The Gnostalgia Podcast

Brian and Sebastian discuss the spiritual dimension of the madness of crowds: egregores.

With apologies for the hiatus... Brian and Sebastian explore the wonders and dangers of Perennialism.

Brian and Sebastian sit down with poet-farmer Michael Martin for a wide ranging conversation on the renewal of metaphysical imagination. The discussion moves through sacramental perception, the life of symbol and myth, beauty as a discipline of thought, and the practice of reading texts and experience with patient inward attention. It reflects on language, tradition, and education, and asks what it might mean to cultivate an intellectual and spiritual sensibility that remains receptive to depth rather than content with surfaces.

Professor Jason Baxter returns to discuss his newly released translation of the second part of Dante's Divine Comedy the Purgatorio.

https://jasonmbaxter.substack.com/

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Brian and return guest Michal discuss the meaning of the stars and the history of cosmic narratives.

Brian Scarffe and Sebastian Morello wander off the paved roads of modern piety and into the wild of the Christian imagination, where animals are fellow creatures addressed, admonished and occasionally instructed. They explore the serious conviction that creation itself speaks, and that the saints, by holiness rather than technique, learned to listen.

The conversation ranges across Scripture, hagiography and medieval cosmology, asking why the ability to converse with animals was once taken as a sign of restored harmony. What was this “language” the saints seemed to master, and what does its disappearance tell us about the modern Christian deafness to the natural world?

Imagine a Christianity less enclosed, less managerial, and more porous to the voices of creation. The lads meditate on what we have forgotten, what we have dismissed as legend, and what might yet be relearned if we remembered that the world was once thought to be alive with meaning, down to its feathers and fur.

Brian Scarffe and Theo Howard meet to explore the strange and venerable world of the holy well. Their conversation moves through stories of healing, dreams, folk tradition and Christian sanctity, tracing how water has long been understood as a point of encounter between the visible world and the hidden workings of grace.

In this conversation, Brian and Sebastian explore the significance of St. Michael within angelic cosmology, the historical importance of the Feast of St. Michael, and the works of Wolfgang Smith that bridge ancient wisdom with modern science. They discuss the Neoplatonic tradition's relevance to Catholic thought, the impact of modernity on spiritual practices, and the risks associated with astral projection. The dialogue emphasises the profound relationship between Our Lady and St. Michael, advocating for a revival of traditional practices in the Church.

Viriditas – that greening force extolled by Hildegard of Bingen, signifying life’s inexhaustible power to heal, to renew, and to bind together heaven and earth. To remain rooted in an age of severance is to resist the centrifugal pull of modernity. Recovering our vital connection to place, to tradition, and to the sacramental cosmos becomes the necessary labour of those who refuse to be torn from the ineffable Source of LIFE.

Philosopher Nina Power joins Sebastian Morello and Brian Scarffe for a roaming conversation on fire: its ancient sanctity, its capacity to protect and to destroy, its place in the hearth cults of antiquity, and its neglected spiritual symbolism in Christian life. From the oracular invocation of fire at a dinner party to reflections on cremation, alchemical distillation, gin-fuelled social collapse, and the counterfeit hearth of television.