In this episode, I reflect on starting to reread Gregory Shaw’s Theurgy and the Soul and the strange, painful tension of admiring a scholar of Iamblichus while discovering he is currently involved in a contested legal case where a woman is accusing him of stealing over 80k from her on a dating website . This is not a verdict, a defense, or an accusation. It is a meditation on projection, spiritual idealization, moral humility, and our desire to believe that people who study the sacred somehow rise above the mud of human existence.

Through Iamblichus, theurgy, psychoanalysis, and the messiness of real life, I explore why genuine spirituality cannot be about escaping embodiment, failure, shame, or contradiction. Maybe the soul is not healed by finding flawless people to worship. Maybe it is healed by giving up the fantasy of flawless people altogether.