What if philosophy was always an initiation, a living practice, a rebellion against the assumption that you already know what you are?

Dr. Danielle Layne is a professor of philosophy at Gonzaga University, director of the graduate philosophy program, and founder of Palinode Productions and Khora, a philosophical search engine and social platform designed to connect ideas and challenge perspectives.

We move from Orphism through the pre-Socratics into Plato and the Platonic mysteries, and into what it means to live philosophy as a rebellious, embodied practice.

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We have access to more information than any generation in history, so why does it feel like we understand less?

In this Monday Night Live, Kaiva Rose and I ask what happened to the Renaissance mind and whether we are confusing access to information with actual knowledge and wisdom. We explore AI and cognitive offloading, pre-digested knowledge, social media and algorithms, the loss of deep reading, apprenticeship and embodied practice, and why returning to source material still matters. 

From Plato, Jung and Ludwig Klages to the Pandaemonic, cosmogonic Eros, magic, mythology and the living world, the conversation becomes a larger question about how we recover a direct relationship with reality. We also follow that same thread into food, agriculture, marketing and the ways we increasingly outsource the basic things that once connected us to our communities and the world around us.

Maybe the Renaissance mind isn't dead. Maybe we're being asked to build it again.

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This conversation with Ike Baker of ARCANVM focuses on magick, the Western Esoteric Tradition, and embodied practice shaped through time, discipline, and lived experience. We discuss how magick functions within initiatory traditions, the purpose of ritual, and why moderation and balance appear so consistently across older systems.

Drawing on his experience within the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and Freemasonry, Ike speaks about initiation, lineage, and what these traditions were meant to cultivate in a person. The discussion also addresses Freemasonry myths, why conspiracy narratives persist, and what often motivates public stories about leaving initiatory orders. In the later portion, we turn toward mythology, exploring why certain stories endure, how myth helps shape a life when taken seriously, how these ideas meet the current cultural moment and much, much more.

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We’ve become very good at measuring the world, breaking it into parts, turning it into data, resources, systems, and functions. But what happens when that way of seeing becomes the only way we know how to see?

In this episode of Magus in the Media, Kaiva Rose and I talk about myth as a living way of understanding reality, not just as old stories. We move through Heidegger, Korzybski, David Beth’s Pandaemonic, astrology, Hamlet’s Mill, tradition, technology, AI, surveillance, and the question of whether the world is still alive with meaning beneath the systems we’ve built around it. 

This is a conversation about perception, memory, the sacred, and what it might mean to remember the mythic world.

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Collin Conkwright of American Esoteric joins me for a long-form conversation on Hermeticism, Freemasonry, and the Western esoteric tradition.

We discuss the Poimandres from the Corpus Hermeticum, ascent through the spheres, universalism, Freemasonry as symbolic transmission, Albert Pike, Chevalier Ramsay, the rejection of establishment churches at the founding, interior discipline, and the role of practice and embodiment along with much much more.

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In this episode of Magus in the Media, I sit down with Miguel Conner of Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio.

We talk about how his path into Gnosticism began through experience and synchronicity, why gnosis resists definition, and how ideas like archons and Abraxas appear in Gnostic texts. The conversation moves through Philip K. Dick, The Matrix, simulation, and why these stories continue to surface when people start questioning reality. 

Later, we talk about Miguel’s book The Occult Elvis, how it came to him, what Elvis was reading, and how mysticism and direct experience shaped his life. Toward the end, Miguel talks about personal myth and what he means when he says, “write your own gospel, live your own myth.” 

Magus in the Media explores myth, magick, and meaning as they surface through modern stories, culture, and lived experience.

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What are we actually giving our attention, belief, emotion, and energy to every day?

In this live conversation, Kaiva Rose and I explore egregores, ritual, modern mythology, algorithms, political narratives, technology, consumer culture, spiritual practice, and the invisible structures that begin shaping us when we unconsciously participate in them. 

We also ask a more difficult question: if our attention gives these things power, how do we reclaim that attention and consciously choose what deserves to be strengthened? From Mark Stavish and Carl Jung to Robert Anton Wilson, Fullmetal Alchemist, ritual practice, community, and the pursuit of wholeness, this became a conversation about sovereignty, discernment, and remembering that we are participants in the stories shaping our world. 

Join us live and let’s go deep down the rabbit hole. 

This is Magus in the Media.

Welcome to Magus in the Media.

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What do the earliest Sumerian texts actually say about the Anunnaki?

In this conversation with Dr. Heather Lynn, historian, educator, and author of The Anunnaki Revelation, we examine the Sumerian problem, language isolates, the difference between the Anunnaki and the Apkallu, and whether civilization may be carrying memory from a cataclysmic past.

From there we move into ultra-terrestrial ideas, altered states, entheogens, ancient possession rites, ritual practice, chaos magic, and the rise of what we describe as a parasitic class. groups who understood language, symbol, and hierarchy well enough to structure entire societies.

This conversation connects ancient Mesopotamia to modern power, narrative formation, and the role of consciousness in shaping reality.

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David Beth of Theion Press joins Magus in the Media for a deep conversation on his new book, The Black Pilgrimage, anti-transcendentalism, living tradition, Haitian Vodou, chaos magic, spiritual ego, and the crisis at the heart of modern occultism.

Together we explore the pandemonic, the embodied soul, initiation, Heidegger, the dangers of spiritual consumerism, and what it means to confront the world as it truly is rather than escaping into abstraction.

https://kosmicgnosis.com/

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I’m joined by Peter Grey and Alkistis Dimech, founders of Scarlet Imprint, for a long-form conversation on Western esotericism, magic, books, and practice.

We talk through the figure of Lucifer as it develops through Milton, the Romantic poets, and later thinkers, and how those ideas continue to shape modern imagination, publishing, and spiritual practice. The conversation moves through existentialism, Colin Wilson and Faculty X, ritual, embodiment, Butoh, spirit contact, and why the body matters in any serious magical or philosophical work. 

We also discuss the role of books as living objects, publishing as a form of praxis, the responsibilities of carrying tradition forward, and how attention, discipline, and study shape a meaningful life.

This conversation will resonate with listeners interested in myth, magic, philosophy, literature, Western esotericism, and the practical realities of spiritual work.

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