How an ancient Tibetan meditation practice helped me through the night in a dark and haunted place, considering: the non-material existence of ghosts; the potential benefits of paranormal encounters; chöd: a meditation practice for dealing with paranormal experiences; Brighton Town Hall: its history and its ghosts; underground water and electromagnetic fields; the Old Police Cells Museum and a plan for spending the night there; paranormal investigation as a contemporary form of chöd; the aims and rationale of chöd; Machig Labdrön on demons, their nature, and how to deal with them; a paranormal investigation at the museum; the layout of the museum; the story of Henry Solomon; a strange experience of an out-of-place smell; possible interactions between imagination and place; the vigil begins; wrestling with the imagination; footsteps and strange sounds; recurrence of the sounds; what chöd revealed about the nature of fear; conflict between the meditator and the paranormal investigator; a big shock; compassion for a ghost; Kunkhyen Pema Karpo on gods and demons; seeing-through the paranormal as a source of supernormal powers; material explanations; the end of the vigil; reflections on the experience.

Support the podcast and access additional content at: https://patreon.com/oeith. Buy me a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/oeith or https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dbarfordG. Or you could send me a lovely book from https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/1IQ3BVWY3L5L5?ref_=wl_share.

Daniel P. Brown (2006). Pointing Out the Great Way: The Stages of Meditation in the Mahamudra Tradition. Boston, MA: Wisdom Publications.

Kate Elms (2011). Henry Solomon (1794-1844), https://tinyurl.com/bdf3urre (brightonmuseums.org.uk). Accessed April 2022.

Machig Labdrön (2013). Machik's Complete Explanation: Clarifying the Meaning of Chöd, translated by Sarah Harding. Boulder, CO: Shambhala.

Old Police Cells Museum (2021). https://www.oldpolicecellsmuseum.com(accessed April 2022).

Presenting a magical working with colleagues Jason Mendel and Paul, we encounter the Estes method of spirit communication, and its potential use in magick, exploring: the background circumstances to this episode; requests for magical interventions and the criteria for deciding whether to get involved; ethical considerations around magical interventions; the ethical mismatch between magick and everyday life; the unusual nature of the entity involved in this case; second order magick; details of our preliminary working, using the Estes method; the Estes protocols; a recording of the session; the question of why spirit communication often is not direct; a couple of odd synchronicities; Alan Chapman’s caution against parasitic entities; Metatron, Sandalphon, and a dead-end; arrival at an interpretation that makes sense of the session; the archangel Poiel; our formulation for the second working; the roots of the Estes method in paranormal investigation and pseudoscience; Hellier as a journey from pseudoscience into conscious magick; technology versus trance mediumship; similarities and differences between the Estes method and the Ouija board; the contrast between verbal and written messages in spirit communication; how it is not meaning that is illusory but meaninglessness; the reality of meaning and the similarity of meaning with love.

Support the podcast and access additional content at: https://patreon.com/oeith. Buy me a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/oeith or https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dbarfordG. Or you could send me a lovely book from https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/1IQ3BVWY3L5L5?ref_=wl_share.

Tommie Kelly, Patrick Murphy & Jason Mendel (2022). TaSTA rituals 003 - the Estes method. https://tinyurl.com/2p87zfzs(youtube.com). Accessed March 2022.

Jason Mendel (2022). The Estes method for magicians. https://tinyurl.com/2p9bbdhv (alampintheunderworld.com). Accessed March 2022.

Jason Mendel (2021) Let’s talk about the Estes method. https://tinyurl.com/2p8jj44y (alampintheunderworld.com). Accessed March 2022.

Greg Newkirk (2019). The Estes method: how the groundbreaking SB7 spirit box experiment is changing paranormal investigation. https://tinyurl.com/22nz82ue (weekinweird.com). Accessed March 2022.

Containing references to sexual abuse, far-right ideology, and the (literal) eating of babies, we face-off to evil, examining: two depictions of Cronos (Saturn) eating a child by Peter Paul Rubens and Francisco Goya; the contrast between their perspectives with regard to the question of evil; the myth of Cronos and the birth of Zeus (Jupiter); the archetype of Cronos and its contemporary influence; Cronos as autocrat and canceller of the future; Cronos as the shadow side of conservatism; the tyranny of the old over the young; sexual abuse of children as an aspect of the Cronos archetype; the case of Jeffrey Epstein; Cronos as the avoider of the law and of karma; how we are haunted by Cronos; gods and archetypes as hardcoded aspects of reality that cannot be changed but perhaps can be responded to; Rubens and Goya as offering two possible trajectories: embracing the real or transcending it; the ethical neutrality of either of these gestures; the Tree of Life as a map of reality; Chesed, The Hierophant, and Zeus, versus Binah and Saturn; the relationship between Cronos and Zeus as presented on the Tree of Life; Lon Milo DuQuette on The Wheel of Fortune and Zeus (Jupiter) as the restorer of karma; confronting evil versus taking responsibility for evil; the right-hand pillar (Mercy) and the left-hand pillar (Strength); the anatomy of each; Chokmah, Binah, and Geburah; The Chariot and The Hanged Man; both pillars as legitimate aspects of reality; my personal preference for the right-hand pillar and the sadness that is its consequence; Nick Land and accelerationism on capitalism as an aspect of reality; accelerationism, the left-hand pillar, and H.P. Lovecraft; both trauma and transcendence as routes to awakening and the divine.

Support the podcast and access additional content at: https://patreon.com/oeith. Buy me a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/oeith or https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dbarfordG. Or you could send me a lovely book from https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/1IQ3BVWY3L5L5?ref_=wl_share.

Anonymous (2022). Rubens & Goya – Saturn devouring his son, https://tinyurl.com/33xrec24 (classicalartsuniverse.com). Accessed March 2022.

Zac Braciszewicz (2006). Dreaming Saturn, https://tinyurl.com/mrxb45zd (wordpress.com). Accessed March 2022.

Lisa Bryant, director (2020). Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich. Netflix.

Lon Milo DuQuette (2017). Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot, new edition. Newburyport, MA: Weiser.

Phil Ford & J.F. Martel (2022). Weird Studies episode 114: on the wheel of fortune, https://tinyurl.com/2s43frc5 (weirdstudies.com). Accessed March 2022.

Nick Land (2021). Critique of transcendental miserabilism. In: Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007. Cambridge, MA: Urbanomic / Sequence.

We examine how Homer, Virgil, and Dante help us navigate the underworld and our relationship to the dead, exploring: the meaning of the hero's descent into the underworld and its personal significance; Odysseus's method of dealing with the dead; what Homer tells us about the underworld and how to work with it; Virgil's Aeneid and the descent of Aeneas; the difference of status among the dead in Virgil; the different impacts upon us of the dead, as explored in Dante's Divine Comedy; The Divine Comedy as an epic wholly about the underworld; the nature of the dead in Dante; the structure of Dante's cosmos; Virgil and Beatrice as Dante's guides; The Divine Comedy as an experiential text; the nature of the dead in Dante; hell, purgatory, and heaven as familiar states of being; hell as a recognisable state of suffering without end; purgatory as the possibility of a willed exit from suffering; the fractal or holographic nature of heaven's bliss; heaven and the non-dual experience; the life of Piccarda Donati and her supposed "sin"; "sin" versus "karma"; sin in the kabbalistic tradition: chatah, pesha, and avon; the application of these ideas to Dante's dead; how we might apply these descriptions of the underworld to our own practice.

Support the podcast and access additional content at: https://patreon.com/oeith. Buy me a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/oeith or https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dbarfordG. Or you could send me a lovely book from https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/1IQ3BVWY3L5L5?ref_=wl_share.

Clive James (2013). Dante: The Divine Comedy. London: Picador.

Richmond Lattimore (2007). The Odyssey of Homer. New York: Harper Perennial.

Rabbi Yitzchak Luria (2022). Three different kinds of sin, https://tinyurl.com/2p8u5y2w. (chabad.org). Accessed February 2022.

To know, to dare, to will, and to keep silence. We explore the magical virtues (specifically, “to keep silence”), known also as “The Powers of the Sphinx”, encountering along the way: the gift of dreams; how keeping silence still protects magicians; how silence can also harm magicians; why I am not silent about my experiences; an oddly pertinent dream; musicians playing music in silence as an analogy for how magicians stand in relationship to each other; the silent recognition of a shared link to the ineffable; the audible as different for everyone, but silence as the same to all; Éliphas Lévi on the Powers of the Sphinx; correspondences of the powers; why I find these unconvincing; Crowley’s take on the powers and their correspondences; Crowley’s added power, “to go”, as an equivalent to the tao or dharma; how the concept of the powers might be useful; the nature of human will; human experience considered as a straddling of realms and bodies; the physical and emotional bodies as “objective”; the mental body as “subjective”; imagining the objective mental body; machines versus angels; an answer to the question free will; the choice between free will and true will; humiliation as the human condition; the powers as ideals, indicating directions of growth and evolution; a less-than-perfect world; keeping silence as cultivating inner silence, and the silence of the divine; Anonymous and Crowley on the primary significance of silence; true will and silence; dreaming as an underrated practice.

Errata: What Nishida Kitaro actually wrote was this: “If we see God externally, it is merely magic” (p. 77).

Support the podcast and access additional content at: https://patreon.com/oeith

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

Aleister Crowley (1943). Magick Without Tears. https://tinyurl.com/3yzx3644 (consciouslibrary.com). Accessed February 2022.

Aleister Crowley (1991). Little Essays Towards Truth. Scottsdale, AZ: New Falcon.

Éliphas Lévi (1896). Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual, translated by A.E. Waite. London: George Redway.

Nishida Kitaro (1987). Last Writings: Nothingness and the Religious Worldview, translated by David Dilworth. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii.

We discuss issues of power and spiritual authority as presented by the tarot card The Hierophant, encountering along the way: Mercury retrograde in the ninth house; a flurry of synchronicities; the question of spiritual authority; the least sexy card in the tarot; common interpretations of the card: dogma and patriarchy; similarities and contrasts between The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, and The Hierophant; Dion Fortune on passivity and activity on the material and the spiritual planes; The Hierophant as the passive masculine spiritual; personal burnout; a reminder of love; patriarchy, authority, and power; Paul Verhaeghe on the difference between power (a two-party relationship) and authority (three parties); authority as the representation of goodness and truth and the renunciation of personal power; the contemporary crisis of authority; spiritual power an impossibility; the question of where, in its absence, we should situate authority; deliberative democracy; the absence of authority as authoritarianism; The Hierophant as not a figure of authority, but a figure that knows where authority is to be found; how commentaries on The Hierophant provoke the question of where authority is found; "the nanny state", my personal ideal; the loving, caring father; Éliphas Lévi on The Hierophant as a loving father; Crowley's very contemporary Hierophant as an enigma and trickster; Mouni Sadhu's Hierophant as a powerful exponent of the will; Anonymous on the will as a vulnerability and a collection of "wounds", and on three types of magick; Anonymous’s types of magick reflected in the other commentators; the "pure" will as authority rather than power; Anonymous’s Hierophant as the embodiment of a process of "spiritual respiration"; prayer and benediction; Tom Hanks, Fred Rogers, and a cinematic manifestation of The Hierophant; authority as not about personal perfection but the embodiment of a spiritual process; the absurdity of neglecting human needs.

Support the podcast and gain access to additional material at https://patreon.com/oeith

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

Aleister Crowley (1974). The Book of Thoth. York Beach, ME: Weiser.

Dion Fortune (1987). The Mystical Qabalah. London: Aquarian.

Marielle Heller, director (2019). A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.

Éliphas Lévi (1861). The Key of the Mysteries, translated by Aleister Crowley. https://tinyurl.com/2p8b74yt (archive.org). Accessed January 2022.

Mouni Sadhu (2004). The Tarot: A Contemporary Course of the Quintessence of Hermetic Occultism. London: Aeon.

Paul Verhaeghe (2017). Says Who? The Struggle for Authority in a Market-Based Society. London: Scribe.

Revisiting my experiences of awakening and reflecting on how things seem now, we ponder along the way: the culture of silence on awakening within Buddhism; the notion that enlightened people never claim enlightenment; my first ever experience of meditation; my failure at regular practice and a farewell to Buddhism; development of an interest in magick; returning to meditation as part of magical training; meeting Alan Chapman; effects of Alan's influence; embarking on the Knowledge and Communication of the Holy Guardian Angel; the 2012 prophecies and the Viking Youth Power Hour; encountering the teachings of Daniel Ingram; how to identify an authentic teacher; the advantages of “spiritual shopping”; using magick in order to experience awakening; replica hand grenades and black monoliths; my lack of faith in magick and my own experience; practical magick for mystical results; the danger of expectations; ego inflation versus lack of confidence; chaos magick as the tradition of not having a tradition; parallels between Crowley's Liber Samekh and Ingram's stages of insight; the realisation that the Dark Night of the Soul is progress; the basic and seemingly universal structure of awakening; discovering this structure all over the place; how the tradition and the practice do not seem to matter; intention and any suitable practice is all that is needed; my brash claims of attainment, and the reasons for this; how I used Ingram's teachings on the Buddhist four path model as my roadmap; descriptions and possible definitions of the four paths; a preliminary shift concerning distraction; my experience of first path: meeting Ultimate Truth; second path as the repetition of this; the major shift of a third path: a permanent awareness of something impossible and divine; God and death; the advice of Christopher Titmuss on dealing with a persistent duality; my experience of a seeming fourth path: nowhere from which to look; why I no longer regard myself as fully awakened; how the awareness has changed over time; a shift of interest towards trauma and karma; wondering about Christina Feldman's definition of enlightenment a “the implosion of all sankharas”.

Support the podcast and access additional material at https://patreon.com/oeith

Duncan Barford (2021). The Magick of A Dark Song: The Abramelin Ritual in Fiction and Reality. Hurstpierpoint: Heptarchia.

Alan Chapman & Duncan Barford (2009). The Blood of the Saints. Brighton: Heptarchia.

Alan Chapman & Duncan Barford (2009). The Urn. Brighton: Heptarchia.

Alan Chapman & Duncan Barford (2010). A Desert of Roses. Brighton: Heptarchia.

Aleister Crowley (1930). Liber Samekh, https://tinyurl.com/2p8a2ned (sacred-texts.com). Accessed January 2022.

Daniel M. Ingram (2018). Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, revised and expanded edition. London: Aeon.

Let's focus in on concentration, exploring: the arms of Baphomet; solve et coagula as "analysis and concentration"; how the mainstream lauds concentration; the prevalence of Attention Deficit Disorder; the union of dissolving and coalescing; Buddhist meditation; vipassana(insight) as solve, versus shamatha (concentration) as coagula; the nature and aims of shamatha practice; coagula and shamathapractice in relation to magick, sorcery, and ritual; belief-shifting and confirmation bias; the cultivation of psychic powers through concentration; solve, insight, and mysticism; undoing the duality between shamatha and vipassana; how insight requires concentration and concentration requires insight; some advice on how to approach shamatha practice; the importance of allowing some space for reflection in shamatha; Leigh Brasington on mindfulness of breathing; the psychological approach to concentration in contrast to concentration itself; the factors of concentration; rapture and happiness; concentration not a means to an end, but the connection with the object itself; the absurdity of the mainstream view; parallels with magick, ritual, and being in love; how there can only be concentration upon something that brings rapture and happiness; personal experience of difficulties during concentration retreats; panic attacks and depression; the mistake of trying to analyse one's way out of issues surfacing from concentration practice; the fruits of concentration practice as mental bodybuilding; concentration retreats as psychedelic voyages, calling for surrender and opening rather than analysis; the similarities of my mistake to the mainstream view of concentration; the role of my character in my mistake; concentration and "productivity"; manifestation as productivity or connection; action versus connection; obstacles to connection; how our relationship to our own mind might impede concentration; Winnicott on "primitive agony"; the mind's terror of itself; personal experiences of this; how retreats can provoke terrors, but perhaps also expose them to understanding; Dan Latner's account of his experiences; overcoming primitive agonies as a realisation of not what we cannot do, but perhaps what we are not doing; spirituality and occultism as discourses in which it is more possible to encounter concentration itself.

Support the podcast and access extra material at: https://patreon.com/oeith

Leigh Brasington (2017). Entering the jhanas, https://tinyurl.com/y63jfvtr (lionsroar.com). Accessed January 2022.

Dan Latner (2021). 1. Episode Zero: The Dang Lantern Podcast, https://tinyurl.com/3h6ze2f2 (spotify.com). Accessed January 2022.

Éliphas Lévi (1856). Baphomet, or the Sabbatic Goat, https://tinyurl.com/3mfpbya3 (wikimedia.org). Accessed January 2022.

Donald Woods Winnicott (1974). Fear of breakdown. International Review of Psycho-Analysis, 1 (1-2): 103–107.

Let's join our minds to explore together the nature of telepathy, taking in along the way: the usefulness of magick in understanding the paranormal; definitions of telepathy and their problems; crisis apparitions; Nick Totton's definition of telepathy as "the experience of transparency between subjects"; the strengths of this definition; how telepathy tends to creep into both magick and therapy; telepathy in psychotherapy; a personal example of apparent telepathy in therapy; its significance in terms of my relationship to my therapist; reasons why therapy might encourage telepathy; the fear of telepathy within therapeutic organisations; Mikita Brottman's take on this and on projective identification (PI); the definition of PI versus projection; a common and widely experienced example of PI; PI as communication through a spectrum of possible means, not necessarily all paranormal; Melanie Klein's original definition of PI and Wilfred Bion's development of it; PI as a fundamental activity of the mind, a primitive kind of thinking; the "middle way" of regarding PI, and why this could be evasive; telepathy and anxiety; a personal example of a crisis apparition; telepathy in the service of intimacy as well as in the service of trauma; telepathy in the case of discarnate beings; a personal example; telepathy versus paranoia; how conventional communication is to telepathy as speech is to touch; Totton's suggestion that the paranormal is bodily; the multiplicity of bodies in occult philosophy.

Support the podcast and access extra material at: https://patreon.com/oeith

Mikita Brottman (2011). Phantoms of the Clinic: From Thought-Transference to Projective Identification. London: Karnac Books.

Melanie Klein (1946). Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 27: 99-110.

Thomas Ogden (1979). On Projective Identification, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 60: 357-373.

Nick Totton (2007). Funny You Should Say That: Paranormality, at the Margins and the Centre of Psychotherapy, European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling, 9(4): 389–401.

If reincarnation is real, then how does it impact on our lives here and now? We consider: the question of how reincarnation manifests in everyday experience; comparison of contact with the dead versus reincarnation; reasons for the relevance of reincarnation; spiritual attainment and insight into past lives; the AUTOTAR working; audio scrying with tinfoil; my supposed incarnation as Otto Berg; why the results failed to convince; the rejection of reincarnation in contemporary western Buddhism; Stephen Batchelor's agnostic viewpoint; Leigh Brasington on rebirth as “an immortality project” and on the Buddha's possible lack of belief in rebirth; the secular materialist style of Buddhism; reincarnation as a disposable doctrine, versus reincarnation as a springboard for productive contemplation; that what is reborn is karma rather than the self; karma as a tennis ball; the thrower and the catcher; contact with the dead as confrontation with the other, versus reincarnation as a continuation of the same; ways in which the dead physically return: incorruptibles; stigmatics; and organ transplant anomalies; incorruptibles as persisting physically not through rebirth but by being regarded as the living as not fully dead; Christ, the persistent returner; the stigmatic as carrying Christ's karma but having no identification with it; organ transplant anomalies as more like a haunting than an instance of rebirth; the experience of reincarnation as identification with something in another as a continuation of ourselves; why experience of a past life is not necessarily a memory; karma as not an experience but an impact upon experience; the EHNB working and its interesting results; tendencies, traits, and predispositions as possible manifestations of karma; my vision of a past life; its mixture of memory and imagination; its relevance to my current life; its recurrence in other workings and in therapy; reincarnation as a continuation of karmic issues; how that which reincarnates never manifests; Rudolf Steiner on the individual as a species; reincarnations and species; reincarnation and the living of similar lives; cases of reincarnation in rural China; individualism as an obscuration of how people are mostly alike; Steiner's previous incarnation as St Thomas Aquinas; the similar missions of Steiner and Aquinas; differences between Steiner's view of reincarnation and that of the Buddha; awakening as the end of rebirth and karma, versus rebirth as humanity’s fulfilment of a much larger project; karma as our manner of falling away from truth; the importance of self-compassion when working with karma.

Support the podcast and access additional material at: https://patreon.com/oeith

Stephen Batchelor (2021). Rebirth: a case for Buddhist agnosticism. https://tinyurl.com/mrxjp993(stephenbatchelor.org). Accessed December 2021.

Steve James (2021). Guru Viking podcast ep122: mysteries of dependent origination – Leigh Brasington. https://tinyurl.com/2p96s8f2(youtube.com). Accessed December 2021.

Steve James (2021). Guru Viking podcast ep120: meditation virtuoso – Delson Armstrong.  https://tinyurl.com/2p8ed2wt (youtube.com). Accessed December 2021.

Changzhen Li (2018). 100 Reincarnation Cases in Pingyang: Extraordinary True Stories of Kam People Who Recall Past Lives. Self-published.

T.H. Meyer (2010). Rudolf Steiner’s Core Mission: The Birth and Development of Spiritual-Scientific Karma Research. Forest Row: Temple Lodge.

Rudolf Steiner (1971). Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man. Forest Row: Anthroposophic Press.