PARENTAL ADVISORY: This episode may contain some adult themes. Masculine and feminine are constantly portrayed in the Bible and mythology as fundamental aspects of the cosmos: creator and creation, heaven and earth, Yin and Yang, husband and wife. How do these dynamics work, and what happens when they go wrong?

Before we can begin to have the conversation about the role of women in culture or religion, we need to go back to the basics on sex and gender, because a female is not merely a biological reality; the feminine is one of the cosmic, enchanted elements of being itself.

Everyone knows that Tolkien started the fantasy literature genre, but it wasn't the fantastical that made it special; it was his moral, imaginative framework, especially in contrast with later disenchanted fantasy stories like Harry Potter.

In the transition from newspaper to radio to film and TV, the Western world transitioned to picture-thinking, the most powerful force in shaping our imaginative framework. Movies become profoundly influential, and Star Wars becomes a cultural phenomenon.

The early fathers of science had grand visions for the domination of the earth and the future utopia, but it isn't until the 20th century's pop culture that their ideas become firmly implanted in the imaginative framework of Westerners.

With the World and Cold Wars of the 20th century, Western culture sees the rise of something it had never experienced before: youth culture. But sex, drugs, and rock and roll aren't just pastimes: they become our new cultural mythology.

The 19th century was home not only to many brand-new American religions but also to a large philosophical movement towards esotericism, mysticism, and new-age thinking that would influence all the major social movements of the time.

America is the birthplace of an astounding number of new religions, but what's surprising is that many of them have their starting place, directly or indirectly, in a specific time and place: Upstate New York in the 19th century.

It's often admitted that America has a strong Protestant influence, but what were the actual beliefs of these colonial religions? Utopianism, Kabbalism, and the belief that America is a new Israel are just a few of the ideas that characterize early American Protestantism.

Is the United States a Christian nation? While the colonies mostly consisted of Protestants fleeing the European wars of religion, the answer is complicated by the strange new beliefs of many of these groups and the occult religious interests of the Enlightenment thinkers.