Friends,

Welcome to this massive double-length episode on religion in our time with Diana Young-Peak.

You may not know Diana, or if you do, it may be from exactly 200 (!) episodes ago on AEWCH 97: DIANA YOUNG-PEAK or THE GREATEST STRIPPER OCCULT PRIESTESS YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF. That episode was recorded BEFORE I had a podcast - back in 2011, when I was part of her small esoteric church, the Church of the Living Christ Order of Melchizedek.

That episode is at the end of this one - it gives all the context and background. If you want to listen to it first, you can jump ahead to about 2 hours in.

But you can also listen to our latest conversation first. It's both a spiritual assessment of where we are in the world now, and also an assessment of the growing presence of religion and spirituality in people's lives.

Two growing presences that are destined to meet: the presence of mutual aid community building, and the presence of RELIGION. I've never, in my lifetime, seen more interest in spirituality and its most accessible & durable pathway, religion, as I do now. And I've also never seen this many people coming together in new groups of belonging, with the aim of making safe and loving community and making the word a better place,

In my understanding, this is a convergent evolution that is destined for intersection. In eight years doing the podcast, I've noticed time and time again that activists, organizers, anarchists, leftists, and more want to talk about their religious and spiritual thoughts. And I've also gotten the sense that we have crossed into a territory where it is newly allowed.

My observation on this is that it's because new people have been allowed into organizing spaces and communities, and it's not just leftist atheists or white christians. Religious and national plurality has given rise to new assemblages and new belongings that call for new spiritual ways of seeing.

In some ways this is nothing new: spiritual movements, particularly small spiritual movements, are mutual aid movements. They provide space for conversations about how to consider reality, the self, the other, and the all. That necessitates action, and coherence. Feminist movements have roots in 19th and 20th Century spiritualism and magic. There were anti-slavery magic movements. The White Rose, inspired by anthroposophy, resisted the Nazis. But more than that, there's the many many groups living right next door to you and me and everyone holding small meetings. organizing for the sake of a sense of a greater good and full connection to the real.

Diana's group - passed to her from her mentor and founder of the group, Grace Hooper Pettipher - is one of these groups. Meeting together, when I was an active participant, in a small hotel room in San Francisco (now they mostly meet online), there was community building, connection, growth, and attenuation to freedom. I don't attend these days, for the most part, but I have great respect for what Diana and the group do with the religious impulse. And I hope this new conversation will inspire you to think towards or even begin your own path with community-based religion and spiritual practice.

I hope you enjoy this double-length episode.

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