | 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. | — | ||||||
| 11/6/24 | ![]() Michæl Griffin on the Virtues in Ancient Platonism: Painters, Dancers, and Godlike Sages | In the first of a short series of synoptic episodes looking at the esoteric in ancient Platonism as a whole, we approach the scale of virtues, the ladder by which the Platonist sage, following in the footsteps of Socrates, was to practice ascent to likeness with the gods, while still engaging in daily life. | — | ||||||
| 10/30/24 | ![]() Judith Noble on Magic and Artistic Practice | We explore the intersections of fine art practice and magic with artistic practitioner Judith Noble. Tricksterish subversion as standard. | — | ||||||
| 7/10/24 | ![]() Levan Gigineishvili on Ioane Petritsi and the Mediæval Georgian Proclus-Reception | We discuss the work of Ioane Petritsi (eleventh to twelfth centuries), a Georgian intellectual whose translation of, and commentary on, the Elements of Theology of Proclus is a historical anomaly in a number of ways. It turns out that everything in Proclus' metaphysics – even the henads – could and did make it through into a Christian work in twelfth-century Georgia. Come for the surprising story of a radical Georgian intellectual, stay for the Georgian origins of the medieval Christian saint, the Buddha. | — | ||||||
| 7/2/24 | ![]() Jonathan Greig on the East Roman Proclus Reception, Sixth to Fifteenth Centuries | 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. | — | ||||||
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