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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, RobertPhoenixonto 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
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.”
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!).
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
• 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
Friends, 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 asbeings – 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.
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 Mindpodcast. 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 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 PeterDuenov, (pictured here) click for a comprehensive review.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
comprehensive review.
Conner Habib 