Neal Sendlak NS: Welcome back to the Gnostic Informant and you are about to attain true gnosis and today I got Dr Puca back from hello yeah Angela’s Symposium. So make sure you subscribe. The link is right in the top right, in the title. Just click on it, hit the subscribe button and you’ll get tons of access to academic information on these topics that we love to talk about. So a lot of topics from Magick to Wicca to Paganism all that good stuff is right there your one-stop shop. And yeah I’m really happy to have you back on Dr Puca how are you doing today?
Dr Angela Puca AP: Hi Neal, thanks for inviting me over again. I’m doing okay. Busy times but yeah I’m doing fine. How are you?
NS: Good and I also have Dr Ammon who is gonna help steer the boat with me as a co-host today. Yeah, so we can jump right into it. We have a question from a super chat. Let’s just jump right into the questions because that’s what people want to ask you stuff and I don’t want to waste any time with my boring stuff, my boring self, so let’s get right to the chat and Jim Markstein says…
Dr Ammon Hillman AH: Yeah can we please, Neal, can I just interrupt, I’m so sorry but Dr Puca would you please introduce yourself properly to me and the audience tell us who you are and your background which is fascinating, who are you?
AP: I am no one. I’m kidding so, I’m Dr Angela. I’m Italian as you may tell by my accent and I have a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and also a Master’s degree in Philosophy in Italy and my degree was both in eastern and western Philosophy. So in conventional Philosophy, I could teach Philosophy at school or university, for instance. But I also have a second major in Asian philosophies and religions, especially Indian and Tibetan philosophies and religions and for that reason, I also learned Sanskrit. And I decided to do my thesis on a Renaissance Philosopher and Magician called Giambattista della Porta and he was from Naples as many Renaissance Magicians and Philosophers, not all of them because we have the very famous Marcello Ficino from Florence. But we have a few Giordano Bruno and Tommaso Campanella, there are a few from Naples, which is interesting. I’m also from Naples, Italy.
And then I moved to the UK to do my PhD which is in religious studies and more specifically Anthropology of Religion and my PhD is on Folk Italian Witchcraft and Italian Shamanism to say in a very simple way because the more academic articulate way might be a bit more complex. But my PhD dissertation was called Indigenous and Transcultural Shamanism in Italy and part of that was also the Italian vernacular healing tradition that I systematised for the first time because that has never been done before even though in the US there are lots of books on Italian Witchcraft. I have bad news because my study on Italian Witchcraft was the first academic study on Italian Witchcraft systematically, as opposed to, perhaps, there have been some studies on some regional variations or some studies from the past, for instance, by Ernesto de Martino who studied Italian Witchcraft in the south in the Lucania area and in other southern areas of Italy. But my study was the first one done systematically on Italian Witchcraft, on the Italian Folk Witchcraft that I then argue to be the indigenous Italian Shamanism. But that’s a massive topic and I won’t get into it. And then throughout my PhD, I also thought, well unless you want me to, but in case people are interested I can go into that but I don’t want to sort of take two hours talking about my doctorate. And then I’ve also been teaching, at Leeds Trinity University for the past six years and one of the modules that I have led for a time was the module, which you would say ‘course,’ I think, in the US, was on Magick in Religious Traditions and how Magick gets embedded in different religious practices and I was focusing on non-monotheistic religions. And then I also had another course which was called Self and Reality in Eastern Philosophy and was focused on the concepts of self, reality, and the perception of the word in Asian traditions, especially in the Hindu and Buddhist but I also included Chinese and Japanese traditions. But since I studied Sanskrit and Tibetan at the university I specialised in Indian and Tibetan traditions and I, particularly like Yoga and Tantra, especially Tantra. I have a video, a couple of videos I think on my YouTube channel. I have one from Tantra to sex Magick and how Tantra came to be perceived as being more sexual than it is in the original Indian tradition.
NS: Wow that’s incredible. How hard was it to learn Sanskrit? Because that’s like not even a different world. That’s got to be tough but that’s incredible.
AP: Well, as you might tell, I’m talking in a second language, so I have learned a few languages in my life and English is probably the last one that I had to learn.
NS: You speak very good English, by the way, very good English.
AP: Thank you.
AH: Can I ask a question, Neal? I’m sorry I didn’t mean to interrupt.
NS: Oh yeah, that was a good idea. I’m sorry, go ahead.
AH: Dr Puca I’m totally in love with this dead guy who writes about some Witch that he came across in northern Italy. He fought it…
AP: Leland? Is it Godrey Leland?
AH: Anyway. You obviously know Aradia and you know the corpus behind it. Well, what do you think? How does it strike you? How do you think it’s like? How does it strike you?
AP: There is no historical evidence whatsoever that what Leland talked about actually happened or it doesn’t mirror any ethnographic data. If I really wanted to be generous towards him, I could say that it actually happened to him and it was a very isolated case that only happened to him. But I would say it’s much more likely that it’s not an accurate representation of anything that had happened in Italy.
NS: Wow, interesting let’s go to some super chats if you don’t mind.
AP: Well I think that when it comes to Italian Witchcraft and Aradia and Stregheria, I tend to disappoint a lot of Americans, I’m afraid. Because I think that the perception of Italian Witchcraft is very specific. In the US you find a very specific perception of Italian Witchcraft that has in most cases little to do with what actually happens in Italy.
NS: You think you think it’s Hollywood that gives people a different perception of what it is?
AP: No, I don’t think it’s Hollywood. I think it’s Grimassi and other people that made up stuff about Italian Witchcraft that have nothing to do with what happened. Because even you find
Italian Americans, have talked about Italian Witchcraft as the old religion and they even use the Italian sentence La Vecchia Religione, which is usually not pronounced very well but that expression doesn’t exist in Italy. I mean it in the words exist in Italian but there isn’t any such expression to refer to an old tradition of Witchcraft because in reality, up until recently and more specifically up until my doctorate, I systematised all the different regional variations under one label which was kind of identifying a uniformity there. But this uniformity only occurred quite recently, thanks to the internet and social media. But up until even a few decades ago, even 10 years ago you really didn’t have Italian Witchcraft. You would just have local folk practices, you wouldn’t have a unitarian tradition. So all those claims about Italian Witchcraft the old religion that’s all so inaccurate.
AH: How about the Satanism let me just extend that question to say Michelet in his history of “Satanism and Witchcraft” talks about one of their Sabbats where there were 20,000 French assembled to take off this soteira, the saviouresses communion.
AP: What’s the term again?
AH: Let’s talk about this one here’s the Greek term sotera and I just want people to notice that the Victorians, who put this dictionary together, said it’s a feminine form of soter, so that’s nice. But if you look at it you’ll notice sources that are far, far earlier than anything that’s biblical. So when you talk about the saviour as a figure, Jesus is taking a feminine title and this title is used in Euripides of Aphrodite, for example, and of Medea. So I guess, I wanted to ask Dr Puca, we get this in antiquity, we get this perception of an Orphic saviouress – a female who can produce a communion that allows us to enter the death state and be brought back. Is there any medieval or is this tradition carried over? That’s why I asked about the Aradia. Is it a tradition? Just tell me. What is your impression of this, of a female saviour? Magic being the heart of what she does, hence the connection with Aphrodite, Urania. Is this figure anywhere have you seen this lady saviour, lady Babalon if you want to call her so?
AP: This perception of the saviour female or male is very Christian in nature. So I think that here I perceive an attempt to sort of overlay a Christian concept to a pre-Christian tradition that didn’t quite have the idea of the saviour, male or female saviour in the same way that Christianity has. And so I find that sometimes people that have been culturally and religiously influenced by Christianity. When they look back at the pre-Christian sources and pre-Christian religious traditions they try to read them with a lens with a Christian lens as opposed to how they, at the time, would have interpreted those figures. So I wouldn’t say that in classical Greek you would have the figure of the saviour the same way that you have the perception of the saviour as Jesus Christ in Christianity.
AH: So she is nothing like Jesus is she? She is nothing like Jesus.
AP: None of the Greek figures has anything to do with how Jesus has been perceived by Christians.
AH: It would be interesting to find out exactly what their pre-Christian saviour was and why it was a woman in the Orphic tradition. It’s all over the hymns and she’s the one who brings the oestrum mania the oestrum is used the oestrus is used in the birthing process, it’s one of the birthing drugs. But it would be interesting to jump on that and to see what that saviour that pre-Christian female, late bronze age saviour is like. They call her a dragoness, isn’t that cool, a dragoness? Anyway questions from the gallery right?
NS: Yeah, we have a couple, let’s get to those. These are interesting stuff. Okay, I’m reading them, there’s pretty surprisingly, interesting. So I actually pulled up some pictures for some people. Jim Marksteen thank you for the super chat. My question for Dr Puca is who is Hecate? What is her story? Where is she worshipped? Is she related to any other goddesses like Diana or Artemis?
AP: So I have a couple of videos on my YouTube channel Angela’s Symposium on Hecate. They are quite recent. Hecate the Historical Overview. I think that’s one you might be interested in and then I gave a paper at the European Association for the Study of Religions Conference on the Contemporary Perceptions of Hecate. So you will find a thorough answer to your question there but we brief here so who is Hecate? Hecate is a Greek goddess and yeah, her story is very complex and complicated. So it’s difficult to just summarize here. So I just recommend you watch those videos, so that you can have all the actual information laid out in the proper way and with the proper references. And as to whether she’s related to any other Goddesses like Diana or Artemis. Well, not really. I think not in the way contemporary practitioners tend to think about relations between Goddesses and Gods because I see something that I tend to talk a lot about in my Patreon community, for instance, is the perennialist attitude that a lot of practitioners have and by perennialism I mean and it is meant usually, when we talk about perennialism, is the idea that there is one underlying truth across all the different traditions and across the ages and people that endorse this kind of perception, this kind of worldview and in a way it is kind of the underpinning to a belief system.
And a lot of practitioners endorse this kind of view even though they don’t acknowledge that that’s what they are doing and that’s the term for it. But when you have this kind of perennialist perspective you tend to bring together different deities and different entities and highlight the commonalities and in a way discard the dissimilarities. So that you can say, oh see these two entities were born or it was believed according to the mythology that they were born around the same time and so it means that they are the same deity or whatever other trait. I think that Zeitgeist, for instance, and in that case, it’s about Jesus Christ and other pagan gods. It’s kind of the pinnacle of perennialism in that they highlight and emphasize the similarities between different entities and they just set aside the differences. And so in that way you sort of construct the fact that there is one entity and when you worship one you worship the other or they are connected in one way or another. So in this sense, if this is the perspective from which you’re asking the question, in that sense I would say no, they are not connected. Although across the ages, of course, Hecate has been perceived in different ways and Hecatos is the male, the male Greek term was also associated with Apollo, the God of the Sun. So you do have certain associations in different mythological stories between Hecate and other Gods and Goddesses. But I think that it would be inaccurate to say that they are the same deities or they are the same deity or that they are associated in a way that goes beyond a very local-specific and time-specific association that is related to a specific myth. So usually, especially, academics tend to highlight the details as opposed to what Perennialists tend to do and that tends to be more the practitioner perception of deities, they tend to lump things together and in a way, remove all the details that would not fit that kind of narrative, that allows for those different entities to be perceived as one or as similar enough as to be even worshipped as one.
And in some cases that is employed to legitimize one’s practice, especially if you come from a Christian background and you feel an affinity to a specific God or a Goddess that can be associated according to perennialists’ view of Jesus Christ, for instance. You find a lot of associations even in Christian mysticism between Jesus Christ or Christ with solar entities, solar energies and it is a way perhaps of integrating a Christian sentiment and also that the need for a different form of mysticism, a different form of spirituality and religious engagement. So I’m not trying to offend anyone who has a perennialist view but as an academic who gives answers from an academic point of view, I always need to highlight that every entity and every deity is its own thing. and they will even vary from time to time, and from location to location they will be worshipped differently, they will be seen differently. So even when they try to lump together different entities, sometimes they just pick a specific perception of a deity from one time and one place and just because it’s kind of cherry-picking, the time when that deity looked more like the way you want it to look. Yeah, I hope that answered the question. I tend to be very lazy in my answers.
NS: That was a good point.
AH: What are those Magicians that you’ve seen in the Renaissance? What did those folks do with all of the Hecatic Magick and the kind of ancient traditions? Did they use codes and did they stand on words of power and did they open portals? Did they do that kind of stuff or was it Magick by the Renaissance had it become kind of watered out? Or were there some real Illuminati in there somewhere?
AH: What are those Magicians that you’ve seen in the Renaissance? What did those folks do with all of the Hecatic Magick and the kind of ancient traditions? Did they use codes and did they stand on words of power and did they open portals? Did they do that kind of stuff or was it Magick by the Renaissance had it become kind of watered out? Or were there some real Illuminati in there somewhere?
AP: I think that at the term Illuminati, I have to take a deep breath and okay, so the Magic in the Renaissance. So the Renaissance was a very fruitful time for Magic, the perception of Magic, you find magic everywhere, especially in Europe. Well, you have it in central and southern Europe, also in the UK with John Dee for example. But in the Italian and German Renaissance, for instance, you have very famous names like the ones that I mentioned earlier, Marsilio Ficino. Marsilio Ficino is kind of a hero because he was the one who translated the Corpus Hermeticum into Latin for the first time. And he also tried to find a syncretism between Christianity and pagan forms of Magic, we could say. So his syncretism actually helped certain Magic traditions to survive. Because it was easily at the time and still now it was heavily Christian and so obviously that helped. Generally, the perception of Magic in the Renaissance, especially in southern Europe, was heavily influenced by Hermeticism, what is now considered to be Hermeticism. And so certain ideas, for instance, the idea ‘as above so below’ which comes from the Emerald Tablet and but you have similar views even in the Corpus Hermeticum, the idea there is a microcosm and the macrocosm. So that means that human beings are all different microcosms but we are all at the same time immersed in a macrocosm and everything is connected by invisible ties. So the way Magic works are by identifying these invisible ties and sort of pulling the string that invisibly and on the occult level is able to affect something at a distance.
So the perception there was that one, you have correspondences that link the microcosm that every human being is to the macrocosm that encompasses everything that is created, everything in creation. And then you have the perception that you have the correspondences, you have the perception of the microcosm and the microcosm and you have the sense that there is a hidden book of nature that you need to read and understand in order to practice Magic. And also you have the perception of certain authors like Giambattista della Porta had the perception that Magic was the practical side of science. Well, at the time they would call science Natural Philosophy and Magic basically would be considered the practical side, so it was Natural Magic. So you would have Natural Philosophy which, at the time, would have been akin to our concept of science and Natural Magic. And so their perception of a scientific understanding of the word was the theoretical side and Natural Magic was the practical application of those theories that were learned. And so there was the idea that you learn things about nature and then you employ them to affect nature, which is something that science does as well. With Magic, you also learn things that are invisible to the eyes and they escape the measurability of the senses and rationality. So you are still learning about nature but you are learning the invisible and of course, mechanisms in nature and then applying them in a similar way as science does but obviously it’s not measurable so it is not science. But the perception was that there was a similarity, especially in terms of the methodology and they would have their diaries and record the magical workings and the timing and everything so that they would see what the effect of every magical operation was and then employed and see what works better, what is not working and then change their future practices accordingly.
So the perception there was that one, you have correspondences that link the microcosm that every human being is to the macrocosm that encompasses everything that is created, everything in creation. And then you have the perception that you have the correspondences, you have the perception of the microcosm and the microcosm and you have the sense that there is a hidden book of nature that you need to read and understand in order to practice Magic. And also you have the perception of certain authors like Giambattista della Porta had the perception that Magic was the practical side of science. Well, at the time they would call science Natural Philosophy and Magic basically would be considered the practical side, so it was Natural Magic. So you would have Natural Philosophy which, at the time, would have been akin to our concept of science and Natural Magic. And so their perception of a scientific understanding of the word was the theoretical side and Natural Magic was the practical application of those theories that were learned. And so there was the idea that you learn things about nature and then you employ them to affect nature, which is something that science does as well. With Magic, you also learn things that are invisible to the eyes and they escape the measurability of the senses and rationality. So you are still learning about nature but you are learning the invisible and of course, mechanisms in nature and then applying them in a similar way as science does but obviously it’s not measurable so it is not science. But the perception was that there was a similarity, especially in terms of the methodology and they would have their diaries and record the magical workings and the timing and everything so that they would see what the effect of every magical operation was and then employed and see what works better, what is not working and then change their future practices accordingly.
NS: Wow that was great, that was a great answer that’s a lot of interesting stuff there. Oflameo, thank you for the super chat. Is Paganism a path of Sanātana Dharma like Buddhism and Hinduism? Hope I said that right.
AP: No, depends on what you mean Paganism. By Paganism contemporary scholars, well you have the pre-Christian Paganism like the Greek and Roman religious practices they wouldn’t have called it Paganism but that’s not something unique to Paganism. Because that happens with so many different traditions that they only acquire a name because somebody else calls them like that because naming is a way of othering somebody. So you wouldn’t call yourself, somebody else will call you so that you are identifiable. It happens with Christians as well as with Gnostics a lot of traditions. So yeah, at the time of the Greeks and the Romans they wouldn’t call it Paganism but now scholars would call that Paganism. And then you have contemporary Paganism which is what I’m specialising in, which is the forms of some people call it also Neopaganism but it is a term that scholars and Paganism are not using anymore because it could be in a way belittling or sometimes considered offensive by the practitioners. So we tend to avoid that term because of that reason and now we are leaning more towards the term ‘contemporary Paganism’ to identify the new forms of Paganism that have stemmed from the 20th century. Yeah, so what was the question again? Sorry, I lost it.
Some people would argue that Hindu traditions, not Buddhist traditions, but some Hindu traditions could be argued to be forms of Paganism and I would say that they are forms of Paganism, not Buddhism, so definitely not Buddhism.
NS: Yeah, it seems like Buddhism isn’t really concerned with the worship of deities more than it’s a concern with an inner journey, right, would you think?
AP: Yeah, you have forms of Buddhism that have deities, Gods and Goddesses, especially in Vajrayana Buddhism, but I wouldn’t say that is Paganism because one of the characteristics of Buddhism is to have an imminent perception of the divine which means that the divine is not transcendent, it’s not outside of nature, it is within nature. And I think that that’s not something that you find in Buddhism. Buddhism has a very different worldview.
NS: yeah, that’s a good point. Thank you for that answer. thank you for that super chat too. Mr Monster, thank you for the super chat. Actually, before I started into Atheism I had a year and a half segment of time where I really got into Paganism. My patron is Baldr I still respect. That’s interesting. What do you think about that any comments on that?
AP: Well I hope you enjoyed your time in Paganism.
NS: Oh, what can you say right that’s all you can say. That was funny, yeah thank you for that super chat. Let’s see, we got a couple more: Chronicles of Luci, thank you for today’s education. Divine Femme bless you.
AP: Thank you. Divine Femme bless you too.
AP: Hi Mark! He’s a patron of mine. We were talking just like half an hour ago. So that’s nice.
NS: Thank you, Mark. I appreciate that. For Dr Puca, what do you think is one of the most significant reasons why people seek expression through arcane, occult, Pagan ways rather than traditional religious kinds of ways of the last 200 years? Great question.
NS: Thank you, Mark. I appreciate that. For Dr Puca, what do you think is one of the most significant reasons why people seek expression through arcane, occult, Pagan ways rather than traditional religious kinds of ways of the last 200 years? Great question.
AP: I think because traditional religions tend to have a non-mediated and less experience-focused experience. So it’s not about the experience, it’s more about following a set of rituals and rules so that you can achieve something that the doctrine of that specific religion says you will achieve. Whereas spirituality, the Occult, Esotericism, and the arcane, are all things that are heavily experience-based and are based on the direct experience of the divine. And I think that’s why people tend to lean towards that or even integrate the two. There are also people that follow a traditional religion or one of the three Monotheisms but they still have that dimension to their religious exploration. So I’d say that spirituality, the Arcane, the Occult and so on these are and that includes Paganism, which is a religion in its own right, but yeah, Paganism is also focused on the personal experience and on the direct perception of the divine rather following certain dogmatic rules to achieve something that the theology of your religion says you will achieve. In those cases there’s more the experience as the focus, experiencing something whether it is the experience of the divine, of the sacred, of Magick and manipulating your reality and entering the fabric of reality to manipulate it. These are all things that are heavily grounded and rooted in your personal experience and in direct contact and that vary significantly from the traditional religions.
NS: Wow, that’s well said. And another thing about the dogmatic doctrinal religions, when they get passed down over time it just becomes a tradition. Like I was talking to you before we even went live, my family has a Roman Catholic – we’re an Italian family and but no one took it seriously. It was just, this is what our family does, you get your confirmation your baptism you get your communion, you do all that stuff but that’s it no one really is like really feeling any spiritual connection to anything. It’s just what we do, whereas I can see how somebody can get into these other things, pagan, occult, arcane spiritual paths. It probably means more, I’m generalizing, but I can see how because you’re actually participating in something, you want to do rather than something that just kind of was passed down to you. What I mean…
NS: Oh we lost her. So hopefully she comes back.
AH: You killed her, what happened?
NS: It’s okay, it’s all right, it happens on the internet. The internet is crazy. Stuff like that happens but all right.
AH: Can I ask her about sex Magick, is that okay?
NS: Yeah, let’s wait so we get to the super chats though but yeah, definitely yeah, she has a video on it so, yeah, it’s not a big deal. Unless that was the last one, maybe that was the last super chat. Oh no we got another one. Okay yeah, let me get through these first and then and then once we have time we’ll do whatever we have left. But yeah, hopefully, she’s back. In the meantime, we got a couple more super chats but in the meantime. Well, I wonder what happened there?
AH: What did you say, man?
HS: She said some Magick incantation and she just got deleted off the thing.
AH: No man, she’s like I’m dropping this bro. I’m not coming back here.
NS: These guys are idiots, I’m out of here.
AH: I was just about to ask her about the sex Magick, it was just about to ask her. Yeah, you can’t, come on man you ruined it.
NS: Where is the internet connection? Because it just went ‘click’ and she was still there. Yeah, there she is, there she is.
AP: Sorry.
NS: What happened?
AP: I had a technical problem.
NS: I’m always joking he was like, he thinks she thinks ready and she’s out of here.
NS: Now well, I think that answered that super chat and I really thank you that when Mark, you said his name was Mark? Thank you for that Mark. There are a couple more so let’s get to those.
Let’s see what was the next one. Here it is. Rat King, good name Rat King, I also like that Tantra or practices centred on the exchange of powerful transformative sexual fluids between male practitioners, wild female birds and animal spirits.
AP: Fluids between bird and animal spirits? Between humans and animals? So yeah, I have as I said I have a video on Tantra and sex Magick, in case you’re interested in learning more about it. So the intent so the perception of Tantra as related to sexual practices, the way we understand it now, is more of a western perception. You have sexual practices in Indian Tantra as well and you may notice that I talk about Tantra as opposed to Tantrism because I think that that’s a western category and it’s problematic. So I tend to talk about Tantra and Hindu traditions instead of Tantrism and Hinduism but anyway so Tantra has been in a way perceived and understood that specifically relates to sexual practices and in western Magick, in western Esotericism and you have the first occurrence of that with Paschal Beverly Randolph and for him, the sexual Magick or sex Magick needed to be employed only by a married couple whereas we have the full-on inclusion of sex Magick with our beloved Aleister Crowley and in the OTO and in his system you have a lot of sex Magick and in that case, it doesn’t have to be between a committed couple it can be with everybody and there’s also the inclusion of homosexual couples. So basically in that case there is a perception that sex is in and of itself and even by yourself, by the way, you can also use this Magick by yourself. So yeah, in this case, there’s the perception that sex is, in a way, even easy. It’s an easy way to raise power, to raise your energy towards the goal that you want to achieve with a Magick practice. Because you may find there is a certain pattern in Magick rituals. So you have the creation of the sacred space then this is especially true for pagan kinds of Witchcraft. But also, perhaps, non-pagan kinds of Witchcraft. But you have the creation of the sacred space, you have the invocation of either in pagan practices of the elements and then the deities that you are working with. In a Wiccan setting, it would be a Goddess and the God, for instance. Then you have the symbolic representation of the change that you want to affect in your reality and then you have a way of raising energy so once you have created and have set all the things in your Magick ritual then what you will do to charge that symbolic representation and to let it affect your reality is to charge it, in a way, through your energy and sometimes people use singing or dancing or drumming and one of these ways could be sex Magick, for instance, using sex as a means to raise energy. And sex can be particularly powerful because it is an energy of union, is something very primal and that really, sort of, steers the deep desires of the person. So, but yeah in terms of the tantric perception of sex Magick that has arrived in the west is very skewed.
AH: Sure and what about female ejaculate as the communion substance and from antiquity and the connection with the Ophites? Why do they have this communion that involves a rite where the female is giving her semen, they would call it their seed.
AP: I’m not sure I would call it that.
AH: They do it’s her seed they call it the same thing.
HS: Oh you are talking about the Greek, OK.
AH: Okay they didn’t distinguish in antiquity between the gametes, right? But her seed, her essence, just like that which flows from a man is supposed to be able to give you an oracular vision and you get this communion that comes through the Ophites and you got Paul pissed off that the Nicolaitans are being listened to and whatnot. So I’m wondering, do you see any of this in your… as you’ve come to medieval Witchcraft and medieval Magic and modern Paganism? Have you seen any of these deep ancient roots that have to do… It could really explain to us why it is that we collect her ejaculate that she is administered medically on a medical applicator. Again, priapic practices right, straight up, Augustine hated these and that you can then collect that in the tripod and you could administer that to your initiates and it will give them the ability to go on the devil’s wings, they called it in the middle ages and it has something to do with.. there’s anus licking as well.
AP: This discourse escalated quickly.
AH: And no, it’s biology, what I’m looking at is, Dr Puca, I traced the drugs that they’re using. That was my area. I was trained by Dr John Scarborough. And so my I’m coming at this from the pharmacological side and I’m following the drugs through the ritual and I’m wondering why it is that you have this figure of the female administrator of the communion, that is supposed to be the avenue to really open up that Hecatic Magick, to bring that ergo into the world right? She who’s of many names, whose the cup is full of her porneia. Porneia you recognize the root? Porn nea right, porn?
AP: I would need to see the Greek word because…
AH: Yeah, sure I’ll send it, I’ll send it to you that’s a great idea, okay I’ll get that and send it to Neal and then he’ll put it up there the porneia.
NS: Yeah, grab it.
AH: In the meantime can you say something about this sexual Magick and what’s going on?
AP: So, I’m not familiar with this practice specifically. So usually what happens in tantric practices and in a western sex Magick it’s more the combination of the fluids between the man and the female and then it gets ingested and that is part of the ritual. But usually, it’s the communion of two fluids that get ingested rather than just female fluids. So I’m not familiar with the kind of practice. So yeah if you have sources to share I’d be interested in learning more. Another thing is when it comes to the female organs and practices related to Magick you have it with the flight ointment in medieval times. There’s the belief that Witches would fly to the Sabbat and that it seems that that is because there was an ointment that was put on a broomstick and it was put on the female genitalia so that it could get into the bloodstream and it would cause an altered state of consciousness or even a hallucinatory kind of experience.
NS: Wow that’s fascinating. Now I will say this though because I talked to some people who say…
AP: That’s why that’s why witches would ride broomsticks because that was connected to the kind of practice.
NS: Wow, that’s really fascinating. But I have also heard, going back to what you were talking about Ammon, with these people like Augustine or Hippolytus who talk about these Christians, that are heretics, doing all this stuff. A lot of scholars think that they’re trying to paint a picture of them as being crazy, having orgies and maybe not, maybe it’s not all true. Not saying that’s correct, I’m not saying they’re right, maybe they were doing these rights but we got to remember the source is hostile, these are people who are saying they are heretics and don’t trust the Nicolatians. They do all these rights. I’m not saying it didn’t happen but I’m saying I’m careful of how I read them talking about other people who they don’t like. That’s all I’m saying.
AH: Yeah you can cut through that morass or as Dr Puca said the Christian lens you can cut through it by just going to the pagan sources and looking at the Magical Papiri and when they have their oracle inserting a poisoned scroll into her vagina to share with the young naked boy, you can’t refute that it’s just written in Greek. So what are they doing? What are they doing where’s the sexual aspect? So the Tantra is just it’s a mixing of the two, okay? Interesting, great stuff.
NS: I got your source here that you just emailed, so I’m gonna pull that up before I get to the next super chat, we do have two more that I want to get to. But since we’re on the topic this is what you were talking about yeah.
AH: Yeah, Dr Puca I just wanted to pull up this is from the lexicon that was produced by the father of “Alice in Wonderland,” back in the good old Victorian days and so you see porneia in Ionian it’s pornei, right? So they define this thing as prostitution or fornication which, you know, you’ve got arches all over Italy what happens underneath the arches right, some unchastity shall we say. Right, so if you look at the metaphorical use of it, they have to type it as metaphor, right? They say idolatry, we have in the text the direct association of the sexual act with ritual practices, particularly with the mysteries and with Aphrodite Urania and this stuff is, you have to say, we say today we’re like, oh they were – which word is it? Porneia, is it having sex outside of marriage or is it worshipping in a temple? And the answer is yes, it’s both. If they refer to it, both. So I was just curious and your exposure to the medieval and tracing this across the Philosophy, what is the idea of temple prostitution? What is the idea of an act a physical act between two people that results in some kind of fluid that gets us high as hell?
AP: I think we need to change, the subject now. I’m not particularly familiar with this kind of practice but yeah.
NS: Yeah, that is pretty deep right there. I’m not gonna lie I was thinking that too but no it’s interesting. But let’s go to the next super chat. Mr Monster, thank you for the super chat, Paganism is more enjoyable to me than Monotheism ever could have possibly been. I feel more atheistic Pagan, don’t know what that quite means yet. I still do rituals and give offerings to Norse gods.
AP: Then why does he refer to himself as atheistic then?
NS: Wow that’s a good question Mr Monster. You better think about that. Are you really an atheist? You might still have some beliefs going on there. Like otherwise why even do it or you just like the act of it maybe. I don’t know.
AP: I would argue that even Atheists actually have religious beliefs because even if you believe in the non-existence of God that is still a religious belief, I would argue. So I don’t think there’s anyone atheist or not that has no religious belief.
NS: Yeah, I’ve always thought that at the very least you should… I mean not should. I’m not saying anyone should do anything but for me personally, it’s hard to grasp the idea of there not being some sort of force, energy, or life. Whether you want to call it God, I don’t know, that’s linguistics we’re just talking words here but something that made everything happen something like some sort of Deism that sparked off evolution, the world and the process of this reality. It’s just kind of mind-blowing, hard to even put wrap your mind around it. Like that we’re all just here just doing our thing and living life. It really is an amazing concept. I think that alone is like something that what whatever your beliefs are I think you can at least admit that it’s pretty fascinating that this is all, really we’re all here, doing this what I mean. So let’s see the next one is… oh that might be the last one. Yeah so, I don’t know we have a couple of minutes left trying to think of the concept of Magick. Okay, we’re done with super chats. If you have any more super chats, so definitely would appreciate that but the concept of Magick. How has it changed since antiquity basically like how has it progressed and changed over time or is that…
AP: How many hours do you have?
NS: You got to do it in 20 seconds, no I’m just kidding.
AP: The concept of Magick is always changing. It is even changing now in the era of the internet but the concept of Magick has existed since ancient Greece, and again I have a video on the birth of the term Magick and if people are interested they can go and check that one out, when it comes to the etymology of Magick and where it comes from and how it develops in antiquity. Yeah, I think it’s called the birth of Magick or something like that a couple of years ago. And so the term Magick comes from the Persian Maguš and it referred to these sorcerers that that were using incantations in a different language and they were perceived as these mystical fakirs and from its very inception the term Magick has been used as a term of othering, as we say among scholars. The term othering means that is a concept or terminology that sets something aside from the norm. So that’s why it is othering and Magick is often the religious practice of the other or something that is non-normative and it is also something that is meant to affect one’s reality. But people could argue that other religious practices also have the same aim to affect one’s reality. Magick tends to be more focused on that and includes different forms of practices like divination, Necromancy, from history alchemy, has been also linked to Magick. And we have different forms of Magick. We could say in terms of a very simple definition that Magick is a way of altering one’s reality by means of by spiritual and religious means. And the changes over time of what those spiritual and religious means are and some have also included in that in the definition in their definition of Magick the concept of science and the fact that and the concept of art as well, the art and science of affecting change according to the will, as Aleister Crowley said. So you have different disciplines that tend to be also associated with Magick, like in more recent years, art and more recent centuries, I would say, art and science and that tends to be also associated with Magick. But yeah the perception has changed throughout the ages massively and it is also changing now. And a scholar Bernd Christian Otto says that Magick is a floating signifier which means that it is a term that tends to assume different meanings depending on the group of people that are utilizing it. So it’s not a stable signifier is more a floating signifier and that is linked to a floating methodology and the Foucaultian idea of the empty signifier, that has been used recently when it comes to redefining the term religion among Religious Studies scholars, but that’s a different topic. So yeah, Magick is something that is ever-changing and I recently was invited to write a chapter on Magick in a book called “Contested Concepts in Religion” was published by Bloomsbury Academic. And if you’re interested in reading my chapter it is on my academia.edu page. I always put my stuff there, so if you’re interested in reading my chapter on Magick as a contested concept in religion and also in relation to science and religion, especially after the enlightenment, you may want to check it out and it is freely available on academia.edu.
NS: Oh wow, interesting that’s definitely an interesting topic right there. You mentioned Necromancy.
AP: I knew that would spark people’s interest. I didn’t say demons otherwise it would have been on top of the list.
NS: Yeah, well this sounds like something to do with dead or what exactly is it. What exactly is Necromancy?
AP: Yeah Necromancy usually is Magick that has some kind of involvement with the dead. Whether is the remains whether it is talking with the dead, whether it is other things that I won’t mention. But yeah and even in Neapolitan Folk Magick, you have practices that could be seen as necromantic, perhaps because they have to do with sculls but isn’t really. Yeah, maybe it’s borderline. I’m not sure if that classifies as Necromancy but I was recently back in my home city in Naples and I was visiting a chapel that has been recently restored and the underground was full of skulls and bones that were used for folk practices. So I thought that was really interesting and that’s the practice that was quite widespread and still is, not to the same extent, in the Neapolitan area and in Southern Italy.
NS: Wow that’s fascinating.
AH: Is there a branch of modern Paganism that tries to practice Necromancy? And my other question where are you on the whole Satanist Sabbat and Satanism? Like how does that Satan come into this picture? Has he kind of been excluded by modern Wicca or how does that work in modern life?
AP: I’m not sure I understand the question. What’s the question?
AH: Yeah, do you worship Satan Dr Puca?
AP: Me? Well, I worship academia which is much worse than Satan. What about that? I don’t worship academia either.
NS: What about the first part first question? Is there a pagan sect that is around today that does Necromancy?
AP: A pagan sect? It’s difficult to answer because contemporary Paganism doesn’t have much to do with Necromancy. Contemporary Paganism, as we define it in scholarship, tends to be more akin to Wiccan practices but also eclectic Paganism. But I am sure that there are Pagans that are interested in that kind of thing. I haven’t come across contemporary practitioners in Paganism that is practising those kinds of things. Maybe in the Left-Hand Path perhaps. I would see that as more appealing to people following the Left-Hand Path.
NS: Now for someone who’s watching right now who just heard l Left-Hand Path and has no idea what that means, check out my video on what is the Left-Hand Path.
NS: A good answer. Yeah actually, you have a really good video on that. I’m not sure where it is on here. I remember watching it though.
AP: Yeah, it’s one of the most popular videos of mine. It’s from a couple of years ago.
NS: Yeah, it’s one of the ones I remember watching and being like, wow, this is interesting.
AP: So yeah, if you type in Left-Hand Path then you will find it, for people that perhaps have difficulty finding it, because at this point I have many videos on my YouTube channel.
AH: Dr why is it that modern Paganism has lost its ancient roots? If there are no more Necromancers how can they possibly be practising anything even close to ancient Magic? I mean somebody asked about Hecate and in the Orphic Hymns she is that death force, she is that resurrective or that that queen who has the power. She’s the Demogorgon. What has happened with the modern world that we have dropped out the Necromancy? I’m sad today, I’m more sad after this interview than I was when I came here.
AP: Well I’m sorry. I think academia sometimes is saddening but also I think that the law could have something to do with it, right? I think the things that were acceptable centuries ago might not be acceptable or indeed legal now. Other than the very trivial reasons, you also have the fact that nobody and I would dare to say nobody follows ancient Magic or ancient anything, for that matter, because you cannot. It is just not possible that after 2000 years you will practice the same thing that had been practised 2000 or 2500 years ago. It’s just not possible because it’s not the same time, it’s not the same language, it’s not the same law, it’s not the same culture, it’s not the same institutions around you. It’s not the same people, it’s nothing the same, nothing is the same. So this pretends to do the same thing that the ancients did. It is just pretending, pretending to feel like you have more authority and to feel like you have more legitimacy but it’s just imagining what the ancients did and doing it, reading a couple of texts and pretending that you’re doing the same thing. You’re still not doing the same thing because after two thousand and five hundred years you will never be able to do the same thing.
NS: Yeah, wow.
AH: It’s almost as if where do we lose our thirst for that baby blood? What I mean is where do we stop getting high?
NS: Don’t forget we had a thousand years of a theocracy in Europe and Italy and in Greece. I mean this was the church was in control of all sorts of religious matters for at least a thousand years.
AH: It was the inquisition we lost…
NS: Let’s not ignore the big elephant in the room. Like that’s what happened it’s not that complicated. I think that’s what happened.
AH: Yeah it was that inquisition, it was that drastic inquisition. I saw one Witch get burned who while she was getting burned screamed in fury. It was the most beautiful female voice I’ve ever seen on a page. She screamed in fury at her persecutors and told them that this was their hell and she was the daughter of Lucifer who was bringing their judgement. I was like dude, where is that in the Magick anymore? Did we stop drinking baby blood? What do you think what do you think Dr Puca?
AP: That none of this makes sense whatsoever? That’s what I say.
NS: Baby blood? What do you mean? So the Rat King has a question that, I don’t know if you’re not a bible scholar. So I don’t know if you can even answer this but they did pay, so I will ask. Can you discuss the Teraphim of Rachel in Genesis 31?
AP: No, unfortunately, that’s not within my expertise.
NS: Yeah sorry Rat King. She’s not a Bible Scholar, so that’s not a thing that we’re gonna be doing but thank you for that, I appreciate the super chat. But yeah so I just wanted to say that we’ve been at this for an hour a little over that and check out the channel and subscribe. If you haven’t, do it – because it’s worth it’s one of the best resources for scholarly information on these deep, interesting subjects such as Magick, the Left-Hand Path, Aleister Crowley, Thelma, and Baphomet. See all these and Hecate, all these interesting fun topics from a scholarly academic, someone with a PhD, an expert in the field. So you can’t beat it, you just can’t beat it, it’s free and anything else coming out, any books or any projects that you want to let everyone know about?
AP: I’m working on turning my PhD dissertation into a book and it will be published by Brill. So I’m working on that at the moment and then I will keep working on my social media platforms. I’m also on Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter but my main platforms are YouTube and TikTok and for those of you who want to join an amazing community of academically inclined people, I would highly recommend joining my Patreon which I tend to call my Inner Symposium because we tend to study a bit more the primary sources in my inner Symposium. So if you want to support my work and also join an amazing community I would highly recommend you join my Patreon community.
NS: There you go.
AH: I’d like to say thank you for coming. From my perspective and I will notify the inquisition that you are not indeed a practising Necromancer. They can call off the investigation. I can’t tell you for how long you can hold these guys off but I appreciate it
AP: I’m very I’m very relieved. Thank you very much.
There you go there, we go. So thank you for that and you have just attained true gnosis.