you might come in those who can't make it.

Specifically, the geometric theory was a this, my interest in this specifically was, uh, I've been teaching not just the, the platonic and, and Neil Pythagorean corpus, but I've, I've kind of bumped up against, um, uh, uh, well, I'm neck deep in teaching the, uh, the seven classical liberal arts.

Okay.

And so obviously in the, The quadrivium, you go through arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy.

And one of the texts that I used, because so much of the geometric stuff philosophical philosophical geometric stuff the primary materials is missing it's gone you have sure we have Euclid but he didn't say anything philosophical about it you have Proclus' commentary on Euclid's first book I think Thomas Taylor translated it.

But other than that, there's like a lapse in the material.

So what I found was actually Robert Lawler, right, who translated Theon of Smyrna's mathematics useful for the study of Plato.

Because again, we see only in part.

Great stuff.

It's comprised of a very interesting syncretic blend of pre-Cabbalistic Jewish mysticism influenced by Hekaload literature, Greek and Egyptian magical techniques, etc.

And this was one of the... foundational early texts for the angelic magic within the grimoire traditions of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Europe.

Among its contents, the Sefer HaRazim contains seven sections describing the corresponding celestial realms and the angelic beings that reside there and belong to their respective ontological sera, right, chains.

There's that seven again.

The techniques involved in this particular text are usually recitations, the evocation and adjuration of specific angels, the crafting of oils, poultices, and curatives of a specific group of natural substances, the crafting of lamellae, the burning of specific types of incense.

This is all standard fare.

So, praises to that angel.

What got you started? What got you started as an author? What got you started as a third just what brought about the Arcanum podcast? We want to know about you.

All right, so I'll give you – I've mentioned this story a couple of times, but I want to tell it for your audience because it's a little weird.

I had been studying this stuff in one form or another since about 2004.

That was like my senior year in high school, really.

So compared to a lot of other people, I started late.

A lot of people start – they get involved in this stuff kind of around 15, 16, just as kind of your sense of self is developing.

But I got into it kind of late and I studied it superficially because what was available to me in the suburban Long Island neighborhood I grew up in was just, I wasn't aware of that stuff.

So

Like what brought you into, you know, the world of ceremonial magic? It's not something a lot of people are drawn to.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's and it's a good question.

And I didn't really go looking for it.

I grew up on Long Island in New York.

And What was available to me at the time in terms of any of this stuff? Actually, it was quite a big part of popular culture in the very early 2000s, even maybe the late, late 90s.

what I would consider like Dan Brown occultism, you know, where these ideas of the Knight Templar and their connections to Freemasonry, the, you know, occult secrets and secret societies, this stuff really started, I mean, it hit the big screen.

But since I've been doing the podcast over the last six years, I do think I oversimplified enlightenment.

If it's done right.

Walter Leslie Wilmshurst, for anybody who's not familiar, he was an esoteric Mason who wrote The Meaning of Masonry, Masonic Initiation, The Rite of Entered Apprentice, or The Rite of Initiation, The Rite of Passing.

He founded Lodge of the Living Stones in Leeds in the UK, and he was a Christian mystic and an esoteric.

quintessential esotericist of the early 20th century, Fin de Sique era.

He left this tracing board that Brother Robert Lomas found.

Now, when he was compiling his research at the Lodge of Living Stones, he found it in one of Wilmshurst's personal notebooks.

Now, this is posted online, but the resolution is so poor.

You want to give the listeners a little taste about what you're going to be talking about?

not

really sure how many views you might get stomped by the algorithm like I do.

But, you know, the thing that I find absolutely like laugh out loud absurd is how many people people that are not masculine, that are women, or old, young, doesn't matter, attempting to define healthy masculinity.

If a man did that to a woman, tried to define their femininity, not having it.

So you gotta be able to understand that there is some shit that you're never gonna know about what it means and what it takes to be the opposite sex.

It's just what it is.

Our biological interface with the world okay, it's uncomfortable for some people.

That's what I figured, yeah.

Yeah, he was talking about it the last time I saw him, yeah.

Yeah, so she's done some stuff with Lon at Joshua Tree.

She works with Lee Barlow, who is a Pythagorean and interested in, he does work in hermeticism, so on and so forth from the UK.

She's done a lot of retreats at this point, but she asked me to lead a retreat in the south of France.

And I had other things on the docket.

But this just serendipitously popping up really, you know, I was hesitant at first, but after a little thought, I was like, I bit into it because a lot of people know me as a Freemason.

A lot of people know me as a Golden Dawn Chief.

Pierre, does

I appreciate that.

[laughs] She unalived herself unfortunately, and, uh, my aunt went down into the apartment and saw that this lady was a hoarder So there were stacks of books and, and, uh, you know, journals wrapped in cellophane.

She called me up because these things are deceptively heavy when you stick them in a box and try and move them around.

Um, she called me up and said, "Hey, could you come over and help me move these, you know, box up and move these books?" I said, "Sure." So, um, as we're packing up this, this one book, uh, the cover just catches my eye and I, I still have it.

It's on my shelf.

It was called The, The Oracle of Kabbalah by a guy named Richard Seidman.

And I ask her, I'm like, "You know, this is a little weird, but do you mind if I take this home and read it?" And she says, "Sure." So I walk around my neighborhood the next day, finish it, very small, slender volume.

Ba-da-ba-ba-ba

Hmm.

Okay? So, so there's this affinity of the souls that want to incarnate for these material pleasures, most particularly sex.

Come in here with this, uh, because there's all sorts of ideas behind that.

It's an energy.

It's a creative potency.

But the pleasure aspect is particularly what he's saying intoxicates the soul and draws it down towards watery, moist nature.

Um, and that then, yeah, honey delicious like nectar pure.

Yeah.

Mm.

Okay? So, so there's this affinity of the souls that want to incarnate for these material pleasures, most particularly sex.

Come in here with this...

Uh, because there's all sorts of ideas behind that.

It's an energy.

It's a creative potency, but the pleasure aspect is particularly what he's saying intoxicates the soul and draws it down towards watery, moist nature.

Um, and that then, yeah, honey delicious like nectar pure.

Yeah.

Is that a good description for my listeners? Yeah.

Yes, absolutely.

She had her theoretical works and the how-tos and things like that.

And then she had her fiction and her occult novels.

And yes, she was an early proponent of a sort of... esoteric psychology.

She trained and worked as a psychologist, as a psychotherapist.

And so she understood the power of symbol and the power of image and the power of the word and color and things of this nature through not just a psychological, but a profoundly what she would call occult or esoteric lens.

I'd love to give you the floor to tell my listeners a little bit about what people will encounter in the course, who it's for, what kind of person will find a benefit in it, and what people will receive from studying her this deeply with you.

Hmm.

So light right there already, right? Because it's like what a- what am I actually seeing? What, what it, what is, what is it that's doing the seeing? Uh, there, particularly when these things become enlivened in the way that I was talking about.

Uh, and don't forget, he doesn't say your, the consciousness is seized, the con- the imaginal is seized, the fantasticum, or the fantasia, the, the imagination is seized.

It, it, uh, achieves a level of autonomy.

So there's still a, a component of you, of you that is there to witness what is going on.

And, um, [sighs] now there is, there's two different v- variations of this, and this can get confusing, but again, for anybody that finds what I am able to discuss here in this timeframe, in this state of mind, uh, insufficient, please see my book, Etheric Magic, because I had a lot of time to really be precise about it.

There are two types of, of, of this visualization.

Is, is there a story to that effect that you can share?

So it's pretty cool.

Yeah, and, and it's, it's interesting that you, you...

Not a lot of people when they talk Chinese medicine are even aware that there is the astri- astronomical or really astrological component, um, or as you might put it, the astronomological [laughs] component.

Right? Uh, love that calendar by the way.

But I, um, there is, uh...

Right, TCM, traditional Chinese medicine, is kind of this post Mao, uh, uh, sort of gutting of, of what, uh, is now i- in schools that, that do and can teach it, like the one in Asheville, Taoist traditions.

It, the, they teach actually a much more esoteric philosophy of Chinese medicine that is referred to as CCM, classical Chinese medicine.

Precisely.

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Yeah, so, I mean, it varies very, very widely.

So the United Grand Lodge of England, right, that's the big body because it was the first one that was actually sort of formalized and put together in the early 18th century.

And...

there was there were other forms of masonry happening primarily in the uk but or you know at the time the the the british isles and uh in scotland so we have a lot of history of of freemasonic lodges right because they kept minute books where they recorded everything that was said and done and we still that's that's something that we do today every lodge has to write down their minutes and all that stuff and uh read them out loud to the members at the next session, so on and so forth.

So we have some of that stuff dating as far back as the 1600s in Scotland.

Now, the UGLA, as we refer to it, the United Grand Lodge of England, is a presiding body that we want.

now

We think of psi as an epiphenomenon of the epiphenomenon, right? Which is totally probably inside out from, I think, if it is real, how it probably actually is, which is totally disembodied, not incarnate, has no need to be incarnate, except when it feels like it or has some necessity to be incarnate.

Yeah, I mean...

There's a lot of points there.

And so William Wynne Westcott, one of the founders of the Golden Dawn, he wrote an inner order memorandum or like a note that became a tradition that they called the Flying Rolls.

Okay.

And this would have been probably 1901, around then 1902, maybe earlier.

But he talks about will and desire.

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