Happy Feast of Saint Olga of Kyiv! There are a great many Saints that lend themselves to magic, to folk expressions, to sorcerous doublings and syncretic masques; and there are some saints whose stories are so bold they become storehouses of witch power and strength in the mere recounting- Olga of Kyiv is notoriously one such Saint! 

Join us in this very special episode, where our sister in serpent-shed and good friend Katarina Pejovic and the Goat and the Good Doctor discuss the fantastic St. Olga of Kyiv, recognized in both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches; the demoness “mistress of sorceresses” and oftime mother of Asmodeus, Agrat bat Mahlat; the bark and bite of the fabled Dogwood tree; the bezoar pearl revered as the Toadstone;  the power and practice of Naming; the geomantic figure of Rubeus; the Tarot Trump of the Star, and the complex mythological sorceress Medea as our Dead Magician.

Episode 30: The Feast of Saint Olga of Kyiv

Radio Free Golgotha is a semi-regular podcast of the occult and esoteric ramblings of Al Cummins &amp; Jesse Hathaway Diaz, and their guests. Each episode is based around a chosen Saint or Angel, Demon or Devil, Herb, Stone, Geomantic Figure, Tarot Trump, and more as the intersections and trajectories are explored through the discussions between these two friends.

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Merry Georgemas, each and every one and all of us!

Whether you are tuning in from Moscow, Malta, Ethiopia, Catalonia, or the chalky shores of Albion, we wish you a very merry Feast of St George! As the bluebells ring out from greening meadows and the seasons Spring further toward Summer, we celebrate and reflect on the mysteries of subduing the monsters that blight the land, battling jingoistic nationalism, the popularity of parading dragons, and the mumming of resurrected knights.

Via our Demon of the episode, Damostan, we get stuck into some deep grimoiric questions of both historical reception of magical texts and the practicalities of practitioners’ animism, conceiving such books of spirits as ecosystems as well as rogue’s galleries of shifting masques. We also pay homage to the transformative potencies and pontos of Exu Ganga.

Our celebrated good Herb is Crocus and the golden mysteries and precious magics of its saffron; from kitchen to the robes of Hekate and so many other goddesses, nymphs, Morai, and more; considering even more occult colour theory and dyeing practices, Jupiterian suffumigations, and much more. 

Our mineralia magica for today is Jasper; whether spotted, speckled, emeraldine, bloody, or lordly. We survey the wide variety of this many-hued chalcedony’s virtues across lapidaries and talismanic medicine, touching upon its qualities of youthful vigor and victorious purity, as well as its blood staunching and even contraceptive usages across history.

Our Style of Magic is Patronage, and we delve especially excitedly into thinking about protectors and pedagogues – whether of places, peoples, practices, or particular endeavours – as well as thinking about patronage – both emblematically and locally – in terms of finding our patrons, heeding their calls, pledging ourselves, and exploring what discovery and integration of mysteries can look like in our practices and our lives. 

Our geomantic Figure this time is Caput Draconis, the benevolent Dragon’s Head of the Benefic Wandering Ones, which speaks of undiscerning prosperity, and the powerful but undirected growth of spring’s saplings turning new leaves. We discuss both the traditional Renaissance attributions of this figure as well as its applications in the magics and mysticisms of trees; as well as offer respectful comparison and contrast with its counterparted Odu, the dynamic, energetic, and spirited Osa Meji. 

Our Arcana takes us on a survey of the shifting trends in interpretations of the Fool and their journey; from the unhoused vagrant dogged by misfortune and mental illness, to moralized parables of self-control and forethought, to our Zero-that-is-Hero’s divine innocence and ‘pure spirit in search of experience.’

Finally, our Dead Magician of the episode is twentieth-century Czech occultist and hermeticist, Franz Bardon, and the cosmological theories, pore-breathing practices, and developmental pedagogies of his most famous trilogy of books – Initiation Into Hermetics, The Practice of Magical Evocation and The Key to the True Kabbalah.

From our own campaigns to battle the dragons of ignorance and xenophobia – and indeed to combat the hydra-headed monsters of our own ever-multiplying tangents and delightful distractions! – we wish you a hearty, healthy, and hermetically-vibrant Feast of St George!

We will of course continue to update the website and our facebook page when footnotes become available.

Episode 34: The Feast of Saint George

Dearest listeners, it is from the Place of the Skull itself we wish you an excellent and powerful Good Friday!

It is with seven years podcast luck this latest episode finally comes to Calvary and celebrates The Friday We Call Good. As our very name suggests, Golgothan themes are important to us here at Radio Free, um, Golgotha, and so we are particularly delighted to explore the is-it-hagiography of the Crucifixion of the Nazarene in this Jesus-numbered Thirty-Third episode. 

Along with reflection upon the martyrdom and Harrowing of Jesus, our Demon(ised) of the episode is Judas Iscariot, and we invite you to join our discussion of his various backtributions of betrayal as well as his contexts in many European traditional witchcrafts.

Our blessedly bitter Botanical of the season is Myrrh, that foreshadowing gift of the Magi and incense of Saturn’s embalming table; and our Mineral is the Edenically greening stone of Emerald, the contagiously-hued stone which brightens the eyes, preserves purity, brings visions to emperors, and so much more.

Apropos of the Passiontide soteriology of the Rood, our Style of Magic this time is Sacrifice: from the blood of the Lamb of God to the animal life-force revered in so many traditions of magic and religion across human time and space.

Honouring the three hours of darkness of this Good Friday, our Arcana is The Sun, and we discuss not only its significances in the history and practice of Tarot but also reflect upon the uncanny phenomenology of experiencing solar eclipses.

Our geomantic figure up for consideration is Laetitia, the Delight that is both Fiery and Watery, and we continue our conversations about the volley-ball of Joy, keeping the flame of inspiration alight, and rippling our rejuvenations out to refresh both private and communal waters; as well as continuing to explore its counterparted Odu Obara Meji through Bantu cosmologies and spiritual medicines of the active head that knows what is necessary to carry even the unmotivated heart through resistances. 

Finally, our Dead Magician could be none other than the accused goetes Jesus of Nazareth himself, pulling double duty in this episode as perhaps only a figure considered simultaneously human and divine could. 

We hope, as always, you find some inspiration and illumination in these topics and tangents by the light of ramble and reflection they were recorded in. Also as always please check back here on the website for updates on classes, conference presentations, and more from both the Goat and the Good Doctor. Cheers!

Episode 33: The Solemn Feast of Good Friday

We bid you a transcendently merry Leap-Feast of Saint Oswald of Worcester! Here in the time-out-of-time we at RFG weave our usual merry way through our Sesame Streetlamp-lit special topics of the episode, beginning with the Saint(s) Oswald; that is, Saint Oswald of Worcester who died on February 29th washing the feet of the poor, “revived” English monasticism, and should not be confused – unless you want – with the raven saint Oswald of Northumbria... 

Our Demon of the Month features an unboxing of Choronzon (or Coronzon ((or even Coronzom))) tracing the dispersals of this entity-concept across the Enochiana of dear Dr Dee, the Thelema of renowned mountaineer, OG yoga influencer, and Great Beast Aleister Crowley, and out into the experimental currents of Chaos Magick, and the philosophies of non-duality, shadow work, and ego death.

 We invite you to our own little Night-blooming Cereus party for our Herb of the episode as we celebrate the wish-granting and immortality of this singularly-flowering dragon-maiden who comes when she will and counsels to keep up the unseen work that creates a perfectly perfumed moment. 

Our Genre of Magic has us enthusing about Metrics of Time – what we do at the turn of the seasons, how we may mark the ritually operative as well as ceremonial festivities, how the jam of talismans acts as a battery of stored momentum, the secret seasonal names of the Earth and Sun, and how we may grasp the new in the experience-quenched patina of the previous. 

We declare a beach day in delighted discussed of our timely Mineral of Sand; in which we hot-step across sand baths, hourglasses, the grandfathers of mountains, and the potentiating memory of the multitudinous to retain myriad sorcerous programmings and punctuations. The geomantic figure of Populus makes an appearance in our celebration of the millions of tiny grains and moments that make an hourglass and the seconds it counts. 

Our Arcana of the episode presents a before and after of Judgment and the Aeon; touching further on time’s lessons in the forms of the find out that inevitable follows the consequences of our folking around. 

Finally, our Dead Magician of the episode leans into the mythic with some love for that cambion shapeshifter prophet druid wizard magus Merlin himself; from his amalgams of origin, his fourteen centuries of rich popularity, his defiantly backwards aging, and his adaptations across time to serve a variety of intellectual and political agendas of the age. 

From us in our astral RFG wizard tower floating in the kairotic in-between of The Leap to you in yours, we wish you a wonderful Time listening to our co-enthusings!

Episode 32: The Leap-Feast of Saint Oswald of Worcester

New Year! New episode! Happy Feast of St Anthony the Great! (aka Anthony of Egypt, Anthony of the Desert, Anthony the Hermit, and more!)

Welcome one and all to our thirty-first very special episode of Radio Free Golgotha, and our seven year anniversary! We are delighted to mark and celebrate the Feast of Saint Anthony the Great, and offer you some tempting co-rambles and enthusings on hermitude, satyrs, and what happens in the wilderness that may or may not stay in the wilderness… 

We are also honoured to mark the one-year anniversary of the passing of our friend and yours, the late Jake Stratton-Kent, and to celebrate his work, his life, and his influence in all things folk necromantic and beyond. 

We begin as is our custom by discussing the legacy and lessons of the Father of Monasticism, (the other) Saint Anthony, offering some appreciation and sympathies for being bothered by demons, considering how pagan spirits are said to have got religion, and reflecting on how exactly a “desert” was depicted by medieval artists who may have never actually seen one.

This episode is also brought to you by extended discussion of the demon Scirlin, that intermediary spirit par excellence of the Grimorium Verum; tracing this most potent spirit through a range of historical manuscripts and comparing their intermediary role with fellow GV intermediary Duke Syrach, as well as the offices of Tantavalerion and Golgothiell in the wider early modern goetic corpus.

Our frothily-lauded flora of the day is Hops which we celebrate for its hop(e)ful blessings of sleep, dream, and of course beer; that most delectable fermented plant ally and patron of after-conference drinks and discussion, especially for the (AL EDIT: totally reasonable and normal) amount of pints that English magicians can put away.

Our mineral of the day is the mighty and true-moving Lodestone, whom we honour for its magnetism (however that works), its historical model of sympathetic action-at-a-distance, and its folkloric links to Polaris and the beams of both the stars and our ceilings; as well as getting very excited about its Adamical historiola and mysteries, and how we compass our morals, our practices, and our hearts.  

Being an episode dedicated to JSK, we could not but make his favourite grimoire, the Grimorium Verum, our style of magic; discussing its sinister reputation as an infamous handbook of black magic, its pagan roots, and its immense practicality of use; via detailed reflection on (inter alia) the First Character, the Orison of (any and all) Instruments, the spellcrafts of the GV’s Natural & Supernatural Secrets, and of course the adoptions/adaptations of components of its hierarchy and infrastructure into traditions of Quimbanda. 

Our patron geomantic figure for this very special episode is Albus, the white-haired peaceful sage in the library tending to the yellowing scrolls and tomes that make up the bodies of work of our predecessors, considering its capacities to throw necromantic dance parties, and comparing this figure to its counterparted homo-form Odu Oturopon Meji, to consider cats, divined destinies, and ways to live our best lives.  

Our Tarot Arcana of the episode is, naturally, The Devil, prompting considerations of demonic pacts, what we chain ourselves to, and how to keep the home hellfires burning in the face of temptations, intoxications, ego, and the costs as well as benefits of our decisions down at the crossroads. 

Lastly, though certainly never least-ly, we dedicate this episode to the late Jake Stratton-Kent most directly by nominating him our beloved Dead Magician of the hour, as we honour, remember, and express gratitude for his influence, his friendship, and his passionate rabble-rousing: from his monumental Encyclopedia Goetica and other revolutionising books on magic, to his spearheading of renewed interest in Paracelsian, Albertine and Cyprianic traditions in grimoire magic, and from his championing of the importance of the Underworld in grounded sublunary cosmo-visions, to his advocacy for folkloric spirits and elementals as a crucial part of the deeper grimoiric traditions.

Episode 30: The Feast of Saint Olga of Kyiv

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