Rune Soup

In the middle of the Philippines archipelago is the mysterious Siquijor -known variously as the Island of the Witches, the Island of Sorcerers or the Island of Healers. This remarkable place is home to several thriving magical and healing lineages. Here is my story of visiting and encountering these traditions during the time of year where the healers travel up sacred Mount Bandilaan in order to collect the healing herbs their work requires for the whole year. These visits only happen on the seven Fridays between Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. I was fortunate enough to come along on one of these harvests. It's a fascinating place that is illuminating in comparison with cunning traditions, curanderismo and other cosmovisions around the world: Saints, sacred timing, herb lore, energy work. And if you are looking to visit Siquijor, check out the show notes. If you'd prefer some visuals, head over to YouTube. - Note - Episode has been updated due to audio not playing properly. Show Notes I have added the fo

In the middle of the Philippines archipelago is the mysterious Siquijor -known variously as the Island of the Witches, the Island of Sorcerers or the Island of Healers. This remarkable place is home to several thriving magical and healing lineages. Here is my story of visiting and encountering these traditions during the time of year where the healers travel up sacred Mount Bandilaan in order to collect the healing herbs their work requires for the whole year. These visits only happen on the seven Fridays between Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. I was fortunate enough to come along on one of these harvests. It's a fascinating place that is illuminating in comparison with cunning traditions, curanderismo and other cosmovisions around the world: Saints, sacred timing, herb lore, energy work. And if you are looking to visit Siquijor, check out the show notes. If you'd prefer some visuals, head over to YouTube. - Note - Episode has been updated due to audio not playing properly. Show Notes I have added the fo

Legendary storyteller and mythologist, Dr Martin Shaw joins the show this week. On the occasion of the release of his remarkable and uncharacterisable (although I try) new book, Bardskull. We talk about the weakness of the word archetype, we talk about place and story and transformation, we talk about myth and landscape, we talk about Tolkien, Gandalf and Merlin, we talk about defending indefensible books, and… in the end and ultimately, we talk about spiritual transformation.  A fantastic chat. One of the best of the year, for sure. Enjoy! Show Notes Get Bardksull: https://unbound.com/books/bardskull/ School of Myth https://schoolofmyth.com/

This week we welcome to the show the legendary Rosita Arvigo. Rosita is the author of ten books, she is a naprapathic physician, a herbalist and a specialist in traditional Mayan healing. For decades she has lived in western Belize, operating a healing practice and maintaining an organic farm. During this time she studied under Don Elijio Panti -a powerful and famous shaman then in his nineties. (He lived to 103.) This story is described in her book, Sastún. Rosita joins us today to discuss Mayan healing and shamanism, what it entails, the state it is in today and what we can learn from it. This is a fascinating discussion that we managed to record from regional Belize all the way to Wellington New Zealand -during a cyclone. Enjoy! Show Notes Rosita's website and books. Rosita on Facebook. The Abdominal Therapy Collective. Rosita presenting at the New York Botanical Garden.  

Peter Mark Adams joins us today on the occasion of the imminent release of his new book, Hagia Sophia: Sanctuary of Kronos. Like The Game of Saturn before it, this is an exploration of curious survivals of pagan cosmologies hidden in seemingly plain sight -in this case Hagia Sophia in his home of Istanbul. Check out the show notes at runesoup.com for some companion images. Along the way, we also discuss what happened to the Mysteries when Eleusis was closed, the School of Athens and whether any such thing as Neoplatonism even existed. Enjoy!           Show Notes   Get Hagia Sophia: Sanctuary of Kronos. Peter Mark Adams's website.

This week, we discuss morality, where to intervene in the world, in your life and why. Enjoy!

Parapsychologist Dr Brian Laythe joins the show for a discussion on ghosts and haunted places. We explore definitions: what IS a ghost? That's a slippery question right there. We look at what makes a place 'haunted'. Are they haunted because they have ghosts or do they have ghosts because they are haunted? And we investigate how ghost encounters fit into the wider ecosystem of High Strangeness. Can anyone really be 'just' a witness or are we at least co-creating these contact events? A great chat. Enjoy! Show Notes Get Brian's book, Ghosted!: Exploring the Haunting Reality of Paranormal Encounters. Visit the Institute For The Study of Religious And Anomalous Experience.

After last year's Astro-Gnostic conference and some extended jungle experience, I want to revisit some comparisons between 'gnosticism' and 'animism' -whatever they happen to be. And in particular I want to make the case for how the assertion that the cosmos is a prison built by an evil God and the cosmos is a community of beings can share co-presence in the same overall framework. So this is a gathering of thoughts in that general direction. Show Notes There is a Higher Soup meetup in Wellington NZ on Saturday Feb 11th. It's open to all but please RSVP so we have an idea of numbers. And once again for no reason other than it's a good way for me to organise my talking points so I don't forget them, I used Tome again. If you want to try it out, here's the invite link.

This week we welcome to the show hunter, leather maker, tracker, artist and educator Harmony Cronin. Over the course of her career, Harmony has been a big game skinner, she has convened and continues to convene women's hunting groups, she provides support for Indigenous buffalo hunts and has lived in a tent she built herself beside Yellowstone, where her neighbours were a wolf pack she fed with road kill. Harmony joins the show for a powerful conversation about the roles and obligations of being a human in a living cosmos. Obviously this one has some pictures to go with it. So you can watch the video version on YouTube, or you can check out all the images we discuss in the show notes at runesoup.com. Enjoy! Show Notes Find out about Harmony's classes and everything else she has going on at Gathering Ways. Find out about the Buffalo Bridge project here.

Join me for the first solo show of the year! In this episode, we walk through a presentation that can help best situate you to achieve and transform in 2023. Extreme ownership. Correctly setting priorities. How to build a map of both official reality and reality. Stepping into an attitude that thrives in chaos. Using time magic to shift from 'goals' to 'sites of magical transformation'. Oh, and if you want to have a play around with the fun little AI presentation creator I used, here's an invite link. You can also watch this episode on YouTube, if you'd prefer.

Tis the season once more for our annual chat with the one and only Conner Habib. We started by discussing Christmas and then ended up having quite a detailed exploration of ceremony, place and context that set the theme for the rest of the chat. So this one is a little different from our usual new year chats. Enjoy! Show Notes Conner on Patreon. Conner's debut novel, Hawk Mountain.

Continuing our End-of-Year run, the legendary Lynne McTaggart returns to the show to talk about working with The Field and the Power of Intention for healing, manifestation and transformation. We catch Lynne up on some of the work of the Rune Soup Premium Member intention groups, compare notes and experiences and speculate as to how all this stuff might 'work'. Always a good time. Enjoy! Show Notes Lynne's website. Get on the waiting list for the 2023 Power of Eight masterclass here.

Welcome to the 300th episode of Rune Soup! They grow up so fast, eh? To celebrate the occasion, I had two options: The first was to hold a big party and then slip on a magic ring mid-speech, vanishing before your very eyes. The second was to invite onto the show perhaps the most-requested guest, John Michael Greer. And really this timed very well because John has a new book out called The Occult Philosophy Workbook: A One Year Course In The Secret Wisdom. Plus we're looking at a whole new year a few days away. Plus we're doing a very special six month premium member course at the beginning of next year called The Foundations which -as the name suggests- is a comprehensive course on all the foundational magical practices from setting up altars to casting circles to scrying and all of that. I'll be taking you through exactly how I do All The Things. So with all this going on, John and I have a conversation at the Venn overlap of all these territories: What are the essential skills of a (broadly speaking 'Wes

A Christmas tradition to rival eggnog and embarrassing yourself at the office party, this week we once again have the astrological forecast for the first half of 2023 with the incomparable Austin Coppock. Enjoy!

Greg Carlwood from The Higherside Chats joins the show for a countdown of the 10 best conspiracy books of all time. UFOs, technocracy, CIA coups, predatory capitalism, ancient aliens, Big Pharma, elite networks… here's the list! Some you might expect. Others you most definitely will not. And half the fun is hearing the justification for why one book made it into the list and another didn't. I had a blast with this one. Enjoy!

The one and only Julio Cesar Ody returns to the show for our annual Halloween special! Julio joins us from his native Brazil for a fascinating romp through his country's magical landscape: Spiritism, Umbanda, Quimbanda, Candomblé. The impact of Diaspora African frameworks, Amazonian plant spirits, ayahuasca. The impact of Catholicism and the role of the saints. The disastrous impact of modern, evangelical Christianity. It's all here! Spooky season's greetings to you all. Thank you so much for listening. Show Notes Julio's book, Magister Officiorum. Julio's website, Figueria Mágica. Figueria Mágica on YouTube. The thesis/article Julio mentions: Umbanda, Uma Religião Sincréta e Brasileira.

The good Doctor Knowles makes a welcome return to the show this week. We talk about the presence of nineteenth century occultism in the pulps, how those pulps influenced the superheroes of the twentieth century, Watcher cults, imperial worldviews and the synchromysticism of the apocalypse. A freewheeling romp for all! Show Notes The Secret Sun. The Secret Sun on Patreon.

This week we have the first triple-header of the energy healing dialogues. Brian Wilkins returns to the show with first-time guest, Jess Waters. Jess and Brian are principally responsible for creating and maintaining a weekly intention group based on the principles outlined in Lynne McTaggart's Power of Eight. So we discuss their respective paths through various healing modalities, how they came to intention-based work, what it's good for, how it might work and what its efficacy implies for the cosmos at large. Really scintillating chat. Excellent stuff with some excellent people. Enjoy! Show Notes Jess and Brian's substack, Banhe. Brian's website.

This week, returning guest Brandt Stickley joins us for another instalment of our energy healing dialogues series. We discuss how Chinese medicine sees the human energy body/ies, the antiquity of the system, how it works, what it works best with and the attitude or ways of thinking that characterise TCM. In particular, we look at what even am meridians, how TCM understands human organs, polarity and all that good stuff. Enjoy! Show Notes Brandt's website. Brandt's Patreon.

One of my favourite books of the year is Jerry Kantor's Sane Asylums. He joins us this week for an equally-scintillating episode. We explore how homeopathy works, the 19th century heyday of homeopathic psychiatry -including the successful treatment of Abraham Lincoln's widow's 'incurable madness' with three months of homeopathy. And we find out just how it was homeopathy was erased from history and why. (Spoiler: Money.) Really great stuff.  Show Notes Get Sane Asylums. Jerry's website, Vital Force Health Care. Jerry's publishing website, Right Whale Press.