What does it mean to live in relationship with our dead?

In our episode "Speaking with the Dead," we discussed Michael's recent contact with his deceased best childhood friend. We knew we needed someone with real experience and insight to help us think through the meaning of that encounter, so we called on Perdita Finn. You may remember Perdita from our episode "Portal to the Great Mother," where she and her husband Clark Strand joined us to talk about their rosary practice. But alongside that work, Perdita has spent decades in relationship with the dead. She is the author of Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World and Mothers of Magic: Summoning the Wisdom of Our Ancestors, out May 5.

Together, we reflect on altars, offerings, intuition, death denial, miscarriage and abortion, addiction, depression, and the reality that the dead are not gone, but still capable of guiding, helping, and teaching us.

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Episode Highlights

[00:51] Introduction to Perdita

• Michael welcomes Perdita Finn back to the podcast.

[03:19] Michael's Contact with "James"

• Michael briefly recounts the striking experience of contact with his deceased childhood friend "James," first discussed in Speaking with the Dead, and explains why that experience led us to invite Perdita back for this conversation.

[05:50] Making Space for the Dead

• Perdita describes her daily practice of praying with the dead, offering worries over to specific ancestors and spirits, and creating altars as places where relationship with the dead can deepen and take form.

[13:20] No One's Alone

• Jeff reflects on how different this way of relating to the dead feels from the distant, top-down spirituality of his childhood, and the three explore the dead as a diverse, personal, and responsive community—specific beings with distinct personalities, perspectives, and powers, eager to help if we learn how to be in relationship with them.

[24:35] You're Not Crazy

• The conversation turns to intuition, imagination, and spiritual permission. Michael and Perdita reflect on how many people already have experiences of the dead, but lack the language, validation, and cultural permission to trust what they know.

[29:05] Play, Desire, and Prayer

• From Santa Claus to family stories to ancestor altars, Perdita reflects on prayer as specificity, mockability, and play—something less like following rules and more like learning to trust desire and imagination again.

[33:34] Why We Fear the Dead

• We explore the West's fear of the dead, our estrangement from death itself, and the ways modern culture trains us to avoid the body, grief, and the ongoing reality of those who have died.

[40:25] We Never Know What We're Looking At

• Through stories of miscarriage, abortion, addiction, suffering, and apparent "worthlessness," Perdita argues that we do not know what a life means or what a soul may be doing for others beyond what the surface of a life appears to show.

[46:32] The Whole Earth Is an Ancestor Altar

• Perdita tells that the whole earth is a graveyard, an altar, and a place of relationship with the dead. The conversation closes by reframing depression, grief, and mortality as possible sites of revelation rather than mere negation.

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In part two of our conversation with feminist theologian and bestselling author Meggan Watterson, we explore the radical story of Thecla from the Acts of Paul and Thecla. Refusing the roles assigned to her by society, Thecla claims her own spiritual authority by baptizing herself in the arena designed for her death.

Tied to our exploration of Thecla is a conversation about love as the deepest spiritual power: not love as sentiment or romance, but love as force that arises from within and cannot be controlled by institutions or empires. Drawing on the Gospel of Mary and traditions of mysticism, Meggan describes the "spiritual eye of the heart" and the dangerous freedom it offers.

Toward the end, conversation turns to our own moment, especially the ongoing reckoning around Jeffrey Epstein and the voices of survivors. What does spiritual courage look like in a world where systems of power still protect abuse? And how might the ancient story of Thecla speak to that struggle today?

Episode Highlights [01:41] Love from Within

• Meggan reflects on love as a spiritual power rather than just an emotion or relationship. The conversation explores love as the "eye of the heart," the force that connects worlds, grounds mysticism, and teaches that real love is ultimately sourced within rather than found in another person.

[10:51] Thecla's Self-Baptism

• This section centers on The Girl Who Baptized Herself and the story of Thecla as a model of embodiment, self-worth, and spiritual authority. Meggan and the hosts discuss how Thecla refuses patriarchal power, baptizes herself, inspires other women to rise up, and reveals a suppressed lineage of female spiritual leadership.

[26:51] Feminine Power and Collective Reckoning

• The conversation widens from Thecla's story into the present, including the erasure of the feminine in Christianity and the need for spiritual and cultural reckoning. Meggan connects Thecla's witness to survivor truth-telling, systemic abuse, righteous anger, and the search for a more collective, love-centered transformation.

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Feminist theologian and best-selling author Meggan Watterson joins us for a crackling conversation about the Gospel of Mary, the "apocryphal" Christian text that gives voice to Mary Magdalene's spiritual authority and visionary insight.

In this episode, Meggan shares the moment she first encountered Mary's words, "I will teach you about what is hidden from you," and the profound experience of direct contact that convinced her this overlooked gospel has the power to speak to us and transform how we understand Christianity, theology, and our own selves and souls.

Together we explore why texts like the Gospel of Mary were suppressed, why embodied and experiential forms of theology are still dismissed as "not real," and what it means to reclaim the wisdom that has long been hidden at the heart of the Christian tradition.

This is the first half of a two-part conversation. In Part 2, we turn to the story of Thecla in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, another suppressed Christian text that reveals perhaps an even more radical of spiritual authority and liberation.

• Visit Meggan's Website

• Mary Magdalene Revealed: The First Apostle, Her Feminist Gospel & the Christianity We Haven't Tried Yet

• The Girl Who Baptized Herself: How a Lost Scripture About a Saint Named Thecla Reveals the Power of Knowing Our Worth

Episode Highlights [00:51] Introducing Meggan Watterson

• Introducing Meggan Watterson—Harvard-trained feminist theologian and bestselling author of Mary Magdalene Revealed and The Girl Who Baptized Herself.

[04:57] Real Theology?

• Meggan reflects on the backlash she receives for writing theology through personal experience and embodiment. We lavish her with praise and gratitude while sharing some similar experiences and perspectives.

[16:25] The Gospel of Mary

• What is the Gospel of Mary? Meggan explains how this lost Christian text survived centuries of suppression and why its message—centered on interior spiritual knowledge and Mary Magdalene's authority—presents a radically different vision of what it means to follow Christ. Meggan recounts her powerful encounter with Mary's words, "I will teach you about what is hidden from you."

[30:47] Why Mary Was Silenced

• We explore why voices like Mary Magdalene's were erased from the Christian canon and what it means for modern seekers that these texts are resurfacing now.

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What did you think about this conversation? Tell us at [email protected] or reach out at: https://www.gospelofdirectexperience.com/#contact.

On the anniversary of a friend's death, a simple ritual—a candle, a glass of tequila, a cigarette, and Pink Floyd's One of My Turns—becomes something neither of us can easily explain. In this episode, we're sharing direct experiences of communicating with loved ones who have died.

We can't prove anything, but we will discuss what it means when the contact feels real—when grief opens up into presence, when imagination is more than fantasy, when the boundary between the visible and invisible thins.

Why have we in the modern West severed ourselves from our dead? What happens to a people who forget their ancestors? And what changes when we begin to treat the dearly departed not as our history, but as ongoing relationships? Whether these encounters with the dead arise from spirit, psyche, or some deeper structure of reality, they challenge our assumption that the dead are simply gone.

What about you? Have you ever felt the presence of your dead? How do you remember them?

Episode Highlights [00:50] "James": An Anniversary and an Unexpected Encounter

• On the anniversary of a his friend "James'" death, Michael builds an altar and makes an offering. Pink Floyd's One of My Turns begins to play. "James" shows up.

[09:46] Samhain: A Culture Severed from Its Dead

• Halloween's forgotten origins—a thin time for communion with ancestors. Why have we in the modern West erased our relationship with the dead? And what might we be afraid to hear if they answered back?

[17:34] "Goodbye, Jeffrey"

• Jeff recounts racing to Rhode Island to be with his dying mother—and the hypnagogic moment, hours later, when her voice spoke clearly in his mind—an experience that forever altered his understanding of death.

[25:10] Skepticism and the Power of Imagination

• Was it "just imagination"? The hosts wrestle with materialism, the limits of skepticism, the metaphysics of consciousness, and whether imagination itself might not be a dismissal, but a doorway.

[35:35] Offerings to the Dead: Ritual, Presence, and Practice

• Michael begins making offerings to departed friends. Sometimes lightning strikes. Sometimes there is only the subtle sense of being watched. What does it mean to cultivate an ongoing relationship with the dead?

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What did you think about this conversation? Tell us at [email protected] or reach out at: https://www.gospelofdirectexperience.com/#contact.

In this episode of The Gospel of Direct Experience, we're joined by Matt Cardin, acclaimed writer of cosmic horror and author of the new book Writing at the Wellspring: Tapping the Source of Your Inner Genius. What unfolds isn't just a discussion of creativity; it's also an initiation into darkness—darkness as terror and generative source and spiritual/cultural necessity.

Matt reframes the "demon muse" or "genius" not as a benevolent guide from beyond but as an abducting, inner organizing force that destabilizes our egoic certainty and is the true wellspring of art, vocation, and transformation. Our conversation ranges from the chapel perilous and cosmic horror, to non-dual philosophy and role-playing games to Frankenstein and the collapse of modern culture.

Get ready to descend into the living dark—not to transcend it, but to be transformed by it.

Visit Matt's excellent Substack newsletter The Living Dark.

Episode Highlights

[00:00:51] Intro to Matt Cardin

• Matt Cardin is an author known for delving into the realms of horror and the metaphysical. His widely acclaimed books, including To Rouse Leviathan and What the Daemon Said, explore the convergence of horror, religion, and creativity.

[00:03:29] Horror as Spiritual Initiation

• Matt reflects on discovering Lovecraft, Ligotti, and the weird fiction tradition, describing the uncanny experience of encountering work that feels less like influence than recognition.

[00:15:33] Lovecraft as Spirit Guide

• Matt describes discovering H.P. Lovecraft not simply as a writer, but as a formative guide into cosmic horror and spiritual disorientation.

[00:25:07] Satanic Panic

• Matt recalls two episodes from childhood that alerted him that his interest in darkness and creativity would not be readily accepted in his cradle religious tradition.

[00:30:46] The Living Dark & the Allotted Function

• We unpack the idea of living into the dark as both a creative and existential condition—life lived without a map or final certainty. From there we discuss discovering one's allotted function—Is it cosmic slavery or existential freedom?

[00:42:44] The Demon Muse

• Matt explores the demon or daemon/daimon muse as a way of naming the unconscious, involuntary source of creativity that moves through us rather than obeying us. We discuss personifying this force—not as superstition, but as a practical way of collaborating with the deep patterns that shape us as individuals and creative beings.

[00:50:55] Frankenstein & Collapse

• Matt reframes Frankenstein as a parable of the daemonic unconscious gone unacknowledged, returning as both personal and cultural catastrophe. Then we turn toward possibility: a new monastic path for those who want to live meaningfully at "the end of the world." What seeds should we plant for the other side of apocalypse?

[01:51:23] Becoming the Living Book

• Jeff reflects on Matt's story "Notes of a Mad Copyist," where a new inner revelation is experienced as a horror. What if collapse isn't the end but a transformation where the false things fall away?

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What if the rosary is not a relic of patriarchal religion, but an ancient spiritual technology—older than Christianity itself—designed to open a living relationship with the Sacred Mother?

In this episode we're joined by Clark Strand and Perdita Finn, founders of The Way of the Rose and co-authors of the book by the same name, for a deeply embodied conversation about the rosary as a portal: tactile, erotic, ecological, and alive.

Drawing on paleolithic bead traditions, Marian devotion, mystery cults, Buddhism, and direct visionary experience, Clark and Perdita reframe the rosary as a practice rooted not in any particular dogma, but in the body—touch, rhythm, breath, grief, birth, death, and rebirth. We explore the rosary's hidden history, its connection to the Great Mother across cultures, and its power to open liminal spaces where the living and the dead, the personal and the cosmic, meet.

The conversation then moves through themes of devotion without orthodoxy, apocalypse without judgment, reincarnation, climate grief, and the Sacred Feminine as a force that shows up—not as metaphor, but as a very real spiritual presence. By the end, we've gone from womb to tomb and back again.

Episode Highlights [00:01:26] Introducing Clark, Perdita, and The Way of the Rose

• Perdida Finn and Clark Strand are the founders of the Way of the Rose Fellowship and the co-authors of the book of the same name. Their work not only shares some of their own profound experiences of the Sacred Mother, it reframes where the rosary came from, what it really is, and where it might be taking us.

[00:02:46] The Land We Are Called To

• An organic, story-rich opening unfolds around sacred land, old-growth forests, ancestral memory, and the way places call us into transformation. The Sacred Mother as land and body.

[00:9:30] The Body Knows the Prayer

• Perdita and Clark introduce the rosary not as doctrine, but as an embodied practice rooted in touch, rhythm, and nervous-system memory. Drawing on ancient bead traditions and the physiology of consolation, they reframe the rosary as a tactile return to the Mother—older than Christianity itself.

[00:18:03] Ancient Origins of the Rosary

• The conversation traces the rosary back through Paleolithic goddess figurines, Mediterranean mystery cults, and pre-literate devotional practices. Clark and Perdita reveal how Marian devotion absorbed and preserved far older traditions of the Great Mother, birth, death, and rebirth—often in tension with official church theology.

[00:26:11] Opening the Portal

• Great discussion here about the rosary being a portal and a summoning practice. Clark and Perdita explore how repetitive prayer, gesture, and intention open liminal space—connecting practitioners with the living, the dead, and the Sacred Feminine across cultures (an invitation to people of any and all or no religious or spiritual background to join in the prayer).

[00:43:41] When She Shows Up (and Speaks)

• Clark and Perdita share their own direct encounters with the Sacred Mother, including visionary experiences and received messages that shaped their work and writing. This section makes clear that the rosary is not symbolic—it is relational, communicative, and alive.

[00:51:19] A Different Kind of Apocalypse

• We close by reimagining apocalypse through the rosary's mysteries—not as punishment or final judgment, but as cyclical renewal, divine union, and rebirth.

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What did you think about this conversation? Tell us at [email protected] or reach out at: https://www.gospelofdirectexperience.com/#contact.

We finally discuss the new documentary The Age of Disclosure and what it suggests about UFOs, government secrecy, and the possibility of non-human intelligence.

Already convinced of the reality of UFOs, your hosts explore the deeper challenges of disclosure itself: psychological operations, selective truth-telling, and the difficulty of knowing what to trust when intelligence agencies are shaping the narrative. We discuss why so many credible insiders are speaking publicly now—and their suggestion that there's more—much more—they can't say.

Drawing on UFO research, the work of Jacques Vallée, and the history of religious and paranormal encounter, we imagine the UFO phenomenon within a broader landscape of "high strangeness" that resists simple explanation and unsettles our assumptions about reality.

Our conversation meanders (as it so often does) toward ontological shock—the disorientation that arises when our frameworks for understanding the world begin to break down—and the question of whether humanity is truly prepared for what disclosure may reveal to us about reality and our place within it.

The Age of Disclosure Trailer

Watch the Age of Disclosure on Prime Video

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What if Christianity began not as a set of doctrines to believe, but as a mystery school—an initiatory path meant to awaken direct experience of the divine? In this episode, wel trace the ancient roots of the Christian story through the lost mystery traditions of the ancient world. From the Eleusinian rites to the "dying before you die" experience, we explore how Jesus may have carried forward an older, hidden stream of spiritual practice—and what it might mean to recover those inner mysteries today.

Episode Highlights [00:00:49] Inner vs. Outer Mystery

• We open the episode by introducing the concept of the inner and outer mysteries. Jeff reflects on his "self-initiation" as a mystic. We contrast the living, experiential "inner mystery" with the outer, dogmatic forms of religion that dominate both conservative and progressive Christianity.

[00:14:35] Christianity's Forgotten Roots

• We trace how Christianity may have grown from the ancient "mystery schools" of the Mediterranean world—traditions that used ritual, theater, psychedelics, and more to guide people through some sort of dying-before-you-die experience. We discuss the striking similarities between stories of Jesus and earlier myths like Isis and Horus, and the theological mischief of time-traveling demons. We conclude that the Jesus story carries forward a much older initiatory wisdom—one meant to be lived and experienced, not "believed."

[00:30:39] Christianity as a Living Mystery School

• Further "conclusions" from the previous section, included the idea that we are meant to become like Jesus, not just believe in Jesus.

[00:38:55] Lost "Indigenous" Mysteries

• We reflect on the loss of the ancient initiatory traditions that once formed the spiritual heart of Western culture. We explore the idea that early rituals in the Eleusinian Mysteries may have included sacred plant medicines—technologies for direct encounter with the divine. We grieve how this indigenous wisdom was outlawed, forgotten, and replaced by flat, literal religion. But if the mystery could born in as unlikely a place as Galilee and Judea, could it be reborn here and now?

[00:47:50] Reawakening the Mysteries

• We close by asking whether the ancient mysteries are reemerging in our time. We reflect on the idea that true initiation may come not from institutions but from Spirit itself—the same living intelligence that once guided the mystery schools. If those mysteries are still alive in the inner world, then perhaps the Spirit will give them back.

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Jeff and Michael sit down with Victoria Loorz, author of Church of the Wild, founder of the Center for Wild Spirituality, and co-founder of the Wild Church Network, for a conversation about finding the sacred beyond church walls. They talk about the experience of hearing God beneath an oak tree, encounters with owls and vultures, and why wilderness has always been the place where spiritual transformation begins.

Together they explore what it means to face ecological and institutional collapse without turning away—to grieve, to stay connected, and to treat even loss as part of the holy cycle of life, death, and renewal.

You can learn more about Victoria at her website or by listening to her podcast, The Holy Wild with Victoria Loorz.

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Psychedelics are often framed today as medicines for trauma and therapy—but what if they are something more? In this episode, we sit down with Justin Levy, founder of Spirit House in Portland, Oregon, to explore psychedelics as a path of devotion, surrender, and cultural rebirth.

Justin shares his journey from early rave experiences to work with kundalini, capoeira, and ayahuasca, and how these threads wove together into a living spiritual practice. Together we ask: How do psychedelics invite us to crack open and encounter Spirit? What does it mean to center devotion rather than therapy? And how can we midwife a new spiritual culture in the midst of collapse and transformation?

This is a conversation about the terrifying beauty of the goddess, the messiness of birth, and the possibility that spirit is emerging through unexpected places—if we are willing to give ourselves fully to it.

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