Thoth-hermes Podcast

In today’s episode of the show I have the huge pleasure to welcome not only one but two guests and we’ll start with Seattle-based author Jobe Bittman who just published his amazingly illustrated high quality work ‘Book of Antithesis’, a grimoire of game and ritual magic, with Finnish independent publisher Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Jobe has a wide experience working as a table top game designer for more than a decade and I’m sure when we mention table top games Dungeons & Dragons will pop up in the heads of many of you out there. As you can easily imagine, Jobe does also have a background in chaos and sigil magic, mostly influenced by the writings of Austin Osmane Spare. As he has always been fascinated with the occult he attempts to establish a connection between the ritual aspect of table top games and practical magic and his approach is for sure a unique one in this field so far.

In this week’s episode co-hosted by my friend and fellow podcaster Greg Kaminsky we will have an extraordinary conversation with Charles “Chuck” R. Dunning Jr., psychotherapist, mason and author of two highly relevant books on contemplation practice, ‘Contemplative Masonry’ which was published a few years ago and ‘The Contemplative Lodge’ which is now available and of course, his ideas presented in those two books will be our focus of interest in the show. From his early childhood on Chuck was always interested in states of consciousness and concepts like infinity and eternity. Having been raised in a traditional Christian family with a freemason as a father the clear emphasis at home was on love and prayer as part of daily life. At age 9 Chuck had the experience of his first lucid dream and became more aware of other realities. From very early on he was exposed to information on the esoteric and mystical aspects of philosophy and religion and this very availability influenced him in his later college years.

This latest episode is a very special one as my guest has already been on the show shortly before the first lockdowns started back in spring 2020. Many of you may be familiar with his name and work, as he is a certainly well-known and widely respected practitioner, author and co-owner of Theion Publishing, source of quite a lot of meaningful in-depth books on the occult. It is a huge pleasure to welcome David Beth again and talk with him about Arthur Moros’ ‘The Cult of the Black Cube’ which has been released this year in a second edition. We’ll open up our conversation with the impact of Covid on David personally, on Theion Publishing and how certain creative processes had to endure an involuntary break. Of course, the psychological effects of the pandemic will be a topic as well as the question what a proper process of editing and publishing takes. We then start to explore ‘The Cult of the Black Cube’ which has been written under the pseudonym Dr. Arthur Moros and reveal a bit of information about the autho

Here is the link to Shu Yap's website INTERPSYCLE

My guest in this episode is hermeticist Rufus Opus, whose work is widely known in occult communities, especially his Red Work Course and his book ‘Seven Spheres’, a manual on planetary magic that teaches how to open up gates and provides the working magician with initiatory experiences. Rufus Opus grew up in a mid-western fundamentalist Christian environment where bible studies were naturally part of his childhood. At around age 7-8 he started to realise that Christianity with its passive attitude did not grant him experiences with the divine and that there had to be something different out there. It was when Rufus moved out of his parents’ house at age 18 that he dived deep into occultism with ‘The Big Blue Brick’, ‘Prometheus Rising’ and ‘Twelve Lessons in High Magick’ and turned it into a part of his day-to-day life building up strength and discipline. In this latest episode of our show we will discuss if and why the bible belt seems to give birth to magicians in a rather interesting way, and how Rufus who

Finally this Sunday on the show I have the huge pleasure to welcome a multi-facetted poet, musician, sculptor and painter, film visual artist and of course magician Orryelle Defenestrate-Bascule. Orryelle opens up about his childhood growing up in Perth, Australia, within a very conservative family and a very conservative place expressing himself in creative ways by writing and drawing and his ‘late huge awakening’ at age 19-20 in Sydney. To Orryelle, art has always been a way of dealing with things that he initially thought to be disembodied – which will be another very relevant topic a bit later – and he shares how his personal boundaries between expressing himself by artistic mediums and consciously performing ritual work have blurred over time until finally all art and magic felt like one thing. Of course, the question how such an amazing artist could develop and hone his skills will be asked and answered where again we experience the respective process of magic and art to be intertwined in inseparable wa

THIS IS OUR 100th EPISODE!! To celebrate this moment, this episode is exceptionally also visual! You can not only hear, but actually SEE the whole show on YouTube (Cliicking on the image below woll bring you directly there!) My guest in this very special 100th episode of the show is author, psychologist and Chosen Chief of The Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids of more than 30 years, Philip Carr-Gomm. We start our conversation by bringing up childhood memories of apparitions that could be seen only by 4-year-old Philip followed by his experiences just a few years later at age 11 when he was already an avid reader of Beck L. Adams, The Life of the Buddha which actually made him feel that the only thing worth pursuing in life was enlightenment. As Philip’s father ran a history magazine and knew a lot of interesting people many of them were guests in the family’s home. This was how teenager Philip met Ross Nichols who was the Chief of The Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids in

My guest of this episode is someone quite a few of our listeners may already know a bit, initiate and author Nick Farrell who just published two new books, we’ll be talking about in the show. But firstly, our conversation starts with the changes of our days due to the pandemic and how it influenced and still does magicians and magic all over the world. We explore how a pretty dangerous form of polarisation seems to have taken over making people form tribes in more extreme ways than before adopting a hunt-and-kill-mentality. However, we also discuss the role of the balanced magician in this weird game and reflect on the need to look at different ideas before acting on them. Of course, Nick’s latest book, ‘Star and Stone’, a ground breaking work about geomancy and its connection to astrology will be a central topic in our episode. We’ll be talking about the origins of geomancy, how it evolved as elemental theory was applied to it and how it was used for horary charts in terms of interpretation. We’ll be explori

Please welcome my guest of this episode, visual artist, initiate and author, Diana Kreikamp who has published an amazing book, ‘Amduat – The Great Awakening’ just two months ago with Mandrake. Diana was fascinated by the divine from very early childhood on as she could see things and communicate with them. She was maybe 7 years old when she realised that not everybody was able to perceive the world the way she did. Always asking questions and seeking answers she travelled to Thailand in her 20s where certain religious practices made deep impressions on her. It wasn’t much later that she started to experiment with meditation and different systems of different traditions until her path led her to the Servants of the Light where she studied the Western Mystery Traditions with Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki being one of her teachers (who btw also provided a foreword to ‘Amduat’). The Egyptian Amduat is an ancient funeral text from the Middle Kingdom, which means it is around 3.500 years old. It describes Ra, the sun go

My guest in this episode is author and scholar Stewart Clelland who recently published a book, ‘The Green Book of the Élus Coëns’, which reflects the main topic of this episode, the very particular ‘Order of Knight-Masons Elect Priests of the Universe’, the Élus Coëns. Stewart Clelland was born and raised in the West of Scotland, in an area where freemasonry is part of the culture on a rather low-key basis. Having been drawn to writings of Nietzsche and Kant from an early age Stewart studied philosophy and later Western Esotericism at the University of Exeter. His goal was nothing else than to understand the spiritual tradition of masonry and the common boundaries of esotericism and freemasonry as well as where they do overlap indeed. Stewart’s research led him to the Élus Coëns, ‘The Order of Knight-Masons Elect Priests of the Universe’, which was founded in 1767 by Martinez de Pasqually in France. Actually, this organisation which certainly had an influence upon later esoteric orders of the 19th century and

My guest in this episode does not need a lot of introduction. Mark Stavish is the Director of Studies for the Institute for Hermetic Studies and has more than 25 years of experience in comparative religion, philosophy, psychology, mysticism and of course Traditional Western Esotericism. His books are internationally well-known and equally appreciated among students and teachers of the occult. Mark Stavish started the Institute for Hermetic Studies out of the idea of a local study group back in 1997. From there it grew steadily and soon offered not only seminars and workshops to which people were willing to drive long hours but also published study guides in readable forms that originated in recordings of some of the seminars and workshops. The Institute provides a complete overview of the essential ideas and practices of Western Esotericism. As promised in the episode, by clicking either on the above image or here, you will access the registration for that free 6-hour co