On this week's show, ritualist and artist Ulysses Black joins AP to discuss ritual magic as it is portrayed in movies, ranging from horror movies to documentaries to arthouse cinema. He has written a full book's worth of work on the subject, and in this episode he and AP discuss some of the movies he covered and how he went about dissecting them. Ulysses' background in both art and ritual magick give him a unique critical eye for details in narrative construction and particulars about ritual in its portrayal, leading to fascinating insights into how we assign meaning as either a viewer or participant in the cinematic experience. Drawing from a diverse range of films, he and AP cover a wide range of topics as conversation gets into broader concepts such as apophenia, ritual derangement, and pitfalls in the human meaning-making experience. Through selected films, Ulysses discusses how they illustrate our popular understanding of the esoteric and how ritual actually works.

Among the films discussed are The Craft, A Dark Song, Eyes Wide Shut, The Devil and Father Amorth, and The Wicker Man- and along the way, a lot of other pop culture and magickal concepts are explored. There's plenty of humor as well, as they discuss Crowleyan metaphors and the celebration of cult cinema as ritualistic in itself. Ulysses is careful to define what constitutes ritual as distinct from routine, and the highly personalized nature of assigned meaning and value that goes into such distinctions. This conversation illustrates the hidden layers of our day-to-day lives as much as it does the symbolism of media, and gives the listener a lot to think about.

Be sure to check out Ulysses' work at https://www.ulyssesblack.com/ and follow him over on substack here: https://theritualist.substack.com/