On this episode I speak to William Barnard, professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University and author of the book Liquid Light: Ayahuasca Spirituality and the Santo Daime Tradition.

Professor Barnard has previously written books on William James and Henri Bergson, but in this latest work he writes about his first hand experience as an initiate in the syncretic Brazilian church of the Santo Daime, which uses ayahuasca as a sacrament.

This episode has been a long time coming. My experiences in the Santo Daime church have played a big part in the arc of my life since my first ceremony with them back in 2010.

I’ve been wanting to speak with someone about the Santo Daime since starting this podcast four years ago, but wanted to make sure that it was someone who wasn’t just approaching it from an academic or anthropological perspective. To know anything at all about the Santo Daime you have to drink Daime many times in different contexts.

In that respect, Bill is the perfect guest to discuss this complex topic. In our conversation we talk a little bit about the history of the Santo Daime, but mainly focus on the mystical aspects of the religion, which includes the practice of incorporating spiritual entities.

Bill’s website: http://liquidlightbook.com

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On this episode I speak with two OGs of the mythopoetic men’s movement, Walton Stanley and Timothy Young.

Walton and Tim currently organize the Minnesota Men’s Conference, and were there way back in 1984 when it was founded by poet Robert Bly.

They share some great stories about the early days, and talk about how men’s work has contributed to their lives and local communities. They also offer their perspective on how men’s work has evolved over the years, and where they see it going in the future, and finally, they address some of the criticisms against the early men’s movement as being a reaction against feminism.

Over the years, I’ve received so much inspiration and encouragement from listening to the Minnesota Men’s Conference archival recordings featuring wise elders like Robert Bly, Michael Meade, James Hillman, Robert Moore and Martín Prechtel. 

I’m deeply grateful to Walton and Tim for keeping the home fire burning over there in the Northeast and for generously sharing the collective wisdom from decades of men’s conferences for free.

I highly recommend subscribing to the Minnesota Men’s Conference YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/MensConference) and if you’re interested in attending the conference in person, visit https://minnesotamensconference.com

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This is part two of my conversation with Australian intellectual, writer and scholar of Jung and religion David Tacey.

In part one we spoke at length about his time in analysis with famed post-Jungian writer James Hillman, including David’s critique and praise of Hillman’s psychology.

In this second half we get into a discussion around Jung and religion, David’s book Religion as Metaphor, and the limitations of both Jungian psychology and religious literalism. In the end we digress into some good old fashioned gossip and David lets rip on misogyny in depth psychology and why Jordan Peterson pisses him off so much.

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On this episode I speak with David Tacey, an Australian public intellectual, writer and scholar. David has written and taught extensively on Jung, spirituality and Christianity and is Professor Emeritus of Literature at La Trobe University in Melbourne and Research Professor at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture.

In our conversation, David shares his memories of meeting and working with the renowned post-Jungian writer James Hillman. While I’ve spoken with other people like Thomas Moore who worked closely with Hillman, this is the first time I’ve talked to someone who was actually in analysis with him.

David offers some unique insights into Hillman and his work, as well as a few criticisms. Some of you might know David from the articles he published a few years ago critiquing Hillman’s work and legacy titled The Unmaking of a Psychologist. Those articles were my first introduction to David and his work and I appreciate his outsider perspective on Hillman and the Jungian approach to religion, and more specifically, Christianity.

David was very generous with his time, so I’ve decided to split our conversation into two parts. The second part will deal more specifically with Jung and Religion.

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Wondering about belonging, mystical experience and religion with writer and activist Stephen Jenkinson.

On this episode I welcome back Stephen Jenkinson for the fourth time on the podcast. If you’re not already familiar with Stephen’s work I recommend checking out episodes 14, 45 and 69.

For those of you who are familiar with Stephen’s work, you’ll know that he is a special kind of teacher. I know he prefers not to think of himself that way, but my interactions with him always stretch my brain in really productive but often challenging ways, and that to me is in essence what it means to be a teacher.

This conversation was no different.

We got together on the occasion of the release of a new book that he collaborated on with Kimberly Johnson, called Reckoning. We touch on what brought about that work, but the bulk of our conversation centers around Stephen’s journey to obtaining a Master’s in Theology from Harvard Divinity School and how that lead him to start working as a Social Worker and eventually to the work he’s best known for as a Palliative Care counsellor.

Along the way we hear about his mysterious encounter with an angel at the Notre Dame Cathedral following a near death experience at sea, and wonder together about what it means to belong to a place, particularly for those of us who are relative newcomers to this land called Turtle Island.

As it often happens after speaking with Stephen, I’m left with some questions that continue to haunt me. In particular, what it means to belong, and the question that we end with, does Christianity belong in North America?

As usual, it’s better not to expect any clear cut answers from Stephen but be open to having some new questions to consider. Personally, I take the advice of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who suggested the following in his letters to the young poet Franz Kappus back in 1903:

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Stephen's website: http://orphanwisdom.com 

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Professor Sean McGrath is a former monk who studied at the CG Jung Institute in Zurich which makes him a perfect person for me to talk to about wrestling with my Christian heritage and encounters with the Christ I've had through yoga and psychedelics.

Sean J. McGrath researches and teaches in the areas of metaphysics, classical German philosophy (Kant to Heidegger), phenomenology and hermeneutics, and psychoanalysis at Memorial University in St. John's Newfoundland.

I discovered Sean through the excellent Psychology & The Cross podcast, which you can listen to here: https://cross.center

Links

Join the Medicine Path Inner Circle at http://patreon.com/medicinepath

Medicine Path yoga practices: http://medicinepathyoga.com

The Four Initiations 6-week coaching program for men: http://fourinitiations.com

Psycho-spiritual Counseling & Coaching with Brian James: http://brianjames.ca

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This excerpt is from Robert Moore's lecture series entitled The Warrior Within, which is available from the CG Jung Institute of Chicago and republished here under a Creative Commons license. 

Robert L Moore was an American Jungian analyst and consultant in private practice in Chicago, Illinois. He was the Distinguished Service Professor of Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Spirituality at the Chicago Theological Seminary; a training analyst at the CG Jung Institute of Chicago; and director of research for the Institute for the Science of Psychoanalysis. He was author and editor of numerous books in psychology and spirituality, and lectured internationally on his formulation of a Neo-Jungian paradigm for psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.

Robert Moore is probably best known as the senior author, along with Douglas Gillette, of a series of books on the in-depth structure of the male psyche, drawing on the account of the archetypal level of the human psyche developed by CG Jung. The most well known of these books is King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, which remains a seminal text of the ever-evolving men’s movement.

To find out about my coaching program for men based on the work of Robert Moore and CG Jung, visit http://fourinitiations.com

I'm offering a 25% discount on the program until September 2022.

*Please note: the audio quality of the original tapes is quite poor but I've done my best to optimize it for clarity and ease of listening. I hope you can overlook (overhear?) the poor audio and appreciate the excellent content.

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Scholar, writer and psychotherapist Mark Vernon joins us once again to guide us through Dante's Divine Comedy as a map of the spiritual journey.

Mark's podcast: https://www.markvernon.com

Support the podcast by becoming a Medicine Path Patreon: http://patreon.com/medicinepath

Learn about my counseling practice, books and events at http://brianjames.ca

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This is perhaps the most important podcast I’ve recorded so far, because it deals with a topic that is becoming increasingly relevant with the growing popularity of psychedelics, occult practices and technology.

On this episode I speak with Norwegian healer and author Are Thoresen about his 2020 book Demons and Healing: The Reality of the Demonic Threat and the Doppelgänger in the Light of Anthroposophy: Demonology, Christology and Medicine.

Are Thoresen was born in Norway in 1952. A doctor of veterinary medicine, he has also studied anthroposophic medicine, homeopathy, acupuncture, osteopathy and agriculture. Since 1981 he has run a private holistic practice in Sandefjord, Norway, for the healing of small animals and horses, as well as people. He has lectured widely, specializing in veterinary acupuncture, and has published dozens of scholarly articles. In 1984 he started to treat cancer patients, both human and animals, and this work has been the focus of much of his recent research. He is the author of Demons and Healing and several other books on complementary medicine.

In our conversation Are and I discuss many aspects of demonic entities and possession — how they are created, how they cause physical and mental disease, and how we can transform them and protect ourselves from them. In his books Are writes in great detail about these entities, and trust me, it can begin to feel pretty complex and overwhelming. 

In an attempt to keep this conversation grounded and relatable, I thought it would be helpful if I shared my personal experience with a demonic entity that I encountered while experimenting with astral projection as a teenager, and how I dealt with it 20 years later in the Santo Daime ayahuasca church. 

This experience is something that I’ve only talked about with 2 or 3 people over the years, and while I’m a little reluctant to share it publicly, I feel that it could actually save someone’s life. It’s that important.

•••

Timestamps

4:20 Introduction

8:22 Early spiritual life (Anthroposophy, spirits, Christianity)

13:10 Demons, entities, psychedelics & disease

16:35 Possession & translocation of entities

20:40 Guarding against opening portals

21:40 My experience with a demonic entity

28:50 Are diagnoses my opening

29:57 Closing portals

32:00 Types of entities & disease

38:49 Different types of attacks

40:25 Ayahuasca and opening portals

42:20 Protecting yourself in ceremony

45:00 Translocation vs. Transformation of entities

46:10 Strengthening the “I”

53:16 The protective power of music 

53:56 The dangers of technology

57:30 Memory of water & homeopathy

58:49 What psychedelic “therapy” is getting wrong

1:02:15 “Opening the middle” in electronic devices and in healing work

1:13:40 What changed after Christ 

1:16:36 The need for spiritual warriors and spiritual healing

•••

Support the Podcast!

If you’d like to join the conversation and help support the podcast, please considering becoming a member of the growing Medicine Path tribe at patreon.com/medicinepath. You can also follow me on Instagram @revealingthesoul. I love hearing from listeners, so please feel free to reach out on social media or email me at [email protected]

•••

Links:

Donate: http://ko-fi.com/brianjames / http://paypal.me/medicinepathyoga

Patreon: http://patreon.com/medicinepath 

Coaching & Books: http://brianjames.ca 

Yoga Courses: http://medicinepathyoga.com

Music: Royal Fern by Green House (https://green-house.bandcamp.com)

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Originally published October 2019

Danielle Tarantola, founder and director of Yoga Foundation and teaching since 1998, is certified by the Krishnamacharya Healing Yoga Foundation at Teacher, Teacher Trainer, and Yoga Therapist levels. 

She aligns with the powerful and practical teachings of Krishnamacharya as learned directly through TKV Desikachar and his primary students in Chennai, South India, over 13 trips to Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram. Continued and extensive teaching, practicing, and studying inspire her to ensure that yoga’s profound wisdom comes through clearly, simply, and with total relevancy for our modern times and conditions. 

She continues to learn with her Vedic Chant mentor of 17 years, Radha Sundararajan.

**Correction: In the intro I mention that Danielle is based in New Jersey. She is based on Long Island, NY.

Danielle’s website: https://www.yoga-foundation.com

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