Tag Archives: health and healing

Wellness isn’t good for you. Here’s how to move beyond it on AEWCH 211 with Fariha Róisín!

24 Jan

LISTEN HERE VIA SOUNDCLOUD OR ON Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Breaker • Anchor

SUPPORT AGAINST EVERYONE WITH CONNER HABIB

The best way to support this show, my writing, my events & courses, is to give an annual or monthly pledge to  Patreon.com/connerhabib.

When you use patreon, you’re not only supporting me, but accessing an economic model that isn’t about paying people for their labor, and instead showing care and appreciation of who they are.

Two other ways to support the show and my other efforts:

  • Buy my debut novel, Hawk Mountain (and if you’ve bought it and loved it, give it a great review on Amazon and/or Goodreads!). All my creative projects end up supporting each other!
  • Give the show a 5 star rating and positive review on Apple Podcasts (and subscribe if you haven’t already!).

Friends,
Welcome to the How To Live Beyond series of eps on AEWCH!
To open 2023, each episode in this series will consider a set of tools or way of thinking that are useful but that we’re ready to go beyond in 2023. We’ll be looking at abundance and manifestation, magick and entheogens, paganism,  and more. The first episode (AEWCH 208) featured Mitch Horowitz on How To Live: Beyond the New Age. The second (AEWCH 209) featured Lisa Romero on How To Live: Beyond Psychedelics & Sorcery. And the third (AEWCH 210) featured Pilar Lesko on How To Live: Beyond Money Magic.

These are the techniques and traditions we use to cope with and confront the challenges of our time, but risk –  if we can’t consider them deeply – getting us stuck in those challenges or worse, funneling their strengths back into those challenges. These episodes aren’t a call to forget about these techniques and traditions, but instead a call to bring forward what they’ve offered without the barbs of the problems they’re tangled up with.

This time:

We’re constantly tracking ourselves: with Fit Bits, exercise journals, food journals, mediation apps and more.

But what if wellness went deeper than tracking and instead into witnessing the wounds of materialism and the constant reopening of those wounds by colonialism, capitalism, racism, homophobia, and more?

To discuss this, I invited Fariha Róisín, artist and author of the excellent critical memoir, Who Is Wellness For?: An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behindonto the show.

Together we examine the hidden woundings that are so frightening to us that we seem to only be left with narrow paths for healing: wounds in the erotic, the spiritual, sacred anatomy, healing, speaking, and more. 

In the same way we fear to touch a cut on our body or look into emotional to heal it, we encounter the deepest wounds as sites of pain. So we end up pushing the knowledge of these wounds to the far edges of our consciousness until they’re that their damage is only revealed a moment that is too late, as surprise diagnosis.

This is an adventure in wellness and how to heal wellness itself. I’m so excited to share it with you.

SHOW NOTES

WHAT OTHER EPISODE SHOULD YOU LISTEN TO
I talked a lot about mental health with author and psychotherapist Charlotte Fox Weber on AEWCH 196. It’s worth a listen because, well, everyone needs some form of therapy! (And if you want to pair it with a therapeutic look at restorative justice, you can listen to AEWCH 162 on violent offenders with Dr. Gwen Adshead!)

WHAT BOOK SHOULD YOU READ?
A good introduction to other models of anatomy and health is Cyndi Dale’s The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy which is richly illustrated and written in clear language.

(Also, if you’re interested in my essay on heath and wellness, here’s
“When You’re Sick You’ll Wait for the Answer, But None Will Come”)

MORE ON FARIHA
Subscribe to Fariha’s excellent newsletter, How To Cure A Ghost (which shares its name with her debut poetry collection). And here’s Fariha’s website which is a good hub for her earlier work. Also, you can engage with a different layering of her consciousness by reading her novel Like A Bird(which is also available on audio). And here’s a short profile on her novel in the New York Times.

Until next time, friends,
Seek wholeness.
CH

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Hands on healing, Himmelbriefs, and hex signs: The Pennsylvania Dutch healing tradition with Robert Phoenix on AEWCH 199!

16 Sep

LISTEN HERE VIA SOUNDCLOUD OR ON Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Breaker • Anchor

FRIENDS! We are on our way to AEWCH 200 – that‘s 325 HOURS of free listening for everyone! – The ONLY way Against Everyone With Conner Habib exists is through support from its listeners via patreon.

Do you enjoy the show? Does it inspire new thoughts and conversations in your life?

If so, SUPPORT THIS PODCAST via Patreon. Your contribution is needed now more than ever.

Friends,
I grew up in small town Pennsylvania which always seemed outwardly magickless back then. De-enchanted, not spiritual except for the very obvious and plain religious traditions happening around me. What a striking discovery that the area I grew up in and even my tiny little town had its own healing, symbolic, esoteric christian tradtion: Powwow or braucherei. The tradition is found in books like The Long Lost Friend and hew symbols on barns and even in a nearby murder.

Learning about all of this grounded me in my past, it made me feel less confused about why I was born where I was born. So I wanted to talk about it. I asked powwow practitioner and author of The Powwow Grimoire, Robert Phoenix onto the show and we had a great conversation of all things powwow.

Very happy to have had such a friendly and enlightening conversation about the spiritual pulse of where I’m from.

This is the last episode on the way to AEWCH 200, which is a massive episode.
Enjoy it, friends!
C

SHOW NOTES

WHAT BOOK YOU SHOULD READ?
I was introduced to powwow in two ways. By a former professor of mine who recommended I look into it, but also in a form you can access – the book Occult America: White House Seances, Ouija Circles, Masons, and the Secret Mystic History of Our Nation by frequent AEWCH guest Mitch Horowitz. It’s the first thing I read by Mitch, and it remains one of the best scholarly works on the occult in America, and its very particularly American forms.

WHAT OTHER AEWCH EPISODE YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO?
Perhaps a surprising selection – but AEWCH 112 with Peter Bebergal, on which we talk about occult technology. The idea of “how occult tech works” flows in and out of my conversation with Robert. I wouldn’t say a definitive answer arises on either episode, but it’s good to hear differing perspectives, both of which indicate something “coming through” rather than “being done.”

MORE ON ROBERT
Robert’s website is full of posts, resources, and information. It’s an excellent site to learn about powwow. Maybe even better? Robert’s YouTube channel, which had a ton of short videos on the topic. Finally, here’s an interview with Robert (and Jason David) on the What Magic Is This? podcast.

He’s also a member of a paranormal researchers group, Spirit Searchers, which is available for investigations in Pennsylvania.

Until next time friends,
Be made whole,
CH

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

A MASSIVE conversation with Paul Chek on his podcast, Living 4D with Paul Chek!

30 Dec

Friends,

While you’re waiting for the next episode of AEWCH, guess what, here’s a THREE HOUR LONG conversation with me and AEWCH 129 guest Paul Chek!

I visited Paul at his amazing house (and met his amazing family) earlier this month. We drummed, we ate together, we stacked stones around Paul’s water orgone accumulator, we vaped some crazy herbs, we talked for hours and hours, and more. 

What an incredible day. This conversation wanders all over – into sex and sexuality, Rudolf Steiner and God, materialism and the occult. It’s just…a lot.

Listen above or on any podcast platform (and subscribe! it’s a GREAT and challenging podcast!).

And here’s the CHEK Institute page with show notes.

Love to you.
See you soon with a new episode of AEWCH (and my live conversation with Gordon White!)
CH

Tags: , , , , , ,

The folks stories, medicine, and spirits, of Irish Travellers. Traveller author and activist Oein DeBhairduin on AEWCH!

2 Nov

LISTEN HERE OR ON iTunes • Spotify • Overcast • Soundcloud • Patreon

This podcast is only possible because listeners like you support it. Do contribute to my mission by supporting Against Everyone With Conner Habib on Patreon!
Thank you so, so much.
Want to buy the books mentioned on this ep? Oein’s amazing book, Why The Moon Travels is only available in the US via the publisher, but I strongly suggest you get it. It’s wonderful. Here’s a link.
For the rest of the books mentioned and some related to what we discuss, please go to my booklist for AEWCH 130 on bookshop.org. It will  help support independent bookstores, and the show gets a small financial kickback, too.

Friends,

I wrestled over whether or not to post an episode about the election tomorrow, but one of the things I kept thinking about was: when we contract our view of the world into political forces and events, what and who get neglected?

In 2004 when George W. Bush won a second term, my friend called me, frantic. I told her to go outside, look at the trees. What were they doing? She told me they were still and swaying with the wind. And the birds? Moving from branch to branch. And the sky? A calm came over her.

What dimension were those beings in that they could stand still, that they could live without the same sort of fear so many were in? Perhaps you could argue that it was merely that they hadn’t the capacity to fear. But then, what did they have the capacity for, and what could we learn from it?We have to remember that the world is big and waiting for us to listen. Or, in the words of Yeats:

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

So this time of this year I was thinking about what we neglect in narrowed vision of the world. And that leads to the question of who are the human beings who are forgotten. And finally, as an interweaving of the two: who is forgotten who can give us a different sense of connection to what is forgotten?

A lot of you probably have never even heard about Irish Travellers, an indigenous minority here in Ireland. But they have their own language, traditions, and culture. As the name Travellers implies movement and a nomadic aspect of life plays a part in all that.

I hadn’t known anything about Travellers until I moved here in 2019. But I have to say it’s dismaying how few people in Ireland know much about Travellers. So as I was trying to learn more about Travellers, I turned to twitter, of course. It’s still good for that if you use it that way. And many people recommended Oein DeBhairduin’s new book of Irish Travellers folk tales, Why The Moon Travels, with illustrations by Leanne McDnoagh.

Oein is an author, herbalist and Travellers’ rights activist. In his book, there are stories about spirits, animals, giants, plants, and medicine. It’s a great book, and it’s my hope that this is a great episode as an introduction to non-Travellers about the multi-layered lives and experiences of Travellers, beyond just their struggles under ignorant or deliberately racist and imperialist legislation here in Ireland.

As a great bonus, Oein reads two of the tales in the book he reads “The Birth of the Rivers” and “Airmid’s Voice.” I’m so happy to share this with you.

Remember, the world is big, and there are many friends you haven’t yet met.

ON THIS EPISODE

  • Are myths and folktales merely just-so stories?
  • Are stories alive? If so, what are they, anyway?
  • The way Christianity (specifically Catholicism) intersects with Travellers stories.
  • The way the landscape comes to life when you start relating to its beings by name
  • Getting in touch with city spirits
  • The way that spirit wants to involve us in its action
  • On not believing in fairies (but not wanting to piss off the fairies)
  • Challenges Irish Travellers face under deliberately racist or otherwise ignorant legislation

SHOW NOTES

• For more on Oein, here’s an interview with him about his developing spirituality. And here’s a good interview with him (done by Irish mythological writer Deirdre Sullivan) just after Why The Moon Travels came out. And here’s a link to the Parish of the Travelling People, which Oein is involved in. Also, buy his book!

• For more on Irish Travellers in general, here’s the Irish Travellers Movement website. And here’s the Travellers’ organization, Pavee Point. Here’s a great article, “A Brief History of the Insitutionalisation of Discrimination Against Irish Travellers” by Dr. Sindy Joyce.

• Karl Kroeber‘s wonderful Native American Storytelling: A Reader of Myths and Legends isn’t available on bookshop.org except as an extremely pricey hardback, so I’m posting it here in a link via amazon. And here’s a photo of Karl.

• I talked about the “positive void” of language and its relationship to occult practice, with Scott Elliot Hicks on AEWCH 122.

• Actually the story about the witch at Lough Derg is a story about a sorcerer at Lough Gur, Conner.

• Here’s an essay about the Lough Derg pilgrimage by Manchán Magan.• Here’s the road (or one of them anyway) that got moved to accommodate the fairy bush. And here are stories of the “hungry grass.”

• The “Twelve Doors to the Soul” are all places where you could strike to kill someone because an opening wound would create a sort of door through which the soul would leave. They are: Top of the head, hollow of the occiput, the temple, Adam’s apple, suprasternal fossa, the armpit, the breast bone, the navel, the bend of the elbow, the bend of the legs, the bulge of the groin, the sole of the foot.

• Here’s the actual Paracelsus quote: ““…all our nourishment becomes ourselves; we eat ourselves into being… For every bite we take contains in itself all our organs, all that is included in the whole man, all of which he is constituted… We do not eat bone, blood vessels, ligaments, and seldom brain, heart, and entrails, nor fat, therefore bone does not make bone, nor brain make brain, but every bite contains all these. Bread is blood, but who sees it?”

• “All the things that people say they hate about Travellers are things they say they love about culture.” – Oein

Until next time friends,
XO
CH

Irish Travellers in 1950s Ireland. Photo by Tony Whelan

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Demonology & Nothingness – A deep occult discussion with Are Thoresen on AEWCH 116!

7 Jul


Against Everyone With Conner Habib · AGAINST EVERYONE WITH CONNER HABIB 116: ARE THORESEN or DEMONOLOGY & NOTHINGNESS


LISTEN ABOVE OR ON: iTunes • Stitcher • Soundcloud
Thank you for your support in this time, friends. This podcast is only possible because listeners like you support it. If the show is keeping you company and making you think or inspiring creativity, please give what you can. Contribute to my mission by supporting Against Everyone With Conner Habib on Patreon!
Thank you so, so much.
Want to buy the books mentioned on this ep? Go to my booklist for AEWCH 116 on bookshop.org. It will  help support independent bookstores, and the show gets a small financial kickback, too.

AEWCH116TitleCardFriends, How does evil – created by culture and our own deeds – affect us?

You’ve heard me discuss spiritual topics on the show before, but I don’t think I’ve ever pulled you all into the deep end with me like this, nor steered the conversation towards the topic of, well, demons. And not the metaphorical kind. Demons as actual entities – as well as why we need to talk about spiritual beings as beings – and how they affect our health and our lives.

My guest, Are Thoresen is a a Christian occultist, author, veterinarian, and acupuncturist who lives in Norway. His writing details (sometimes in the same book) his decades-long career in healing as well as his own spiritual experiences, encounters, and events.

He’s the author of many books, including Spiritual Translocation: The Behaviour of Pathological Entities in Illness and Healing and the Relationship Between Human Beings and Animals, and Demons and Healing: The Reality of the Demonic Threat and the Doppelgänger in the Light of Anthroposophy, both which we talk about at great length here.

Unlike other episodes, I let myself get lost a bit in this one, because Are and I have some overlapping spiritual experiences, and I don’t want to halt the conversational pathwork to explain everything. To that end, I give some guidance with the terms we use (elementals, Lucifer/Ahriman, etc) at the top of the show.
We start off with evil and we end with the Nothingness of the Christ. In between, there are dinosaurs, translocating demons, sick pets, a planet made of bad deeds, and more. This is a wide-ranging episode that has its own life. If it knocks you over, that’s okay. Hit those fifteen-seconds-back buttons and listen through again.

ON THIS EPISODE

  • The lure of evil when we talk about it, and the protection of the heart healing
  • Why Are considers the fact that he had coronavirus a blessing
  • How negative feelings and thoughts echo up into the cosmos
  • The 8th Sphere
  • The Northern Way, Southern Way, and Middle Way of initiation
  • The time I heard the devil in my backyard
  • Why pets get sick when their owners are sick
  • Why podcasting is just a little bit evil
  • When Are time traveled and saw dinosaurs
  • The problems with magical activism

SHOW NOTES

• For more on Are, here’s his website, as well as a great skeptical (and far less skeptical by the end) interview with him on the Adventures Through The Mind podcast. I’m also linking here to his Temple Lodge Publishing page and to two of his books via amazon, because some of his books are not available or are on backorder on bookshop.org.

• The essay about my ex-boyfriend beating me up is, “If you ever did write anything about me, I’d want it to be about love.”

• If you’d like to know more about Daskalos and his conception of elementals, I talk about them on AEWCH 67 with Daniel Joseph.

• The story of Parzival (or Parsifal) is known as a depiction of occult initiation. Here’s the most exoteric version of it: Wikipedia!

• The friend who said, “you’re not evil, you’re racist!” was Gordon White, of course.

• Here’s an interview with Judith Von Halle in The Southern Cross Review (whose editor once called me an “anthro-degenerate” but it’s a good interview, nevertheless!). The profound insights on the Pool Of Bethesda I mention appears in Illness and Healing: And the Mystery Language of the Gospels.

• The Fifth Gospel lecture cycle by Steiner is one of the most complicated and intense, and one that Steiner himself said others would have great difficulty understanding.

• Mentioned briefly: For more on occultist Peter Duenov, (pictured here) click for a PDcomprehensive review.

• My essay about the lymphoma diagnosis, as well as my thoughts on treatment, and my mother’s death from bone cancer, is entitled, “When You’re Sick You’ll Wait For The Answer But None Will Come“.

• A great psychoanalysis book on the emanation of everything from nothing (in this case, sex) is What is Sex? by Alenka Zupančič.

• “Everything that violates free will is black magic.” – Are

Thank you for listening, friends.

Note: No episode next week. But I imagine it will take everyone some time to digest this one!
XO,
CH
gecko

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Ghosts, blood, bodies: Irish feminist literary icon Sinéad Gleeson joins me on AEWCH 72!

4 Jun

AEWCH72TitleCard

LISTEN HERE OR ON iTunes • Spotify • Overcast • Soundcloud

Your Patreon contribution goes a long way to supporting not just to the podcast, but to my writing and other work as well. If you find something of value on my show, give back and support the many hours of free podcast content and other public output that I offer every month for the price of a latte or cocktail or lunch.

Pay for the podcasts you love by signing up for my Patreon today.

Friends,

Very excited to delve into questions of the body – political, spiritual, philosophical, paranormal, and more – with literary icon Sinéad Gleeson. Sinéad is an author, editor, broadcaster, and Irish literary stalwart; her book of interconnected essays, Constellations is a bestseller here in Ireland, and about to make its way to America. It’s a captivating book about blood, feminism, injury, ghosts, and health; all orbiting around the question: What does it mean to be a human who is, at least in part, a human body?

Sinéad and I talk

• creating our own anatomy books

• standing up to the Catholic church

• the law of correspondences

• the importance of constellations in the sky and in our bodies

• how medicine is patriarchal

• my ghost experiences and Sinéad’s ghost experiences (and how we self-stigmatize them!)

• how ghosts are like good health

• health for athletes and porn performers

• the exploitation of pain and trauma as currency in the attention economy

• how being in touch with our bodies helps us be compassionate towards others

SHOW NOTES 

XO
CH

SO

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

AEWCH 71: TREATMENT AS METAPHOR

21 May

LISTEN HERE OR ON iTunes • Spotify • Overcast • Soundcloud

Your Patreon contribution goes a long way to supporting not just to the podcast, but to my writing and other work as well. If you find something of value on my show, give back and support the many hours of free podcast content and other public output that I offer every month for the price of a latte or cocktail or lunch.

Sign up for my Patreon today by clicking here. It’s quick, easy, and you get cool stuff in return.

AEWCH71TitleCard

Friends,

It’s May, the anniversary death month of my mother, who died in 2001, shortly after Mother’s Day. I wanted to honor her memory this year by sharing with you something I’d written about her nearly four years ago – but also to explore the concept of treatment, illness, and healing.

The topics of medicine and illness come up a lot on AEWCH (two examples are on AEWCH 20 with David Shorter, and AEWCH 68 with Lisa Romero), if you hadn’t yet noticed, and I am very interested in exploring them more deeply.  So let’s set the stage for that with this episode about three cancers – my mother’s, Susan Sontag’s, and mine; and how each of us dealt with them.

This episode is dedicated to my mother.

I love you, Mom!

XO
CHmom2

Click here for show notes!

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Daskalos And The Mysteries Of Christian Occultism: AEWCH 67 with Daniel Joseph!

16 Apr

LISTEN HERE OR ON iTunes • Spotify • Overcast • Soundcloud
Please pay for the podcasts you love, including this one. This podcast is always free and available to the public, but your support is crucial to keep it going. If you find something of value on my show, give back and support the many hours of free content I offer every month for the price of a latte or cocktail or lunch.
Sign up for my Patreon today by clicking here. It’s quick, easy, and you get cool stuff in return.
PATRONS GET ACCESS TO THE FULL YOUTUBE VERSION HERE
AEWCH67 Title Card
Friends,
I’ve been longing to introduce you to Christian occultism more deeply, and particularly the work of Stylianos Atteshlis, also known as Daskalos. So I’ve invited one of my spiritual teachers, who was also a student of Daskalos’s. author Daniel Joseph, onto the show to explore why Christian occultism matters now more than ever.
If you’re turned off by the “Christian” part, but interested in the “occultism” part, listen through; you’ll find that there’s plenty there to think through. In fact, we don’t mention Christianity as such very much, but it runs through the work and practice. And if you’re turned off by both, Daniel and I break down all the seemingly hocus pocus terminology and make it intelligible for secular listeners.
Daniel runs workshops for The Researchers of Truth, who carry on Daskalos’s work, and I highly recommend you check them out.
Daskalos’s work, via Daniel and his spiritual partner, Aki Toshimutsu, has changed my life, and I know many people can benefit greatly from engaging with it.
Daniel and I discuss:
  • Who Daskalos is, how Daniel came to meet his teachings, and why his work matters so much.
  • What are the “Seven Ascended Masters”? (We really do get to it by the end of the ep)
  • How Westerners often reject Western esotericism
  • How religious Christianity has wounded people and how that Christianity is much different than Christian occultism and esotericism
  • Daskalos’s healing miracles, and how proximity to spiritual truth can itself be healing
  • What the human being is and what dreams are
  • Why dead people often don’t know they’re dead (and how you can tell if you’re dead or not)
  • The different esoteric bodies
  • Why some esoteric masters are public, some remain hidden, and one that was recently incarnated
  • The illusion of time
  • Where humanity will be in a million years and why nuclear war and climate change won’t be the end of us
  • The theory of understanding and practice of engaging with elementals
  • The skill of spiritual listening, versus secular hearing
  • Being frustrated when we don’t have spiritual encounters
  • Why Conner was all nervous about this episode, and how to deal with this nervousness when you’re about to speak with someone

Show Notes are here.

D

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,