The Numinous Podcast

Content Warning: Grief, death, substance use, intergenerational trauma, and bereavement.

I have a magical story for you today about angels, grief and loss, and receiving signs from our ancestors. My guest today is Corey McAuliffe. She holds a PhD in Social and Behavioural Health Sciences and a Master’s in Public Health. She’s also the author of 23 Dates with My Dead Dad, a grief memoir that chronicles her journey toward reconnecting with her late father and healing from intergenerational trauma.

After her father’s death in 2019, Corey transformed their monthly father-daughter tradition into a spiritual practice, tuning into synchronicities and signs. The book weaves together her experiences with chronic illness, ancestral trauma, and a transformative trip to Ireland to explore family history.

For many of us, the holiday season is a time of bittersweet memories and melancholy reminiscences…one thing I really appreciated about Corey’s book is that is offered a balance of the practical actual lived reality of a complicated relationship with a parent with the excitement and uplifting energy of asking for signs and tuning into synchronicities and receiving winks from the Universe.

It really was a page turner so if you're looking for a memoir that’s one part Eat Pray Love, one part Travelling with Pomegranates, plus a dash of visiting a medium to connect with your Beloved Dead, then have I got a book for you!

Buy 23 Dates with My Dead Dad 

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As we slip more deeply into the holiday season, even the most committed feminist may also be inadvertently sliding into old patterns of over-functioning. Let's pause to refocus, shall we? Beatriz Victoria Albina is a Family Nurse Practitioner, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, and author of the bestselling book, End Emotional Outsourcing: a Guide to Overcoming Codependent, Perfectionist and People Pleasing Habits.

In this episode, we talk about:

• signs we might be engaging in Emotional Outsourcing (what it is and what it might look like)

• the five Survival Selves – personas we adopt to get along

• a process to engage with boundaries using clear, direct communication

and much, much more!

Béa has a ton of useful resources that I highly recommend you check out.

Follow her on Instagram

She's also the host of the Feminist Wellness Podcast with hundreds of helpful episodes!

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Learn more about my books, Spells for the Apocalypse: Practical Magic for Turbulent Times and The Spirited Kitchen: Recipes and Rituals for the Wheel of the Year – Everyday Animism, Folk Magic and Witchcraft

My guest today is ✨ Dra.Rocío Rosales-Meza ✨ Dra.Rocío is a former academic with a background in counselling psychology who currently works at the intersection of ancestral veneration, decolonization, health – and by that I mean, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health and wellbeing.

Through her courses and mentoring programs, Dra.Rocío helps people unlearn colonial programming and embody their gifts. As of this recording, registration is currently open for her program, Decolonial Shadow Work, designed specifically for white folks and bi-racial white folks.

Because I’ve followed Dra.Rocío for some time and I’ve seen her quote many of the iconic teachers and revolutionaries that I, personally, find inspiring and instructive – for instance, I’ve seen and heard her reference Frantz Fanon, bell hooks, Assata Shakur, some of the figures I admire most and that most fascinate me in the movement for Black liberation – I thought it would be very worthwhile to have a conversation about decolonizing our minds and hearts and doing the deeper spiritual work needed to become a reliable and useful accomplice and co-conspiritor in the movement towards liberation and justice for all. I hope that whatever your racial identity, you'll enjoy and find something useful and comforting in this conversation.

Register for Decolonial Shadow Work

Dr.Michael Yellowbird - Neurodecolonization and Indigenous Mindfulness

Assata Shakur

bell hooks

Thích Nhat Hanh

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Come to my Book Jam! Bringing Contact Nutrition to the Page

Pour yourself a cup of tea or something cozy because my dear friend, Sarah Selecky, and I are going to have a chat about writing.

Sarah’s newest book, Story Is A State of Mind, started as a writing class in her living room in Victoria, BC, 25 years ago, right around the time we met. It has since become a unique example of how the internet has disrupted the classical education system, with her program evolving into an online program now known as the Sarah Selecky Writing School. Her Story Course has been praised by the likes of Margaret Atwood and Zuzie Gartner and her debut short story collection, This Cake is for the Party, was a finalist for what is probably Canada’s most well known literary award, The Giller Prize. Her next book, Radiant Shimmering Light, was optioned by Amy Adams to create a series for HBO. And her latest, Story is a State of Mind: Writing and the Art of Creative Curiosity, is getting buzz in academic circles with profs in MFA programs across the country adding to their required reading lists. 

And we are SO LUCKY to have Sarah back on the program for a third time to help us bring our creative work out into the world.

Listen to Sarah's previous visit to the podcast, ep.102 talking about Radiant Shimmering Light

Listen to episode EIGHT (😮) of The Numinous Podcast: Sarah Selecky on Better Living Through Metaphor

Get your copy of Story is a State of Mind from our wonderful friends at Assembly Press

I am ✨thrilled✨ to welcome back to the show for a fourth time, my friend and beloved mentor, Dr.Cyndi Brannen. Cyndi is a world-renowned expert on Modern Hekatean Witchcraft. Her seminal book, Keeping Her Keys, published in 2019 continues to be a bestselling title in the witchcraft category. She has since published three more books on Hekate, a trilogy begun with Entering Hekate’s Garden in 2020, Entering Hekate’s Cave which came out in 2023, and now, finally Entering Hekate's Cauldron: Spells, Spirits, Rites, and Rituals released summer 2025.

In this episode, we talk about rites and rituals but also we go more deeply into Hekate’s parentage and her coterie of counterparts - the other deities and allies that show up in her myths, and even author her myths as we’ll hear later on.

Learn more about Cyndi's books and offerings (including Covina, her on-going coven of Hekate) on her website keepingherkeys.com

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Today I’m delighted to welcome back to the show, Nicholas Pearson, who is basically becoming our resident geologist and crystal witch. His newest book is The Witching Stones: The Lore & Craft of the Essential Crystals, Gemstones and Minerals to Empower Your Magic.

Nicholas has been immersed in the mineral kingdom for thirty years and appeared previously on this podcast, in episode 158 on Crystal Basics which aired in 2021, and episode 170, Flower Essences from the Witch’s Garden which aired in 2022. I think he’s written about a dozen books now, not only on minerals but other spiritual topics as well, and he’s always got a unique take, there’s always a new way of looking that I think keeps the topics fresh and the books worth the investment.

In this conversation, Nicholas shares his rationale for some of the unexpected choices he made when writing The Witching Stones.

Follow Nicholas on socials! Instagram Facebook TikTok

I’m delighted to welcome back to the show, Nicholas Pearson, (who is basically becoming our resident geologist and crystal witch). His newest book is The Witching Stones: The Lore & Craft of the Essential Crystals, Gemstones and Minerals to Empower Your Magic.

Nicholas has been immersed in the mineral kingdom for thirty years, and appeared previously on this podcast in episode 158 on Crystal Basics which aired in 2021, and episode 170, Flower Essences from the Witch’s Garden which aired in 2022. He has written about a dozen books now, not only on minerals but other spiritual topics as well, and he’s always got a unique take, there’s always a new way of looking that I think keeps the topics fresh and the books worth the investment.

In this conversation, Nicholas shares his rationale for some of the unexpected choices he made when writing The Witching Stones.

Follow Nicholas on Instagram @theluminouspearl

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TikTok

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Join us in The Numinous Network!

Welcome fellow Numinous Network Guide, ✨ Asteria ✨, to the podcast!

Asteria Elzea (she/ they) is an artist, a maker, and a connector. In this episode, Asteria shares how she builds community on a shoestring budget as a queer disabled neurodivergent artist.

Asteria identifies as white, bisexual, polyamorous, and is neurodivergent. Her most special interest is people and how we connect. Asteria has trained in connection, actionable goals, and trauma-informed facilitation with Beautiful You Coaching Academy, Desiree Adaway, and me, Carmen Spagnola!

They also love growing food, roses, decolonization, and pulling the rug out from under capitalistic, white supremacist, patriarchal society. Asteria is a certified data analyst and practicing witch, as well as a coach and community builder.

As a resident of LA, her grassroots approach has helped her communities in the challenging times they've faced with the entertainment industry strikes, the devastating fires, and the city under siege by the government. 

Check out her coaching and workshops at StarGirlCreative.com

Check out Asteria's somatic workshop if you're in LA! Sunday, Oct.19 at The Makery, 260 S.Los Angeles St, 2:00-3:30.

I've been waiting a long time for this interview and I'm so delighted to share it. Abigail Rose Clarke is one of the few somatics teachers whose instructions and anatomical lessons I can actually *remember*. Her inspired teaching style features clear articulation and vivid, lyrical descriptions that really land and stay with me. Abigail is a somatic educator, writer, artist, and creator of the Somatic Tarot and also the Body Oracle Deck. Abigail holds a degree from Smith College in Health Behavior and advanced training certificates in Embodyoga®. She's also the author of Returning Home to Our Bodies: Reimagining the Relationship Between Our Bodies and the World.

This is a conversation about how to balance using language that people understand while also breaking the chokehold of capitalism on our words, minds and bodies.

It's also about the ✨mesentery✨, ✨lungs✨, ✨SCM✨, ✨psoas✨, and what's so magical about these parts.

This is the biggest announcement I’ve ever made, not just on this podcast, but in my life. Bigger than getting a book deal, even.

This is something I’ve been thinking about for the past four years or so, since I was in the midst of the pre-order campaign for my first book, The Spirited Kitchen in 2021. The nudge got even stronger as I was in negotiations for my second book, Spells for the Apocalypse. And now, with both of those works out in the world and doing really well without a lot more help from me, the nudge has felt more like a call, a strong pull forward towards something…pretty scary, honestly, but all good adventures stories begin with accepting some risk, venturing into the unknown, and what makes it a great story is that the protagonists don’t know yet what they don’t know. 😂

It is my great, great pleasure to announce, that along with my colleagues and co-founders, Taraneh Erfan and Thérèse Cator, I am embarking on a new venture to publish world-building books that help readers develop meaningful answers to the question, How then, shall we live in these times?

Our new company, 9th House Press, is a worker cooperative. A worker cooperative is a business that the workers own and democratically control, and it foregrounds two equally important primary purposes: to provide employment and a better quality of work-life for its members, and to provide a community benefit. We see this work of publishing uncompromisingly liberatory books as an important part of the movement for civil rights and protection of intellectual freedom, in a similar vein as libraries and a free press. And we see our taking more control and ownership of the means of production – meaning the ways we access liberatory information – we see that as a critical shift away from an industry that is overflowing with talented women making money for white shareholding men.

I mentioned the right wing imprints that large traditional publishers have begun to profit from - read more about that here.