Three years ago, Douglas Batchelor of the What Magic is This? podcast released a series that caught my attention. I had been a fan of his show for years and had come to expect his episodes to revolve around magical history, often with an emphasis on the ceremonial and evocatory variety. He called this series A Fistful o' Fairies, and over six episodes, he brought on an assortment of amazing guests to delve into different facets of the various interpretations of "who faeries actually are." As someone with a strange compulsion to explore this liminal realm and its denizens, this was a rare encounter with a podcast that didn't broach "fairies" as a one-off curio but rather gave the vast topic the searching consideration it demands. I loved this series, and after it ended, I asked myself, "What if that series spun off into an entire podcast?" Within a matter of months, Radical Elphame was born.

In light of the monumental influence Douglas had on the inception of this show, it was a true honor to chat with him and explore what inspired him to go down the faerie rabbit hole in the first place, and where it has continued to lead him today.

SHOW NOTES:

What Magic is This? Podcast

Douglas' Patreon

Douglas' Website

Before I was a Witch, I was a cinephile. When I was younger, I subscribed to the "Auteur Theory" of film appreciation, which posits that the best movies are essentially a masterful reflection of a god's eye view, and that in the case of cinema, the director is god. The Auteur Theory of the director doesn't describe a dreamer or a collaborator, but a visionary master of their medium, who, prior to shooting, has already meticulously perfected their next film in their head. To the Auteur, the sets, actors, and film stock are all uncarved blocks for them to impress their vision upon. Interestingly, though, I don't think many of the great directors of the last century actually experienced filmmaking this way. I think the Auteur Theory is a story created by film critics living in an era dominated by the ontology of scientific materialism, trying to find a way to classify this new art form in ways that conform to these limited beliefs.

If there is a poster child for the masterful Auteur, it has to be Stanley Kubrick. There's an entire feature-length documentary formed out of a collection of wild theories about the "hidden meanings" encoded in Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining, all of which hinge on the shared belief that he was such a meticulous genius that any odd or out-of-place props or unrealistic set geography must have been intentional clues to a mysterious puzzle that only they could solve. A common example of Kubrick's perfectionism was the often torturous number of takes he would demand of his actors, even for what seemed like less significant moments in the story. The presumption being that Kubrick needed so many takes to ensure he had captured his unshakable vision.

In just the past few years, deep dives into Kubrick's creative process, through rare interviews with his closest collaborators, have burst this obsessive-genius bubble. His reputation for excessive takes, it turned out, was not an attempt to crystallize his inner vision, but rather giving the scene enough space for something he couldn't have scripted to manifest, no matter how long it took. This same porous approach to storytelling is why his film Dr. Strangelove went from being an existential thriller to a black comedy midway through development. After trying earnestly to adapt the novel Red Alert for months with its author, Peter George, at a certain point, they couldn't ignore the inherent absurdity of nuclear deterrence and mutually assured destruction, and just leaned into it, or learned to "stop worrying and love the bomb" as it were. A comedy "masterpiece" was born, completely by accident. Essentially, Kubrick was always just trying to "catch the big fish," as David Lynch would say, but he had such a difficult time doing it that his method became misconstrued as genius.

Although certainly an "Auteur" in his own right, David Lynch never conformed to the Auteur Theory's conception of a master over his craft. Lynch unapologetically rejected "explaining" his often confounding films, to the ire of critics, not because he had ingeniously encoded them like a puzzle for the viewer to solve, but because his films were designed as thresholds for the viewer to cross and experience on an individual level. To Lynch, the meaning of his films was intentionally subjective, circumventing the intellectual interrogation of the critic, who usually seeks to explain and "rate" the work, à la the scientific materialist paradigm. To some, this made Lynch less of a "master" of his craft and more of a madman with a budget.

It's this same use of art and imagination as a threshold state to engage with "The Other" that Chaise Levy sees in the works of William Blake and the Romantic movement he would go on to inspire. How might we see Blakean "Double Vision" as a form of seership? What can Romanticism teach us about animism? Chaise is here to tell us.

SHOW NOTES:

Join the Patreon! The Coven of Wider Inclusion

Inspiration, Move Me Brightly Substack: Substack

Chaise's Website: chaiselevy.com

The Hagstone Podcast: Spotify Link

Chaise's Instagram: @telluric_tounges

Aidan Wachter's After the Fall: A Black Book Working

The inner experience of magic – the knowledge and gnosis gleaned from somatic responses and inner-eye eruptions – is a feature, not a bug, of engaging with these practices. When magic can be experienced fully, without doubt, it tends to draw us in and lead us to seek even deeper. The mystical applications of magic are a large part of what drew me to it in the first place. The utility of practical magic is important, sometimes even vital, but once your roads are open, your luck is drawn, and your boundaries are set, then these tools can help us ask the bigger questions. Sometimes, this inner exploration can draw practitioners into the hermitage or wizard's tower, and even lead them to retreat from life. Once you've plowed the depths of your shadow or returned from your katabsis or grounded from your celestial ascent, what are you to do with the boons of this experience? Hopefully, lead a richer and more fulfilling life.

Today's show is a little different than usual. Rather than an interview with a magical expert or a deep dive into a tradition or technique, today, I enjoy the chance to catch up with some friends and let them regale us with all the ways magic can be used to have fun, to seek out some adventure, and foster new friendships. CR and Robert tell us about their chance encounter in the UK, the magical shenanigans they got up to, and CR describes how those same magical currents and spiritual support systems can also guide us through the trials of loss and grief. I thought it would be fun to share this chat with you all. It's very casual, but also heartening, and at times truly poignant.

SHOW NOTES:

C.R.'s Website: https://lalanomicon.com/

Alien Encounters: Fact or Fiction: HBO MAX

IG: @misterxofer

No Hand Path: Robert's Substack

IG: @robertpeterservices

If you had to guess the political persuasion in the land of Faery, what's the first thought that comes to mind? I think for most, it would be hard to separate our preconceived notion of faeries from their titular tales, replete with Queens, Kings, and courts. Although there is no lack of allusions to a Faery adherence to some form of Otherworldly monarchy (or monarchies), there are just as many instances of clear inversions of the etiquette and mores of our human royal courts, in their Faery reflections. In the Early Modern period, we also see a number of social rebellions on the part of the human working classes against the tyrannical excesses of their own monarchs, carried out in the name of faeries. How much of this mirroring of our own realm, that we see askew in Faery, is an expression of their inherent nature, and how much is it actually a form of theatrics or co-creation? When is Faery an interface? In the US today, are there still Faerie Queens, or have they decided to try out the popular mode of democratically elected authoritarian?

In Morgan Daimler's latest book on The Fairy Courts, they challenge many of the pre-conceived notions we have about the social structures of these beings, and the relative morality at play in their pledged loyalties, from the "Seelie" and "Unseelie" Courts in Early Modern Scotland, to their modern adaptations in fiction and pop culture. In our conversation, Morgan unpacks all the nuances of this complex topic and fells some sacred cows along the way.

And while I have you here, I just want to mention that we have a lively Patreon page you can check out if you want to pledge support for the show. We offer extended bonus interviews for every episode, and I've been offering a Patreon-exclusive deep dive into my approach to seership over there as well. I also have a free Substack called The Foliate Head, where I'm about to post my fifth entry into an essay series on the vast array of theories about the fundamental nature of faeries, and why they might not all be mutually exclusive.

And if you haven't yet, go forth and rate and review the show. It actually goes a long way in getting us into more ears. All that said, I hope you enjoy my chat with the great Morgan Daimler.

SHOW NOTES:

Morgan's Books: Author Page

The Fairy Courts: Moon Books

Feed the Fairies Podcast: Spotify Link

Morgan's Patheos Blog: Patheos Pagan

Morgan's Classes: Irish Pagan School

Morgan's Instagram: @morgandaimler

If I go to my rural grocery store today, amongst the tabloids, gossip rags, and boomer nostalgia slop in the magazine section, a strange artifact awaits. There, as it likely has been since the place was built in the fifties, is a row of Old Farmer's Almanacs. Ostensibly a relic of homespun wisdom and a tangible reminder of an agrarian lifestyle that a few generations ago would have been intrinsic to survival, but is now merely a hobby. The Farmer's Almanac can seem like an object of tradition more than function, like Coke in a glass bottle or cowboy boots: a tool to embody and experience the past. Less remarked on, though, is how the Old Farmer's Almanac is essentially a grimoire of agricultural folk magic that is somehow as ubiquitous as the TV Guide.

In the Old Farmer's Almanac, you'll essentially find half the categories of the New Age section in the bookstore: weather predictions, astrological timing, home remedies, and a lunar cycle planting guide, and somehow it still manages to feel as kitschy as a Norman Rockwell painting. What this apparent dichotomy between content and presentation reveals to me is just how old most of what gets called "new age" actually is. Interestingly, by going back to the land as a form of self-care or hobby, a vocation, or an intentional lifestyle, a hermetic dialectic opens up between that most rooted and embodied experience of growing food in dirt and all the seen and unseen cosmic influences that make it possible. When we remove the barriers between our human lives and the processes and activities that support them–such as agriculture, energy generation, and cooking–we start to realize how much modern life has become almost a simulacrum of living. When we allow ourselves to reconnect with the actions that foster our lives and turn down the distractions and toils of modernity, the "big questions" feel closer at hand. What can feel like interests of fantasy or eccentricity to the modern world–those subjects beyond the scope of what we can quantify, dissect, and extract from–in this more embodied life, take precedence.

This is why I think some form of engagement with the "natural" world is fundamental to what we now call magic, and in the past, we probably experienced as just part of being alive. I think something unlocks when we see ourselves through the lens of the earth, and the ways in which we are grown by it and governed by the same forces that influence it. Magic removed from this gnosis is always going to be handicapped, and any life not guided by it will be stunted. Although I don't think the Old Farmer's Almanac at my local grocery store is a sacred text, the persistence of its metaphysical approach to the most practical of tasks is something I find heartening. But what would an even Older Farmer's Almanac look like? What if it were written by Agrippa instead of Garrison Keillor? What if it could explain the hermetic principles it was emulating? What if it traced these practices to their ancient sources and explored the perennial wisdom of agrarian magic found across the globe? It might look like Todd Elliott's new book, The Cunning Farmer.

SHOW NOTES:

Todd's Book: The Cunning Farmer

Todd's Substack: The Cunning Farmer

Despite being an eccentric enough person to have a podcast about magic, I find the topic of UFOs and UAPs difficult to talk about. Unlike animism, folk magic, and faeries, the UAP subject is no longer a fringe pursuit. It's making headlines in legacy media outlets and being earnestly discussed by the figureheads at both ends of the US political spectrum. Unlike most of what we cover on this show, UAP phenomena is now a suitable topic of conversation for even the normies in my life. Now, with very few qualifiers, I can dive into a philosophical conversation with almost anyone, about the vast spectrum of implications we're facing if we are to finally find ourselves the recipients of some kind of "official" disclosure. I think my hesitation to bring up these subjects casually has something to do with the ways in which, despite dovetailing with so many of my own spiritual and philosophical interests, the general consensus is that this phenomena can not only be explained within a fundamental materialist worldview, but that it, in some way, supercedes the spiritual, rendering it obsolete.

When we look at the mainstream coverage of the UAP topic, what we see is a very materialistic spin on what is otherwise a fairly mysterious and aberrant phenomena. This narrative fetishizes the tech of these so-called crafts and presupposes an advanced alien race, perhaps ready to welcome the humans of the 21st century into their intergalactic federation now that we have AI deepfakes and self-driving taxis. For someone like me, interested in the esoteric and arcane, this scenario doesn't feel like progress, nor does it describe what I see when I explore the UAP subject with magician goggles. During my conversation with today's guests, Sinéad Whelehan and Anthony Miller of the Fire in the Cosmos podcast, Sinéad made a fascinating point about how the historically male-dominated field of "UFOlogy" has skewed the narrative of the subject toward the "nuts-and-bolts" paradigm most of us take for granted today. Interestingly, I think you can see echoes of this in a majority of the paranormal fields, where for most of this century, a primacy has been placed on cutting-edge technology being employed to "hunt" and "prove" the tangible reality of these subjects and subdue them into the rational materialist paradigm once and for all.

It's heartening to see a shift in the conversation around UAP and related fields, and the welcoming of more female voices and perspectives. With this shift, the wider acceptance of the right-brained side of the conversation has finally come, and subjects relating to consciousness, myth, and spirituality are becoming less relegated to the fringes. With this holistic consideration of the UAP topic, suddenly the knowledge and experience of the occultist or magician feels just as relevant to the task of groking this mystery as any cutting-edge science, and with this paradigm shift, perhaps our pre-conceived notions of what science and magic are in the first place can begin to grow and expand.

SHOW NOTES:

Podcast: Fire in the Cosmos

Patreon: Fire in the Cosmos

Contact in the Desert: May 28 - June 1st

There can be a deep sense of displacement in the experience of the diaspora. Often raised unrooted to ancestral lands and traditions, or even fully rudderless in the vacuum of cultural assimilation. To engage in ancestral lifeways from this position can sometimes give off a palpable sense of imposter syndrome, seeming like a choice between appropriation and a LARP. How can we explore ancestral spirituality as "ancestors in training" rather than merely venerating the past? How can ancient myths make us more engaged in our present?

The Pennsylvania Dutch, in their many iterations, offer a fascinating example of how a diasporic people can foster a living spirituality, propelled by their traditions, but gracefully in conversation with the adaptations and assimilations that a true connection to the present moment asks of us. The Pennsylvania Dutch have many flavors, but the most interesting to me is somehow at once the most invested in their ancestral ontology, and also the most progressive. Urglaawe is a new vision for working with old Gods. A strain of Heathenry that seeks to adapt ancient wisdom to contemporary life, and root ancestral lifeways in new lands.

SHOW NOTES:

Get the Book: Heathen Traditions of the Pennsylvania Dutch

Learn more about Urglaawe: Urglaawe.org

Urglaawe FB Page for event info: Urglaawe

Stacey's Blog: The Accidental Urglaawer

Stacey's Etsy Page: Accidentalurglaawer

When we consider "nature spirits" in an occult or magical context, they can appear to be a clearly defined category of beings. In most books on Witchcraft or spirit work, they might be reduced to a chapter or even a paragraph. So what are we talking about when we refer to "nature spirits"? Are we talking about "elementals" a la Paracelsus or Madame Blavatsky? Or the pixies and sprites of Victorian nurseries? Are we referring to a spiritual presence in thunder or a gust of wind? Do we imagine the hermetic sympathies that we can draw from plants and trees? Or conspicuous animals arriving as omens? Or the vibes in an ancient ruin or battlefield? Are "nature spirits" the spirits of humans buried in nature? And what happens to these spirits when their valley, or coast, or hillside becomes a city?

It would appear that the deeper we look into this category of spirits, a clear definition isn't constellated; instead, a plurality or ecology begins to emerge. Thankfully, Elyse Welles has freed the spirits of the land from the confines of these reduced delineations and given them the space of a full book to be explored with the nuance and depth they deserve. What role does the egragore of a town or city play in our spiritual engagement with the land, and how to do reach beyond it? Can the animating forces of a bioregion call on animal emissaries to deliver messages? Where do land spirits end, and gods begin? Tune in to find out.

SHOW NOTES:

Buy Elyse's Book: Sacred Wild

Elyse's Website: Elysewelles.com

Links to Elyse's Podcasts, Tours, and Beyond: LinkTree

A strange thing happened in 2019. A five-part paranormal documentary series named after a small town in Kentucky was released for free on the internet. The promo art for the series featured a bizarre humanoid figure with a conical head and amphibious features and felt like clear counterprogramming to the run-of-the-mill ghost-harassing fodder dominating mainstream TV at the time. The project was helmed by first-time director Karl Pfeiffer, and the documentary focused on the chummy husband-and-wife paranormal investigation duo, Greg and Dana Newkirk. Up until this point, Greg and Dana were known primarily as ghost hunters, and their approach to branding could best be described as the intersection of the anomalous and fart jokes. This new documentary, Hellier, felt very different. As a pretentious snob, at the time, I would have called myself a Fortean. I was less interested in ghost-hunting shows and Ancient Aliens than I was in pondering the novel theories of Jacques Vallee and Terrence McKenna and their implications for what we might call the paranormal.

Even though I was skeptical of Hellier initially, it was free after all, and I dove right in. Much like the Newkirk's themselves, I was shocked to discover that what was ostensibly going to be a quirky investigation of a purported goblin sighting soon became a deeply engrossing meditation on the amorphous nature of paranormal activity, and the implications of the phenomena, once glimpsed, staring back wryly. Credit to the team behind Hellier, as the narrative they encountered became weirder, so did their approach to the investigation. It's clear that John Keel and his heterodoxical embrace of so-called "high strangeness" in considering the realm of the paranormal became an intentional road map for the Newkirks to follow, but maybe less obvious to them was the way in which their goblin hunting movie was also becoming infected by a mysterious, co-creative trickster energy, more akin to Robert Anton Wilson's 1977 narrative non-fiction ordeal Cosmic Trigger. Playboy writer turned ironic cult leader, Robert Anton Wilson, through documenting his own psychedelic and synchromystical experiences with skillful levity and wit, fomented an occult revolution. Although Wilson was clearly a product of the late sixties hippie generation, his novel approach to the subject of the anomalous and esoteric planted a seed in the budding young weirdos of the next generation, becoming something of a patron saint for the chaos magicians and psychonauts that would carry the occult revival torch for the cyber punks and archaic revivalists of Generation X. By the time Hellier was released in 2019, Cosmic Trigger's influence had wained, and a new generation, unaware that all the structures holding together consensus reality were about to crumble around them, were ripe for an initiatory artifact of their own. To my estimation, Hellier became a new participant in the initiatory current that propelled Cosmic Trigger to infamy, but updated for the internet generation, and made bingeable.

There's a cathartic moment early in Hellier's second season where the floor drops out from under the premise of the series, and the creators sit down to recount the flurry of messages, warnings, and clues they received after the show first premiered. These messages weren't from their target ghost-hunting demographic, but a swarm of online occultists, who in an uncoordinated effort had reached out in droves to explain the hidden premise of their own show to them. Hellier, the series, the project, it was suggested, is a ritual, and an initiation is being unknowingly undertaken not only by the show's creators, but by its audience as well.

Season 2 of Hellier premiered a few months before a worldwide lockdown, spurred on by the Covid-19 pandemic, would cause a large swath of the world who would normally be distracted by the mundane toils of daily life to be sucked deep down internet rabbit holes. For people like me, this was Hellier. Viewers across the globe reported synchronicities they began to experience in their own lives, seemingly a reflection of the bizarre occurrences that pursue the Newkirk's in both seasons of the show. In reddit forums and discord servers people were describing odd sightings of conspicuous blue star balloons, similar to the investigators on the show, as well as eerily consistent audio phenomena, frequent and uncanny occurrences of revelant names and symbols, and more widely a feeling that the rising number of synchronicities in the lives of the show's audience were evidence that something was intentionally leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for them to follow.

This bizarre effect of the phenomena, once glimpsed staring back, isn't merely an example of the hunter becoming the hunted, but rather a mystical form of call and response. The breadcrumbs people have been led to follow from this sort of engagement don't often lead in a straight line, but weave like a maze. What can seem like hoaxes and fictions can, bizarrely, lead to true insights into these experiences for the participants. In many ways, these experiences are like being sucked into an Alternate Reality Game, with a loose and hidden set of rules. In this game, the initiatory phenomena seems to operate outside of the assumption that "x" marks the spot, instead rewarding the active participant choosing their own adventure.

Was the inciting incident of the Hellier series, essentially an anonymous tip about a goblin sighted in a Kentucky cave, just a rouse all along? A story that, when given the attention of Pfeiffer and the Newkirks, could be taken up and used by something else? What are we to make of this strange relationship between fiction, the phenomenon, and its ability to insert itself into our lives? My takeaway from watching Hellier and the subsequent synchronicities that entered my own life was that it wasn't the ghost hunters or speculative philosophers who seemed to have a real grasp on what I was experiencing. It was the occultists. Before long, what was once an armchair fascination with the Fortean, for me, became an active one. Magic has been a core part of my life ever since. I soon learned that the anomalous initiation that can follow a dead-end email tip about a goblin may be no different than the effects instigated by putting the statue of a deity on an altar and starting to talk to it like it can hear you.

Today's guest also felt Hellier's initiatory effects, but in the opposite way. Celeste Mott was already a self proclaimed Witch and professional tarot reader in New Orleans' French Quarter when lockdown drove her into the show's orbit. For Celeste, Hellier didn't introduce her to magic so much as showed her new ways to think about some of the stranger examples of how it manifested in her life. It turns out this wasn't Celeste's first foray into initiation via cultural artifact.

Celeste has recently had more than one viral moment while recounting how she was ensnared in an online Anne Rice vampire cult in the early days of the internet. Her story is fascinating, at times hilarious, at times disturbing, and ultimately a story about how narrative has the power to initiate, manipulate, and take on a life of its own. As someone who got chewed out by a deacon for reading Interview with a Vampire during a church service when I was nine, I am so here for this story. Today, Celeste is exploring how the same narrative magic she may once have fallen prey to, through a conscientious engagement with this byproduct of high strangeness, can instead be harnessed for personal empowerment. Oh yeah, we talk about Mall World too.

SHOW NOTES:

Celeste's Site: celestemott.com

Celeste's Substack: TheMothsMissives

Celeste's Patreon: TheMoth-UrHouse

Celeste on TikTok: @CelesteMoth

Celeste on IG: @celestemott

Celeste on YouTube: c/celestemott

Watch Hellier: YouTube

UPG is a term I find to be often misunderstood. Short for "unverified person gnosis," this phrase is sometimes wielded as a criticism in the world of spirituality – pagan, polytheist, or otherwise. It's the word "unverified" that stands out in this instance, that seems to be contextualizing someone's "personal gnosis" – about a spiritual path, or being, or myth – as dubious, or heterodox. When used disparagingly, UPG can feel like a corrective. In many ways it can feel like a tool within so-called "alternative spirituality" to reinforce the kind of strictures of the culturally dominant monotheisms onto the "Old Gods" – whether they like it or not.

In the protestant form of Christianity that I grew up with, the word of God had already been written down, in the Old Testament and the New Testament, and that was the Almighties mic-drop. Any divine addendums beyond it were generally considered heresy. When the stakes of divinely inspired words can bear the punitive power conferred by the Christian Bible, it's easy to see why the amendment process would be extremely bureaucratic. It's this very patriarchal approach to spirituality that we find in monotheism, though, that makes alternative spirituality so appealing in the first place. What if UPG is a feature of spirituality, not a bug? What if idiosyncratic personal gnosis from a god, or spirit is a sign that you're having an authentic interaction, as opposed to adopting a state mandated morality tale? What if the gods and their stories are alive, and not frozen in amber?

When Briar writes about the gods, they feel alive. They have new things to teach, and to convey, and the forms they can take are not limited to our preconceived notions. When we hear the word "polytheist," I think we can sometimes think of someone with a religious practice similar in philosophy to monotheism – where the god in question is an all powerful and omnipotent authority to be obeyed – only, with a lot more gods to contend with. From this vantage, a goddess of Spring or a God of the sea, can seem like a goddess ruling over Spring, or a god ruling over the sea. In actual practice I think the relationship is a lot more fluid, and experiential. Pantheons, I think, are not actually so codified. They are beings to be co-created with, in flux and in dialogue.

Briar's Polytheist practice takes the form of what she likes to call the "home cultus." Where the gods are shaped by the land, and alive in the home, imparting gnosis with no verification required. Not frozen in amber, but in active participation. On today's episode, Briar breaks down the anatomy of a home cultus, and invites you to cultivate your own.

SHOW NOTES:

Briar's Website: The Greene Chapel

Briar's Patreon: Briar of the Greene Chapel

Briar's Chap Book: The Beheading Game

The Holy Mountain Zine: @holymountaincitv