
006 Eating Cheese Sandwiches with Orthodox Demons
Explicit content warning
01/21/23 • 77 min
Leaving the occult; the growing popularity of orthodox Christianity; what orthodoxy offers: not a lecture but participation in a ritual; symbolism and literalism; finding a spiritual orientation without institutional support; overcoming relativism as a first step; the dismissal of truth by postmodernism; a story about someone finding their direction in the Jehovah’s Witnesses; recklessness encouraged by our culture; the allure of occultism described by a convert to orthodox Christianity; strange parallels between occultism and Christianity; genuine initiation versus false initiation; the process of becoming a lost soul; occultists who do not actually believe in what they evoke; entities as existing beings versus entities as types of relationships; the shared nature of humans and discarnate beings; the nature of demons revealed through their manifestation; the machinations of the nameless god; spiritual LARPing; the absence of a guiding framework and the presence of a harmful framework; what the divine wants for us: sacrificing the self to the self; idolatry and deification; the lack of magick in Christianity; the drawbacks of magick versus its experiential value; the Abramelin ritual and the embedding of magick in a religious tradition; the pitfalls of superstition in Christianity; an instance of an exorcism gone wrong; the nature of superstition; saying yes or no to demons versus attempting to expel demons from others; possible future trends.
Rod Dreher (2023). On Leaving the Occult, https://tinyurl.com/5n6j8tnn (theamericanconservative.com). Accessed January 2023.
Conner Habib (2022). Against Everyone with Conner Habib Episode 202: The Problem with Magic (part one) with Phil Ford & J.F. Martel, https://tinyurl.com/586n69vc (patreon.com). Accessed January 2023.
Danya Issawi (2022). What to Know About the Balenciaga Ad Scandal, https://tinyurl.com/ym6fybhv (thecut.com). Accessed January 2023.
George Kapsanis (2005). Theosis: Deification as the Purpose of Man's Life, https://tinyurl.com/2p94p55s (greekorthodoxchurch.org). Accessed January 2023.
Mitchell B. Liester (2000). Hesychasm: A Christian Path of Transcendence, https://tinyurl.com/24ktnd5a (theosophical.org). Accessed January 2023.
Samuel Liddell MacGregor-Mathers, trans. (1976). The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage. Wellingborough: Thorsons.
Samuel Liddell MacGregor-Mathers, trans. (1995). The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King. Boston, MA: Red Wheel Weiser.
Intro music by Alan Chapman. Outro music from loops by users mildperil, Tumbleweed, and VladEisch at looperman.com.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Leaving the occult; the growing popularity of orthodox Christianity; what orthodoxy offers: not a lecture but participation in a ritual; symbolism and literalism; finding a spiritual orientation without institutional support; overcoming relativism as a first step; the dismissal of truth by postmodernism; a story about someone finding their direction in the Jehovah’s Witnesses; recklessness encouraged by our culture; the allure of occultism described by a convert to orthodox Christianity; strange parallels between occultism and Christianity; genuine initiation versus false initiation; the process of becoming a lost soul; occultists who do not actually believe in what they evoke; entities as existing beings versus entities as types of relationships; the shared nature of humans and discarnate beings; the nature of demons revealed through their manifestation; the machinations of the nameless god; spiritual LARPing; the absence of a guiding framework and the presence of a harmful framework; what the divine wants for us: sacrificing the self to the self; idolatry and deification; the lack of magick in Christianity; the drawbacks of magick versus its experiential value; the Abramelin ritual and the embedding of magick in a religious tradition; the pitfalls of superstition in Christianity; an instance of an exorcism gone wrong; the nature of superstition; saying yes or no to demons versus attempting to expel demons from others; possible future trends.
Rod Dreher (2023). On Leaving the Occult, https://tinyurl.com/5n6j8tnn (theamericanconservative.com). Accessed January 2023.
Conner Habib (2022). Against Everyone with Conner Habib Episode 202: The Problem with Magic (part one) with Phil Ford & J.F. Martel, https://tinyurl.com/586n69vc (patreon.com). Accessed January 2023.
Danya Issawi (2022). What to Know About the Balenciaga Ad Scandal, https://tinyurl.com/ym6fybhv (thecut.com). Accessed January 2023.
George Kapsanis (2005). Theosis: Deification as the Purpose of Man's Life, https://tinyurl.com/2p94p55s (greekorthodoxchurch.org). Accessed January 2023.
Mitchell B. Liester (2000). Hesychasm: A Christian Path of Transcendence, https://tinyurl.com/24ktnd5a (theosophical.org). Accessed January 2023.
Samuel Liddell MacGregor-Mathers, trans. (1976). The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage. Wellingborough: Thorsons.
Samuel Liddell MacGregor-Mathers, trans. (1995). The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King. Boston, MA: Red Wheel Weiser.
Intro music by Alan Chapman. Outro music from loops by users mildperil, Tumbleweed, and VladEisch at looperman.com.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Previous Episode

005 The Warpath Prophecy
The presence of a stalker; previous experiences of stalkers from our Open Enlightenment project; well-intentioned stalkers and stalkers with a malevolent intention; confrontation with the current stalker; this person’s tactics: fake accounts, on-line harassment, smears, and misattribution; the assumption of good faith; the actual indifference of the stalker to the ideas they pretend to care about; the stalker’s participation in a magical working to contact the Third Order / Great White Brotherhood; our experience of these beings from the Tempe workings; the mistakes we made and the necessity of learning from mistakes in magick; the nature of these beings and of the prophecies they provide; the mistakes made in the working to contact the Third Order and its embarrassing results; the implications for the stalker of being told “f**k you!” by the Third Order; the ethical conduct of the stalker during this working and its effects; the prophecies made during the working; on the warpath against the Third Order and the Arcanum Arcanorum; criticisms of the lineage of the Arcanum Arcanorum; the current tendency to depose the prophets; the possible motivations of post-Crowleyism; the way back from mistakes in magick; how mastery in magick depends upon the recognition of delusion and the willingness to confront it; the warpath prophecy; binding practice and its difference from “binding” in the sense of enchantment; the working to contact the Third Order as an origin scene explaining the role of the stalker and the constant humiliation in which it results; how the stalker says no to the practice yet is continuously attracted to it; a personal example of attraction to something in order to try to negate it; the line between criticism and harassment; the process of initiation as turning the right way up what is fallen; the ill-will of the stalker; the analogy of the bees, butterflies, and spiders in Magia; the spider and the narcissist; the use of narcissism as an insult and its difference from true self-love; narcissism and control; the difference between narcissism and Narcissistic Personality Disorder; the challenge of changing narcissistic behaviour; the inner void from which the narcissist is hiding; the fire of awakening as an illumination of the void; questioning the notion of narcissism as a block to awakening; the examples of Andrew Cohen and Jiddu Krishnamurti; the importance of personal responsibility in the face of cultural delusion; the contemporary discourse around the divine and magick, which both entail confrontation with the inner void; cultural narcissism; a personal example of the horror of the inner void; how our culture pretends it is the goal of history and that the prophets and the divine never existed.
The livestream of the working to contact the Third Order mentioned in this episode has recently been withdrawn from public access. However, for anyone interested, a written transcript (with commentary) entitled "The Demonstration" is available at: https://tinyurl.com/2cym69eb. (Direct link to PDF file: https://tinyurl.com/5zwfhnt4.)
BBC Select (2021). Was Andrew Cohen's EnlightenNext group a cult? https://tinyurl.com/2p9dfmhm (youtube.com). Accessed December 2022.
Stephen LaBerge (2009). Lucid Dreaming: A Concise Guide to Awakening in Your Dreams and in Your Life. Boulder, CO: Sounds True.
The Open University (2022). Charles W. Leadbeater, https://tinyurl.com/2jtnj55e (open.ac.uk). Accessed December 2022.
Richard Whittaker (2011). Interview with Peter Kingsley: Remembering what we have forgotten, https://tinyurl.com/mr2wmsc7 (conversations.org). Accessed December 2022.
Intro music by Alan Chapman. Outro music from loops by users mildperil, Tumbleweed, and VladEisch at looperman.com.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Next Episode

007 Disreputable Faeries
Our recent podcast hiatus; the relevance of reputation to magick; the use of reputation by spiritual teachers (Crowley, Gurdjieff, Milarepa); the indispensability of dissuasion; contrasts between this and modern spirituality; warnings against reputational damage; reputational contagion; why and how reputation will not survive the Great Work; the reputational disaster of The Baptist’s Head material; why we might want to stand by this regardless; the antidote to these problems in Magia; following the thread versus reputation and preference; the destruction of the teacher’s reputation; bad reputation differentiated from inappropriate conduct; following the thread regardless of revulsion; the impossibility of gatekeeping; how disgraced teachers are often overly preoccupied with reputation; dissuasive teachers we have known and loved; trust for the truth rather than for the teacher; how, if even the teacher may not know what they are following, then neither will the student; why non-abuse is so easy; “Boomer magick” and its impact on contemporary spirituality; the Gen X perspective; the opportunity presented by the passing of the Boomers; the current prevalence of “the Phenomenon” in podcasts; the suspicious absence of faeries from our experience; the annoyance of crappy little spirits; the possible relevance of this to classic faerie encounters; misdirection, deviation, fakery and fictionality; the relationship of faerie and UFO encounters to awakening; getting stuck in the “outer threshold” of spiritual realisation; how most work with spirits might be a distraction; the contrast of this perspective with animism and spiritism; why the mystery of the Phenomenon is actually not mysterious; the delusion of collective awakening; the problem with “the other of the other”; the Phenomenon as a manifestation of the Many; the importance of engaging with particulars; encounters with birds and the contrast of these to faerie encounters; birds and angels; the paranormal as a possibility for initiation; discriminating between spirits by their relationship to the human; the Phenomenon as a parody of initiation.
John A. Keel (1970). Operation Trojan Horse. New York: Putnam.
Karl Pfeiffer, director (2019). Hellier. Planet Weird.
Georgina Rose (2023). The Postmodern Iconoclast: Magical Lineages Explained, Featuring Alan Chapman, https://tinyurl.com/4svmvkhu (spotify.com). Accessed April 2023.
Intro music by Alan Chapman. Outro music from loops by users mildperil, Tumbleweed, and VladEisch at looperman.com.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
If you like this episode you’ll love
Episode Comments
Generate a badge
Get a badge for your website that links back to this episode
<a href="https://goodpods.com/podcasts/worp-fm-522273/006-eating-cheese-sandwiches-with-orthodox-demons-68006758"> <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/goodpods-images-bucket/badges/generic-badge-1.svg" alt="listen to 006 eating cheese sandwiches with orthodox demons on goodpods" style="width: 225px" /> </a>
Copy