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Exploring the shifts in our experience of the other between psychology, the paranormal, magick, and spirituality, encountering along the way: a phobia of spiders; the abject horror of the object of a phobia; the psychological origin of the abhorred other in the self; fascination and fixation in phobia; the example of H.P. Lovecraft; the binding of the other; the other as a false appearance; desire and false appearance; personal experiences of projection; an ironic example from James Joyce; Jung on the animus/anima; how to spot an animus/anima projection; drawbacks and opportunities from projection; the other on the psychological level compared with the other in paranormal and magickal experience; the paranormal other as that which sees us and makes of us a false appearance; the story of a bizarre coincidence; the sense of the other in this experience; the sudden shift from the psychological to the paranormal other; how this applies to other types of paranormal and magickal experiences; an example in a magickal context; the curious problem presented by cases of high strangeness/weirdness; the approach often taken by investigators of these; the reappearance of false appearance; the seeking for “the other of the other”; examples from John Keel and the Skinwalker Ranch case; how the other of the other leads to just more of the self; an example from the movie The Mothman Prophecies; the trap of seeking the other of the other; the possibility of an alternative; personal examples of attempting to summon aliens and high strangeness; the tricksterish quality of the results; the paradox of a non-existent, empty, yet palpable other; this other as characteristic of the spiritual domain; the simultaneous disappearance of the self; the ongoing tendency to seek the other of the other; the return to the psychological realm in the event of this; the end of the podcast; how these reflections on the other might offer a coda to the series as a whole.

BBC2 Weird Night (1994). Strange days – coincidences, https://youtu.be/Cx56Qs2Q3g8?t=395 (youtube.com). Accessed September, 2022.

James Joyce (1916). A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, https://tinyurl.com/3p6uyfpc (gutenberg.org). Accessed September, 2022.

John Keel (2002). The Mothman Prophecies. London: Hodder & Stoughton.

Colm A. Kelleher & George Knapp (2005). Hunt for the Skinwalker. New York: Paraview Pocket.

Mark Pellington, director (2002). The Mothman Prophecies. Lakeshore Entertainment.

Donald Tyson (2010). H. P. Lovecraft: flight from madness, https://tinyurl.com/4keac27f (llewellyn.com). Accessed September, 2022.

WORP FM can be found on the usual podcast platforms and at: https://shows.acast.com/worp-fm.

OEITH is now available as a book. 600 pages. 270,000 words. All episodes lovingly transcribed, referenced, and indexed. Available from major online booksellers, including Amazon US and Amazon UK.

Joined again by Paul, we probe the weirder sides of therapy and working as a therapist: defining the anomalous in the context of therapy; shifts in awareness and reality; Jeffrey Kripal’s definition of the paranormal and how it applies to therapy; the intensity of the therapeutic encounter; the pertinence of the psychoanalytic understanding of therapy; resistance to anomalous experiences (AEs) among the therapeutic profession; Freud’s ambivalence in this respect; Paul’s research and the responses received; perspectives from integrative therapy; transpersonal trends in EMDR; how what the theory allows influences what clients bring; clinical parapsychology in Germany; professional versus personal world views; problems concerning confidentiality and the discussion of AEs; the specificity of synchronicities; a personal experience of a prophetic dream; the pathologizing tendency of therapeutic language; collapsing boundaries; the therapeutic potential of AEs; possibilities for openings; the challenge to egoic structures; how the therapist might greet an AE; the “diagnostic” use of AEs; instances in which AEs might not offer opportunities; the shortcomings of therapists; holding AEs for clients; another personal experience, somewhat like a haunting; a sense of “the other”; an AE as an opening of “the reducing valve”; different types of AEs; the relative frequency of psi experiences and synchronicities; pathologisation and power structures; a personal experience of a presence felt in a session; bereavement as a hotbed for AEs; the question of whether the therapist should disclose an AE; when therapy encroaches upon psychic mediumship or occultism; the intersection of therapy, spirituality, and magick; the contrasting ethical frameworks of therapy and magick; erring on the side of minimising harm; the more open the therapist can be, the greater the possibility of grounding for the client; moving beyond vetoing AEs; the overlap of skillsets between therapy and psychic mediumship; a proposal for “weird therapy”; the lack of any manuals for how to work with AEs; the importance of keeping multiple paradigms in play; “living with” and “living in”; the importance of the therapist’s embodiment; holding AEs for clients; attunement; why the therapist must be well-versed in the weird; authenticity; the necessity of a certain selflessness in order to heal through therapy; why spirituality and psychology need to go hand-in-hand.

W.H. Kramer, E. Bauer & G.H. Hövelmann, eds. (2012). Perspectives of Clinical Parapsychology: An Introductory Reader. Bunnick, The Netherlands: Stichting Het Johan Borgman Fonds.

Jeffrey Kripal (2017). Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions. Chicago: University of Chicago.

Thomas Rabeyron (2021). When the truth is out there: counseling people who report anomalous experiences. Frontiers in Psychology, 12: 693707.

OEITH is now available as a book. 600 pages. 270,000 words. All episodes lovingly transcribed, referenced, and indexed. Available from major online booksellers, including ⁠Amazon US⁠ and ⁠Amazon UK⁠.

Exploring the relationship to our ancestors, and how it might affect our lives and spiritual practice, encountering along the way: Carl Jung and his relationship to the dead; ghosts, the dead, and the possibility of further transformations after death; conversation with ancestors; Jung’s Seven Sermons to the Dead; individuation and the dead; a disturbing personal encounter with the ancestors; the similarity to and difference from a demonic encounter; a fallow period in my magick; how magick “fails”; the importance of finding “our” dead; a recourse to art; some help from the Archangel Raziel; how identification with ancestors causes division among the living; the necessity of confronting and criticising the dead; what “criticism” of the dead really entails; the possible negative consequences of avoiding this; a ritual that lead to the composition of Liber Pisces; observations on the technique of active imagination; Liber Pisces as the answer to my questions about the dead; the appearance of Jung and Dante in the visions; Daniel Foor on “ancestral guides” and “happy ancestors”; family tree research; what I discovered about my ancestors and how I felt about them; the legacy of my ancestors in the way I reacted to them; the karmic significance of shame and snobbery; an encounter with a happy ancestor; my earliest named ancestor; the possible impact of ancestral trauma on our spiritual practice.

Daniel Foor (2017). Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing. Rochester, VT: Bear.

C.G. Jung (1967). Memories, Dreams, Reflections. London: Fontana.

Peter Kingsley (2018). Catafalque: Carl Jung and the End of Humanity, volume 1. London: Catafalque.

Printed copies of Liber Pisces are available from: https://tinyurl.com/3y5ewpk6.

OEITH is now available as a book. 600 pages. 270,000 words. All episodes lovingly transcribed, referenced, and indexed. Available from major online booksellers, including ⁠Amazon US⁠ and ⁠Amazon UK⁠.

After a warning concerning the dark content of this episode, we explore (from personal experience) the shadow side of intense meditation practice: panic attacks on my first fire kasina retreat; the importance of reaching out for support from fellow retreatants; the usefulness of maps and models; fear, misery, and disgust; differences in approach between concentration and insight practice; the usefulness of distraction; the importance of sticking to the practice being undertaken; my second kasina retreat and how I made the same mistakes again; self-disgust; depression, unreality, suicidal ideation and intentions; the impact of life problems upon the practice; difficulties in reaching out for support; social alienation; projection of feelings of abandonment; the helpfulness of a group ritual and permission to freak out; the dangers of a highly focused mind; choosing the time and place for self-analysis; the importance of observing and offering support to fellow retreatants; my third kasina retreat, and some success at circumventing the same old difficulty; escaping the mind loop; the relationship and interactions between psychological issues and meditation practices; how psychological issues are resolved not by meditation but through other means; my own issues and how I have addressed them; the abject failure of the third retreat and how this came about; the need for processing and containment of overwhelming psychological issues; the difference between psychotic hallucination and beneficial insights; taking bizarreness as an insight versus living out the bizarreness in reality; the failure of processing and what helps re-integrate; the failure of processing and its possible relationship to trauma; the possible roles of trauma in spiritual practice; the usefulness of agreements to take a break from practice; the kind of experiences to look out for that might indicate a failure to process experiences; possible resistances to taking a break; the likely efficacy of some simple grounding interventions; circumstances leading to the failure of my third kasina retreat; the detriments of ending a retreat unexpectedly; summary of a simple model for keeping retreats safe; the real and significant impacts of spiritual practice and the difficulty of distinguishing psychosis from spiritual insight.

If you are in emotional distress, struggling to cope, or feeling suicidal, then call Samaritans on 116 123 (UK) or the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (USA), or search for local suicide helpline services. There is someone there to listen and support you.

OEITH is now available as a book. 600 pages. 270,000 words. All episodes lovingly transcribed, referenced, and indexed. Available from major online booksellers, including ⁠Amazon US⁠ and ⁠Amazon UK⁠.

We confront this most terrifying item of magical equipment, to explore what makes it so volatile, considering: my first experience of Ouija; the tendency of Ouija to creep into more direct forms of manifestation; the lifelong impact of these experiences; an example of a very physical manifestation; the tendency with Ouija for things to get out of control; obsession and the possibility of harm; comparison of the Ouija with other magical systems; tarot, runes, and the I Ching versus the Ouija; the lack of any system or wisdom in the Ouija; a mixture of divination and evocation; the pendulum and the Forty Servants versus the Ouija; how the onus of safety falls upon the Ouija operator; William Benjamin Carpenter and the ideomotor reflex; the ideomotor reflex as a classic example of “explaining away”; the magical dimension of the ideomotor reflex; a recent (2018) experimental study of the Ouija using eye tracking equipment; the theory of Ouija messages as an “emergent property” of its operators; belief in the Ouija and lowered “sense of agency” (SOA); SOA as a potential but risky magical technique; effective Ouija usage as a balancing of SOA; Aleister Crowley on the Ouija board; using magickal protocols with the Ouija; an example of a working to communicate via Ouija with a djinni; some simple techniques for “locking down” Ouija communications; J. Edward Cornelius on the magical mindset required when using the Ouija; a consistent application of will, thought, and imagination, in order to create an ideal balance of SOA.

Marc Andersen et al. (2018). Predictive minds in Ouija board sessions, https://tinyurl.com/ytxes9e3(springer.com). Accessed June, 2022.

Duncan Barford (2010). Occult Experiments in the Home. London: Aeon.

Duncan Barford (2020). Summoning the djinn. In: Even More Occult Experiments in the Home. Hurstpierpoint: Heptarchia.

William Benjamin Carpenter (1852). On the influence of suggestion in modifying and directing muscular movement, independently of volition, https://tinyurl.com/3enfb5cf (wellcomecollection.org). Accessed June, 2022.

J. Edward Cornelius (2005). Aleister Crowley and the Ouija Board. Port Townsend, WA: Feral House.

Aleister Crowley (1917). The Ouija board, https://tinyurl.com/2p9f3hnh (hermetic.com). Accessed June, 2022.

Tommie Kelly (2022). The Forty Servants, https://tinyurl.com/2p87es2p (adventuresinwoowoo.com). Accessed June, 2022.

Nuke’s Top 5 (2022). The Norwegian ghost, https://tinyurl.com/sb863ftz (youtube.com). Accessed June 2022.

OEITH is now available as a book. 600 pages. 270,000 words. All episodes lovingly transcribed, referenced, and indexed. Available from major online booksellers, including ⁠Amazon US⁠ and ⁠Amazon UK⁠.

Joined by my good friend Paul, we discuss the ethics of magick and the integration of ethics into magical practice, exploring: a somewhat unethical hexing; retaliation, its justifications and alternatives; proportionality; the lack of an ethical framework in chaos magick; the impossibility of an absence of ethics; ethical integrationism versus technical eclecticism; the postmodernist suspicion of morality; accusations of morality; codes of ethics versus ethical frameworks; the discomfort of autonomous ethical reasoning; the problem of post-hoc justifications; the role of interpretation in understanding actions and intentions; abdication of judgement as a strategy for avoiding ethical responsibility; the inescapability of judgment; the principle of minimising harm; the identity of intention and action in magick; the perils of action at a distance; the example of the sunflower as a sigil for victory for Ukraine; distance and disproportionality; the occult community and the question of who should retaliate when retaliation is justified; the ethics of restraint and non-involvement; avoidance of harm versus taking risks to achieve benefits; the risks and potential benefits of magick; an example in mindfulness-based therapy; when things get worse before they get better; the inevitability of harm in magick; the Faustian bargain; the potential for cultivating compassion; how ethics has begun to shape our magical practice; the uncertainty in balancing gain against harm; the deficiencies of "an it harm none"; how ethical thinking beforehand can make magick more effective; an example of a working for a situation involving allegations of misconduct and racism; the problems of a binding ritual in this context; Mirkachank, our servitor for turning a perpetrator’s actions back against them; the surprising outcomes from using this servitor; the problems of intervening from outside a situation; how certain types of personalities are unlikely to benefit from confrontation with their own actions; ethical discomfort as an important signal; our conclusions and the outcome from the working; the principle of parsimony of intervention; Daoist non-action as ethical rather than mystical; the principle of not being an arsehole; the simpler the working the more effective it might be; the fundamental simplicity of ethics; a developmental arc towards simplicity; the simpler and more ethical our magical practice, the perhaps the more it integrates with daily life; the subtle and long-term effects of magical practice.

Federico Campagna (2018). Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality. London: Bloomsbury.

OEITH is now available as a book. 600 pages. 270,000 words. All episodes lovingly transcribed, referenced, and indexed. Available from major online booksellers, including ⁠Amazon US⁠ and ⁠Amazon UK⁠.

Blowing the dust off some old diaries, we reflect on how kasina meditation generates magical powers, exploring: kasina practice and its rejuvenation by Daniel Ingram; the corruption of the original texts; the need for fresh terminology; different types of kasina; how a kasina is used; the importance and use of the retinal after-image; the cultivation of siddhis or “psychic powers”, and what these include; the circumstances of my first fire kasina retreat; the daily schedule; stages of the practice: after-image, red dot, black dot, and the murk; scrying into the murk as a means of realising a magical intention; a vision of a deity and “parallax imagery”; the experience of images that act like perceptions; the differences between perceptions and images; a thought experiment from Jean-Paul Sartre; perceptions as that which is given; images as a manifestation of an intention or will; different types of images and their commonalities; perceptions as offering endless perspectives on reality, and images as offering endless possibilities for departing from it; the characteristics of external images or media; perceptions as analogue and images as digital; magick and the erosion of the difference between imagery and perception; fire kasina as a hacking of the physiology of eye and brain to disrupt this difference; “seeing” with the mind, not the eyes; timescales for building the degree of concentration required; experiences of “travels” to different places; an experience of “the low-resolution vision space”; “the high-resolution vision space” and encounters with discarnate, sentient beings; meeting the Thai Spider Buddha; the strange experience of entering the high-resolution vision space; reflections on the nature of kasina practice; concentration as a limited means of manifestation; a warning about the shadow sides of kasina practice.

Bhadantácariya Buddhaghosa (2011). Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga), translated by Bhikkhu Nanamoli, https://tinyurl.com/2p9aup6j(accesstoinsight.org). Accessed May, 2022.

Daniel Ingram (2018). “Fire Kasina Practice” In: Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, second edition, https://tinyurl.com/2usvrcu5 (mctb.org). Accessed May, 2022.

Jean-Paul Sartre (1972). The Psychology of Imagination. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel.

Shannon Stein & Daniel Ingram (2017). The Fire Kasina: Questions and Answers on Retreat with Practice Notes and Commentary, https://tinyurl.com/3m8y58bv (firekasina.org). Accessed May, 2022.

Arahant Upatissa (1961). The Path of Freedom (Vimuttimagga), translated by Rev. N.R.M. Ehara, Soma Thera, & Kheminda Thera, https://tinyurl.com/4crx5m55 (urbandharma.org). Accessed May, 2022.

OEITH is now available as a book. 600 pages. 270,000 words. All episodes lovingly transcribed, referenced, and indexed. Available from major online booksellers, including ⁠Amazon US⁠ and ⁠Amazon UK⁠.

Borrowing from Buddhism the concept of the “near enemy”, we consider how art, history, and psychology may look like magick but can harm our magical practice, exploring: the danger of the near enemy; pity as the near enemy of compassion; art, history, and psychology as near enemies of magick and their detrimental effects; the difference of this approach from Lionel Snell’s approach in SSOTBME; philosophy as a current near enemy that was once synonymous with magick; art as the most insidious near enemy of magick; the legitimate role of art in magick; beauty versus truth; Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn”; magicians who are artists: Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and Tommie Kelly; how art and magick can be synonymous; art as a disguise for magick; the different intentions and skill sets of art and magick; Phil Ford and J.F. Martel on M. John Harrison’s The Course of the Heart, and Harrison’s response to this; Philip K. Dick as a gnostic writer and Harrison as an imitator of Gnosticism; Socrates’s expulsion of the artists from Plato’s Republic; my view of history as irrelevant to magick; the roots of my view in chaos magick and Perennialism; defining Perennialism and distinguishing it from Traditionalism; the value of different and multiple paths to truth; the tendency of the historical perspective to situate truth in the tradition rather than in personal experience; the value of tradition as a path to personal experience; psychology as a near enemy and my personal vulnerability to it; the spirit paradigm versus the psychological paradigm; how the psychological paradigm is likely to produce only psychological results; the different dimensions of truth: subjective and objective; the psychological paradigm as possibly occluding the objective dimensions of truth; Jung and the objective dimensions of the psyche; the subjective and objective dimensions of the mind in meditation, and psychology’s pathologizing of the objective dimensions.

Phil Ford & J.F. Martel (2020). Weird studies Ep. 81. Gnostic lit: on M. John Harrison's The Course of the Heart. https://tinyurl.com/2kjpywse (weirdstudies.com). Accessed April 2022.

M. John Harrison (2005). The Course of the Heart. In: Anima. London: Gollancz.

M. John Harrison (2020). The core of the heart. https://tinyurl.com/yeyr3h9y (wordpress.com). Accessed April 2022.

M. John Harrison (2020). I can hear you. https://tinyurl.com/yckfj2wa (wordpress.com). Accessed April 2022.

John Keats (1819). Ode on a Grecian urn. https://tinyurl.com/29z54pjh (owleyes.org). Accessed April 2022.

Tommie Kelly (2021). Art is magick, magick is art! https://youtu.be/TcFVj9NBuJk (youtube.com). Accessed April 2022.

Alan Moore (2016). Art and magic. https://youtu.be/WHxWE-S3nD8 (youtube.com). Accessed April 2022.

Plato (2022). The Republic, 10: 598b. https://tinyurl.com/mt3vybc8 (tufts.edu). Accessed April 2022.

OEITH is now available as a book. 600 pages. 270,000 words. All episodes lovingly transcribed, referenced, and indexed. Available from major online booksellers, including ⁠⁠Amazon US⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Amazon UK⁠⁠.

We approach the Middle Pillar on the Tree of Life as a possible guide to the dilemma of having a human identity, exploring: the contrast between identity and being; the advantages and drawbacks of emphasising one of these above the other; a parallel between the Pillar of Severity and identity, and the Pillar of Mercy and being; how these distinctions transcend politics; neurodiversity as a new and possibly radical category of human difference; neurodiversity as a possible recognition that the human being is not synonymous with the human mind; lack of mental imagery as a marker of neurodiversity; mental imagery in magick; Lionel Snell on seeing fairies; how the imagination does not depend upon mental imagery, because the imagination is universal; some ancient myths and other accounts of human nature; the changeability of human nature; David Abram on the separation of the human from nature; putting the blame on language and Plato; the primacy of forgetting in human nature; forgetting and remembering in Plato; remembering as resurrection; parallels between identity and remembering, being and forgetting, and the dilemmas of both; the Middle Pillar as an alternative to these; Kether as that which is beyond the human mind; Israel Regardie on the resolution of psychological conflict as a preliminary practice to magick; acceptance as the solution to conflict; Tiphereth as the model of acceptance and balance; the Middle Pillar as a combination of remembering and forgetting; Yesod as the unconscious and the storehouse of memory and images; the abyss and the enigma of Da’ath; the nature of Da’ath and a personal experience of it; Da’ath and the Holy Guardian Angel as useful fictions; the arrival at a useful fiction as a preliminary to the experience of Kether; the Middle Pillar as a pulsation of different kinds of remembering and forgetting.

David Abram (1996). The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-human World. New York: Pantheon.

Anonymous (2002). Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism. New York: Tarcher.

Ramsey Dukes (2011). How to See Fairies: Discover Your Psychic Powers in Six Weeks. London: Aeon.

Israel Regardie (1945). The Middle Pillar. Chicago: Aries.

OEITH is now available as a book. 600 pages. 270,000 words. All episodes lovingly transcribed, referenced, and indexed. Available from major online booksellers, including ⁠⁠Amazon US⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Amazon UK⁠⁠.