There’s an impressive podcast called The SHWEP (The Secret History Of Western Esotericism Podcast), Exploring the Forgotten and Rejected Story of Western Thought, that’s a scholarly, chronological look at all things esoteric, occult, and hermetic in the European and American mind. It’s a slow crawl: It’s up to Episode 186 and has reached Proclus (400s A.D.). Topics include “Platonism, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, the Kabbalah, alchemy, occultism, magic, and related currents of thought,” as the website says. The host, Earl Fontainelle, is a gracious and learned conversation partner, with a terrifying amount of knowledge and a lovely podcasting voice.
I’ve wanted to be on the podcast for a long time and, indeed, first talked to Earl about the possibility four years ago. We decided to wait until I’d finished the PhD, but we didn’t want to wait until the year 2768 for my episode, which is when it would occur in the chronological scheme if the current pace continues. Thankfully, for those of us who haven’t mastered immortality through the transmutation of sexual energies, there’s The Oddcast, which pops in non-chronological topics of interest now and again.
So today Earl and I talked for, oh, maybe an hour and a half. (We tried last week, but apparently Mercury in retrograde killed my internet connection. Today went smoothly, in spite of my having the flu!). We covered many of the main points of my dissertation, including competing definitions of Modernism, the ‘occult,’ and ‘esotericism.’ We looked at the point where modernism, magic, and theatre overlap, especially as they mutually influenced and changed one another. Of course, we spent a great deal of time talking about Yeats and Williams, but we also got some Crowley and Alex Sullivan/Mathews in there, too. We wondered where the lines are, if any, between theatre and ritual, between magic and miracle, between an esoteric ceremony and a church service, between pagan invocation and Christian mysticism. We talked about the delicate balance of teaching “truth” while keeping secrets.
It was a wide-ranging, surprisingly well-organized conversation, and I’m looking forward to when it’s released. I’ll be sure to post it here. Meanwhile, Stay Esoteric!
The Oddest Inkling 
Sounds like a good podcast, I’ll be looking forward … meanwhile, take care of that ‘flu!
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This illness is still lingering! It’s a nasty one. 😦
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My grandmother’s recipe: Tea, honey, lemon, and a good dollop of vodka. It may not cure the disease — but you’ll feel a lot better anyway 🙂
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Nice! I’ve been including all those ingredients except the last; clearly the most important.
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Sorina, I quite sincerely hope that every time you suggest, even with the most tentative deference, that there may be no hard and firm line and an intervening abyss separating a Catholic Mass and a magical ritual, you do no omit to think that something that no one expects might come bursting through your door. 😉
https://images.app.goo.gl/W9P8vXgFMi3bYBNQ9
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I didn’t expect that! 😉
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Sørina, Instead of sending a public Comment that included private personal information, I emailed you last Sunday with the heading “Damaris and eidola.” Did yoo receive it?
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This is delightful! I’d come across SHWEP’s blog but didn’t know about the Oddcast. Doing the deep dive on Earl’s whole site this week has been so nourishing, intellectually and artistically. I can’t wait to hear your episode!
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Prof. Higgins,
When it comes to the rituals (whether esoteric or religious (and good luck differentiating the two) that we as humans either create, follow, or otherwise enact in order to either commune with, or otherwise see if there are answers from the Great Beyond, my go-to source for a while now has been a historian named Christopher Dawson.
If the name is unfamiliar that’s no surprise. I’m pretty sure the vast majority of the world no longer knows he even existed. The only real kick in the teeth about that, as far as I’m concerned, is that the small handful of those who are aware of him are exactly the type who are prone to using his writings for the sake of forwarding what I’m going to call a “Closed Society Agenda” (in contradistinction to Karl Popper’s “Open” one).
I don’t dare name names, here. Because the last thing I want is to muddy the waters. All I’ll say is that a goodish amount of time having to wade through the weeds leaves me with the conviction that when it comes to any “message” Dawson has to convey, it’s best to go straight to the horse’s mouth, starting with a book titled “Progress and Religion”, which was and remains his over-arching master’s thesis.
With that out of the way, the crux of Dawson’s writing is that he is a historian of religious belief. He comes at the subject from a Catholic Mythopoeic perspective, though as I said above, he is by no means ever closed-minded about it all. In refreshing distinction from a lot of his would-be commentators, Dawson’s work displays a big-hearted regard even for those faith traditions with whom he otherwise shares nothing in common with. Even if he’s talking about the content and development of Asiatic religions and practices, Dawson remains nothing other than the consummate, curious seeker. What’s interesting about his work is that he takes the Myth-Ritual approach of Victorian anthropology and not only modernizes it, he also corrects it. Dawson writes as someone well aware of the kind of small-minded bigotry that was often inherent in studies of “inferior” (read: non-white races and cultures) during the Era of Kipling. So he took all of that, burnt out the dross, and put it all back on a legitimate footing.
I wasn’t lying when I said that Dawson approaches all of this from a Mythopoeic perspective. One good proof of this comes from Verlyn Flieger’s “Tolkien on Fairy Stories”. It’s there she reveals that when composing his famous Andrew Lang lecture, Tolkien drew on Dawson’s work to help construct his history of the Fairy Tale. Let that stand as a testament to the forgotten Catholic historian’s influence. I just think he’s a name worth keeping in mind when it comes to wondering about the history of belief and worship.
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Great! Thank you for the reference, recommendation, and summary. Sounds like a good one.
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I will echo Sørina’s thanks! I’ve long been meaning to read some Dawson (have I even browsed him a bit?…) – I think mainly on account of the Tolkien connection… I haven’t gone checking for other Inklings references – but see from Wikipedia he was editor of the Dublin Review when it published things by both Williams and Tolkien! I had forgotten he was almost exactly 3 years younger than Williams – but did not die young, so all his work is still in copyright – though I see a lot scanned among “Texts to Borrow” in the Internet Archive.
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