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

Earl Fontainelle

The SHWEP podcast is basically chronological, but there’s only so much chronology that anyone can take. The Oddcast features interviews from the whole historical scope of western esotericism. When the chronology catches up with episodes here, they migrate to the main podcast, but there's no reason to wait years to listen to an interview we have now.

  • 56 minutes 36 seconds
    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.
    6 November 2024, 11:17 am
  • 59 minutes 9 seconds
    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.
    30 October 2024, 12:01 am
  • 1 hour 5 minutes
    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.
    10 July 2024, 8:11 am
  • 57 minutes 34 seconds
    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.
    2 July 2024, 11:01 pm
  • 1 hour 3 minutes
    Sørina Higgins on Modernist Drama and Ceremonial Magic
    We discuss the Occult in Modernist drama with Sørina Higgins. Yeats, Waite, Williams, Crowley, and a cast of supporting characters appear on the stage. The line between ceremonial magic and dramatic performance gets a thorough rinsing.
    30 April 2024, 11:01 pm
  • 58 minutes 11 seconds
    Peter Adamson on the Arabic Proclus
    We discuss the translation, adaptation, and evolution of Proclus' Elements of Theology into and through the Arabic and Latin thought-worlds with Peter Adamson. Come for the monotheist Proclus who is Aristotle, stay for the digression on Plethon.
    13 April 2024, 11:21 am
  • 58 minutes 41 seconds
    Alireza Doostdar on ‘Metaphysical Religion’ in Contemporary Iran
    We speak with Alireza Doostdar on his field-research exploring alternative forms of spirituality in Iran. Come for the new-age exorcisms, stay for the the true spiritual significance of The Exorcist.
    2 February 2024, 11:47 am
  • 1 hour 4 minutes
    Karin Valis on Magic and Artificial Intelligence
    In our second A House with Many Rooms interview, we discuss the intersections between AI and magic with machine learning engineer Karin Valis. Come for the divination, ensouled statues, golems, homonculi, and alphanumeric cosmology, stay for the techno-magical intervention at the end.
    8 November 2023, 9:30 am
  • 31 minutes 2 seconds
    Noah Gardiner on the Pseudo-Bunian Shams al-maʿārif al-kubrā and the Corpus Bunianum
    We discuss arguably the greatest magical book of the Islamicate tradition, the Shams al-maʿārif al-kubrā or Great Sun of Knowledge. Turns out it isn't by al-Būnī as everyone thought, though there is some Būnī in there; but it has so much to tell us about Islamicate culture, Sufism, and the ‘project of forgetting’ of esoteric Islām among both Muslims and scholars.
    5 September 2023, 11:01 pm
  • 57 minutes 56 seconds
    Noah Gardiner on Aḥmad al-Būnī and Islamicate Lettrism
    We introduce Aḥmad al-Būnī, master sūfī and alphanumeric speculator, but most famous in the Islamicate world as an authority on magic. We sift the wheat from the chaff and get to the bottom of who al-Būnī was, what he really wrote, and what kind of reception he has had, both within and outside of Islam.
    23 August 2023, 1:23 pm
  • 50 minutes 54 seconds
    Morwenna Ludlow on Universal Salvation in Christianity
    We discuss universal salvation, a perennial idea within Christianity – that all of humanity, or maybe even everything in the universe, will be saved through Christ's salvific atonement – with Morwenna Ludlow of the University of Exeter. Starting from Clement of Alexandria and ending with the current state of play in sometimes-unlikely Christian circles, we explore the long history of an esoteric (and sometimes not so esoteric) Christian idea.
    5 July 2023, 11:50 am
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