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Friends,
I’ve spoken a lot about what we need to move beyond to meet the challenges of our time and the future: manifestation, magick, entheogens, wellness, and more. But what should we move towards?
Here is a series of episodes on occult & esoteric christianity, an evolving tradition that offers vitalizing insight into how to move forward.
Across these episodes, I’ll be talking about various streams and fruits of occult and esoteric christianity, as well as some of its key figures. Rather than presenting the typically dogmatic, dominating, and totalizing christianity — which is always in danger of being seized by people, especially conservatives, with power — this series will present a different and truer form. Open, wounded, individuated, and powerless; a tradition that relates to other spiritual paths without seeking to control or diminish them.
(And if you like this series, listen to last year’s series on the same topic, which started with AEWCH 181 and ended with AEWCH 185 – which I’ve linked to because it has links to all the other episodes in the show notes.)
To begin this series, it seemed important to me to ask:
Why esoteric christianity at all?
So I asked someone who works daily in one stream of esoteric christianity – the Christian Community, which offers christian services and gatherings based on religious renewal offered to ministers and theologians by Christian occultist Rudolf Steiner.
Jonah Evans is a reverend and seminary director in the Christian Community in Toronto. He is cohost of one of my favorite podcasts (right up there with Weird Studies!) The Light In Every Thing. And he helps edit the series of Rudolf Steiner lectures offered by the Community, and offers workshops and conference around the world.
This episodes gives a picture of Jonah’s experience of receiving esoteric christianity into his life, and why he decided to let it in, as well many christian mysteries, like:
Why does the name of Christ have any power outside of the christian tradition?
What is the mystery of the two Jesuses?
Does Hell exist?
What role do the dark forces play and how do we recognize them without a violent or merely dogmatic morality?
SHOW NOTES
WHAT BOOK SHOULD I READ? A Thousand Names for Joy: Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are by Byron Katie and her husband, Stephen Mitchell. We mention the book on the show, and, because it blends an Eastern tradition – Taoism – with a Western perspective – The Work – and because the Tao helped both Jonah and I prepare the way for esoteric Christianity, I think it can be a helpful supplement to the series, even though it’s not esoteric Christianity.
WHAT OTHER EPISODE SHOULD I LISTEN TO? Jonah’s closest colleague is Patrick Kennedy, who was the guest on a favorite episode of mine, AEWCH 181.
MORE ON JONAH Jonah has a YouTube channel, Living with Christ, with lots of video lectures. Here’s an interview with Jonah about The Christian Community and his role. Jonah’s podcast with Patrick Kennedy has a patreon which offers early access to each episode and other benefits. And one of the best ways to understand some of what Jonah and that is to see if there’s a service near you and then attend one. Nothing will be expected of you, no one will try to get you “in” to the group. You’ll just encounter what all encounter: the baseline of the service is always the same; the Act of Consecration of Man. And then some talking afterward.
Conner Habib 