Dr Justin Sledge JS: All right everybody, welcome to an Esoterica live stream but a special one, because I’m joined by my distinguished colleague and friend, which I’m really blessed to be able to call you both of those things Angela. I’m really happy to be joined by Dr Angela Puca who I’m sure everyone who’s watching this has also subscribed to Angela’s Symposium. If you’re not then you should go rush over there and get subscribed and Angela, thank you for hanging out with me.

Dr Angela Puca AP: Oh thank you, Justin, and yeah, I’m also very pleased to be calling you a distinguished friend, no distinguished colleague and friend obviously. I had to mess it up.

Dr Angela Puca AP: Oh thank you, Justin, and yeah, I’m also very pleased to be calling you a distinguished friend, no distinguished colleague and friend obviously. I had to mess it up.

(Laughter)

AP: Yeah, it’s like yeah he’s not just a friend, he’s a distinguished friend.

JS: That’s like people who have like more than one best friend. I know people are like yeah, that’s my best friend and that’s my best friend. I’m like no, like…

AP: Yeah, I have two best friends.

JS: So I don’t understand this. It’s a strange thing but anyways, it’s great to have you back on and just sort of hang out and chat and hopefully we can take some questions just from the audience. And it’s great to have you on because one of the things that I always say then how much I appreciate Dr Puca’s work, is that it’s a great corrective on the channel or my work as a corrective viewer – you were here first on YouTube and that we work in such interesting complementary ways. like I work in some fields that that you don’t work in and you work in some fields where I don’t work in and it’s so great too, for instance, when I get questions about Paganism or Shamanism I can be like I have no idea but I know a guy and it happens to be – not a guy …

AP: I don’t know maybe I can be a guy, I don’t know.

JS: If you bang – you do. But it’s great to be able to be like yeah, I don’t know the answer to that question but I bet I know someone who does. So it’s great to have you on because especially when it gets into contemporary stuff and questions on Paganism and stuff like that I just don’t have any expertise in, it’s great to be able to lean on your expertise and it’s very welcomed. Also to say hi to a couple of folks in the chat. Jason is in the chat who’s just a great guy and friend of the channel and also our shared friend Marco Visconti, also who I just saw in the chat as well.

AP: Hi Marco, we’re gonna see each other in March because he has a book signing in Leeds.

JS: Oh nice. Yeah, I’m looking forward to reading his book. It’s often hard to find good information on Thelema and so it’s good to have an expert who’s been at it so long, writing the book. It was great to have a conversation about the Bornless Ritual which is a lot of fun and a great compliment to this epic three-hour conversation I had with Dr Dzwiza on the Akephalos, it’s amazing, it’s amazing how much, and I’m sure Angela knows this as well, how if you really get into something how deep you can go on even a short text like PGM 95.

AP: Yeah, I think that’s why I always consider my videos as appetizers and not as something comprehensive because when it comes to these topics, probably when it comes to any topic really, it’s just endless what you can find out and what you can research. I think when things seem simple it’s because you haven’t researched them deeply enough otherwise it’s like every single religious aspect, religious element or even within spirituality, you know, magic practices, every single thing has so much behind it.

JS% No right, and I always tell people and I think I’m saying this with Dr Dzwiza that I always think of Esoterica episodes as the beginning of a journey. It’s how you start learning about something that if you think you know something after watching an Esoterica episode you’re mistaken – now you just have a lot of work to do. So yeah, folks should always think of this kind of education as really the beginning of an education. Not the culmination of one. So yes, all right let’s jump into some questions. And I see a couple already popping up. And let’s see here from Raymond Plante, let’s see:

Does it seem feasible to maintain that evil is less a moral principle than the impact of an agonistic vertigo toward knowledge consistent with the death drive?

All right, it’s a mouthful. We got to put our philosopher hats on I think, Angela.

All right, it’s a mouthful. We got to put our philosopher hats on I think, Angela.

AP: Yes.

JS: Folks, you know Angela is also trained in philosophy. We’re both trained in philosophy so it’s great to have also another philosopher here.

AP: I have both my Bachelor’s and my Master’s in philosophy.

JS: Yeah, that’s where my PhD is and my MA is in religious studies.

AP: So yeah, it was for me the PhD in religious studies.

JS: Right we’re mirror images of each other in that way. All right, so let me read this again to make sure I’m following the question.

AP: I’m not sure what he means by agonistic vertigo towards knowledge consistent with the death drive. Does he mean that evil is a principle linked to spiralling down to death? I’m not sure.

JS: Yeah, that’s the other thing I’m not quite sure about, and feel free to clarify, Raymond, what you’re thinking in the chat and we’ll try to answer it. I mean I guess it depends on what you want and also what you want to do with evil here. I mean I don’t know what you think about this Angela but I guess I typically don’t group evil in a moral category. I typically think of evil as a theological category. As a moral category, I would say something can be vicious as the opposite of virtuous or something…

AP: Or harmful.

JS: Or yeah like in a utilitarian system where it can violate the categorical imperative.

AP: I’m a utilitarianist.

JS: So yeah, so it’s the harm principle is how you would go. I’m not sure where I would land on that. Sometimes I think, on a good day, I’m a Kantian.

AP: No, I think yeah, I have debated that with myself a lot whether I’m a Kantian or utilitarian and that’s where the philosophers come to the front.

JS: Actually I don’t think I’m actually… I am much more of a virtue ethicist. That’s kind of where I land for complex reasons but I really like virtue ethics in that way. But yeah I guess the question is that it depends on what you want to do with evil and I guess it would be is it sort of a naturalistic theory of evil that you’re getting at with the death drive because I’m assuming that’s a reference to Freud. Or is it a larger theological question? But I guess I would have to flesh it out more about what you might mean but I don’t typically think of evil as being, insofar as it is a moral principle, it’s almost always a moral principle operating within a theological framework – Thomism or something.

AP: I agree I think that in terms of ethics and morality, I see more concepts such as harming people or fostering the opposite of coalition and community and helping each other. So damaging each other, harming each other, that would be the ethical category that I would see similar to what in theological terms people would use the term evil.

JS: Yeah, maybe if you clarify a little more we can say a little bit more about it. But a question for Dr Puca from Jason. Bauhaus or Fields of the Nephilim?

AP: Difficult.

JS: A dilemma.

AP: Yes, because I love both. I think that I appreciate more Fields of the Nephilim because of the aesthetic themes but Bauhaus is
obviously like an anthem for Goth people.

JS: Yeah, I think if you throw a Bauhaus under the bus, you may get Goth-cancelled. They might send the Goth police after you.

AP: Very, very possible,

JS: Yes, that’s dangerous territory.

AP: I don’t know if you guys know and there’s another group, this is more metal perhaps than Goth Rock but it’s called Therion
and do you know them?

JS: Yeah.

AP: I also like them, especially the album Gothic Kabbalah and there are also songs about the Perennial Sofia and Shekhinah. It’s very esoteric.

JS: Western yes, at Western ‘esotericy.’

AP: Yes,

JS: I’ll also point out that Jason’s rocking esoterica merch in his profile picture. So I appreciate that.

This is the one that I guess I’ll maybe field.

If any of the medieval alchemists succeeded in their works what little evidence is there?

I guess it depends on what you mean by their works. I mean the medieval Alchemist and Alchemy did manage to succeed in a great deal of things but I don’t think any of them successfully created a Philosopher’s Stone or engaged in substantial transmutation or made the Alkahest or life-extending, you know, substantially life-extending elixirs. That’s also one big difference between Chinese Alchemy and Western Alchemy is that Western Alchemy never had the idea that you could live forever. Chinese Alchemy thought that you could, they thought you could do it with a bunch of mercury which turns out mercury does the opposite of making you live forever.

AP: Thank you for saying that because I got that question in my latest live stream and I didn’t quite know the answer to that.

It’s one of the differences. But it’s also interesting this is a place where Christianity and Alchemy really mixed in because the idea was you could extend your life but you couldn’t live forever because that would make you kind of Christ-like and they really didn’t like the idea of that. So that’s a place where sort of a theological imposition was set upon Medieval Alchemy where you could extend life and there are, famously, cases of people allegedly like Flamel living for hundreds of years. But no, I don’t think that they could do those things and I think they couldn’t because it’s just not physically possible. They just had an incorrect theory of Nature and that’s not to say they didn’t get a lot done but they couldn’t get that done.

Oh yeah, well you said you were gonna maybe we’ll do a thing together on, what’s her name, the Italian female Alchemist Isabella Cortese

AP: Isabella Cortese, yeah.

JS: Yeah we should work on her. I actually have her book over there a copy of her book from the 16th century. It’s a neat book, have you looked at it much?

AP: No, not really. If it is an ebook I can get it. Is it in Italian?

JS: Yeah, it’s in Italian. I can find you a copy on archive.org. It’s neat because it has recipes for the Philosopher’s Stone right next to recipes for cosmetics and it’s really a great text, one having been written by a woman Alchemist. – it’s pretty rare in general but also you get alchemical theory right next to how to make hand cream.

AP: It doesn’t surprise me because there are other magical texts from the Renaissance, from the Italian Renaissance, and they will also associate those kinds of things.

JS: Della Porta’s natural magic is like that.

AP: Della Porta is also like that. It would have things like avoiding balding for men next to some kind of…

JS: … How to live for a long time. Yeah, it’s interesting and della Porta’s text on Natural Magic is really fascinating because it represents a period after Medieval Aristotelianism where it is no longer functioning as the standard epistemological paradigm but before the Baconian scientific method emerges and so it’s in a fascinating period, that was very brief in European history, where you have basically tricks that you could do and they were called Natural Magic but we recognize them now as early scientific experiments. But it’s really a fascinating period where they’ve abandoned Aristotelianism or at least some intellectuals had but they haven’t picked up Baconian – what we would now call the scientific method. And so it’s this fascinating text that’s neither one nor the other. And that’s why when you read it it’s just sort of a disconnected series of Natural Magic but where there’s no methodological theory uniting it, like why all these works, which is a terribly fascinating period in European intellectual history.

AP: Well for della Porta it was and for other Renaissance magicians they had kind of a theory of why that worked and that was because that’s how nature worked. So they had the idea of Philosophia Naturalis and Magia Naturalis. So Philosophia Naturalis is the theoretical aspect and Magia Naturalis is the practical one. And by Philosophia Naturalis, they meant what we would now mean as Natural Science, basically, before the Baconian time as you said. So, for instance, in della Porta, what he thought, is that magic, Natural Magic because he would distinguish his type of magic from Witchcraft, which is communing with entities and that was considered forbidden and he tried to make a case that his way of doing magic was actually acceptable and he managed to escape the fury of the Catholics because of that.

JS: That was the inquisition, yeah, and it was a terribly popular book.

AP: Yeah, it was also translated into English. I found the copy from an, I think the 1700s, I think it was 1620 or something like that.

JS: Yeah it was translated really early. I have a copy over there actually from the 17th century.

AP: Yeah, but della Porta’s idea, Neapolitan by the way like Giordano Bruno, but I think that many of those Italian magicians including Tommaso Campanella had the sense that magic was applying the hidden book of nature. So they thought that it is actually applying the laws of nature that we have yet to discover or that we don’t know yet. We don’t know why they work but you know it’s not supernatural, they didn’t believe that it was something supernatural. They believed that it was leveraging the laws of nature – just the ones that people didn’t know yet or didn’t know at all.

JS: And it turns out they were right and that’s why gravity and other kinds of forces are occult. They are in fact occult forces so much so that there are letters that Newton wrote where he’s like, I don’t want to be associated with this idea, it’s like occultism. These are like really dangerous ideas that there are these unseen forces that are out there and Newton had to admit that he had discovered it but at the same time, he didn’t want to be associated with it, which is again such an interesting 180-degree difference between how we think of Newton now like he would have been super proud that he discovered all this stuff but in fact, he was, for religious reasons, very uncomfortable with it but turns out they were right.

It’s an interesting question you may have some insight into it. I know a little bit.

Can you share any basic info on the deity Baphomet or reputable sources to learn more? It’s really hard to find any

good unbiased info?

AP: I have a video on Baphomet so you can watch it and there is, as always with my videos, in the info box you will find the references. Yeah in that video I focus more on the Baphomet by Éliphas Lévi and the depiction and the meaning and where that comes from. But it is a bit of a difficult figure. I mean that of the Baphomet, to trace the history back in an accurate way. But I would recommend definitely watching that video and there’s a paper written by Julius Strube which is quite long, I think it’s like 30, 40 pages for a paper and you can find it for free online. So I would recommend checking my video on that.

JS: Yeah and I think it was started as a mistranslation. It started off as a mistranslation of Mohammed’s name and basically, they stuck it on the Templars as a mechanism by which the King of France had to pay his debts and so he murdered all of them. It’s a very convenient way of not paying your debts, just murdering your creditors and so he just accused them of all worshipping this thing and being gay basically and murdered them all. History is just a mess, it’s just like if it weren’t horrible it would be hilarious – if it weren’t our history. If I were an alien I would look at human history and be like, wow. I mean I guess Marx is like first – tragedy then farce – something like that.

Yeah, oh man this is another one from Brandon.

Can you please recommend which Alistair Crowley works to engage with, first as a Chaos Magician? Also, any works by anyone who might be useful

for someone interested in the meeting place of Vedanta and Chaos Magic?

I’ll let you field this one, Angela. I’m not a super big knowledgeable person about Crowley also I think that Marco might be in the chat as well, Brandon. He’s very

knowledgeable about Crowley and could also point you in that direction as well but I’m not knowledgeable on Chaos Magick and such and so forth.

AP: So which I would recommend for the first. Well, I think that many people would probably give you a different answer to that, but different people would give you different answers to that. I think that a foundational work is still “Magick in Theory and Practice” and Chaos Magick tends to be a tradition that focuses very much on results, especially after Peter Carroll and Sherwin and the tradition and the movement that came after that. So I think that so theoretically you could also be interested in “Liber 777” and many other Crowley books. But considering that those also contain correspondences and in Chaos Magick there’s more the idea because magicians tend to have more of the idea that you can create your own correspondences based on what you feel connected to. So if you feel that to you the colour blue resonates more with the element air, you would use that one as opposed to the more conventional association that you will find in standard correspondences or correspondences of a specific tradition. So it tends to be more individually tailored. So maybe that book is not the best one. I think “Magick in Theory and Practice” because it still contains some philosophical elements that could be useful for a Chaos Magician in terms of that sort of sentiment that Magick is for all and there is that sort of democratisation of Magick with Crowley. Even though some people have kind of challenged his intention with that because he seems to want to popularise and democratise Magick but at the same time his books are quite obscure but we know that Crowley is an interesting character and full of contradictions. But yeah, I guess that I would recommend “Magick in Theory and Practice,” Liber Four.

JS: And I was looking at “Liber 777” the other day, just randomly looking at Crowley’s stuff.

AP: As a pastime.

JS: Yeah I do. You’d be surprised that that’s actually true. It’s like I haven’t looked at this “Liber 777” for a long time. It was part of this larger thing on Crowley and the Bornless One. But I will say that looking back at it I would say there are a lot of mistakes in there especially when it comes to Hebrew stuff. I don’t think Crowley understood Hebrew at all and there are howlers of errors in there. Like things that he says mean things that don’t mean anything like that. Mistakes in Gematria.

AP: He also misunderstood Indian philosophy.

JS: Yeah, I mean yeah, it’s like he wants to shove the square peg in the triangular hole sometimes. And there’s a bunch of stuff in there. now I can pin that on Crowley but I can also pin that on Bennett because it really was Bennett that put together most of what became 777. I wonder if Bennett would come back later and look at 777 and think, you know, whatever because he could, by the end of his life, he could read Sanskrit and Hindi and Pāli and stuff fluently. So but anyway, that’s just a side note, that the Kabbalah of “Liber 777” is interesting.

AP: Yeah, I’m also curious about the meeting of Vedanta and Chaos Magick, the non-dualism well the non-dualism is the Advaita Vedanta actually. So the Vedanta is the Vedanta meant in Sanskrit, it is the Upanishads basically and it’s one of the six Darshana in Indian philosophy.

JS: Frater Zigmund. Love both of you. Thank you Zigmund. Where did the idea of microcosm and macrocosm and that the human body reflects the universe originate? Reading a Manly P Hall book about it I like to be a more informed opinion.

Actually, the Stoics are the first people to develop the idea that there’s a system of sympathy, sympatheia that exists in the world and the human body is part of that network of sympatheia. I think that the human body, reflecting that universe is also. You see it a little bit in Stoicism but I think you see it most clearly – I think the Hermeticists are the first people to really develop that where…

AP: Yeah.

JS: There’s the unknown God and there’s mind and then mind creates the universe and the human body is sort of like a nexus of all of those things and then that way the human body is a microcosm of the macrocosm. But that’s also Hermeticism leaning on Stoicism, Hermeticism leans heavily on Stoicism actually the middle Sto which is a little weird kind of Platonising Stoicism but I would say that primarily the idea comes originally out of the Stoa and then had really taken up in a more religious way in the Hermetic Corpus. That ring true to you, Angela?

AP: Yeah, I agree. And I would also recommend watching my video on Iamblicus and Plotinus, the Neoplatonism because I mentioned that concept as well, that it comes from Stoicism and yeah I think I agree with what you said Justin, it is a Stoic concept but the way it’s understood now by Magic practitioners it’s more the Hermetic development than the Stoic inception.

JS: There’s an entire episode that I want to make and I don’t know when I’m gonna make it. Now that I say it I’ll probably make it in a few weeks but just the degree to which Western Esotericism relies on Stoicism both for the idea of sympatheia but also the idea of esoteric hermeneutics that, you know, there’s this big thing in Plato about what to do with the myths that are outrageous. When the myths say outrageous things Plato just argued we should get rid of those parts or we should at least edit them and censor them so that people can’t see them. The Stoics had a totally different answer and their answer was no, we read them when they literally say something outrageous there must be a deeper meaning by which they say something more profound that isn’t obvious. And that shift toward esoteric hermeneutics. I don’t think there is Western Esotericism without that move and in many ways, Stoics pioneered that move and not Plato. Plato really wanted to get rid of them and it was the Stoics who introduced that idea that would eventually be taken up by other people. But in those two cases the idea of sympatheia and the idea of esoteric hermeneutics I think are indispensable for thinking about Western Esotericism. It may really come out of the Stoics, which I think as we typically think of so much coming out of the Neoplatonists but we don’t typically think of the Stoics because they’re materialists and rationalists or whatever. But they certainly have a huge impact on the development of Esotericism.

AP: Yeah, and also the idea of antipatheia which is close to that of sympatheia. So sympatheia is the attraction between things and you know the fact that there are things that are connected and antipatheia is the things that are repulsed from each other. So it’s the movement of attraction and repulsion that is in all things.

JS: Yeah I love the Stoics.

AP: Now they are they seem to be popular among…

JS: Fake Stoicism among like basic dudes.

AP: Among alpha males.

JS: Yeah, the alpha males are there. I’m how many of these Alpha, and Sigma males sitting in Romanian jails are experiencing strong ascent to cataleptic impressions – I’m like you’re just talking about like not feeling your feelings that’s not Stoicism. Stoicism is about strong ascent to cataleptic impressions which again it’s just like the Reddit version of Stoicism is. It’s really Chrysippus rolling in his grave.

All right, here we go. You knew it was coming. Angela, you get to field this question.

AP: Yay.

JS: Do you think that…

AP: I haven’t read it yet so I don’t know.

JS: Do you think pre-Wiccan initiatory witchcraft existed and continues to exist? It’s basically a version of the Margaret Murray thesis i.e. Chumbly’s Cultus Sabbati and the Horseman’s Word and Toadman though the latter may be baulk. I guess it would also include things like the Benedanti in Italy the Ginzburg introduced most of us to. I mean I’ll say at least from the historical perspective there’s no evidence of survivals from the Pagan world into what inquisitors called Witchcraft – maleficia specifically that term maleficia. And what little evidence we do have is mostly from people being tortured and so it’s highly unreliable. So I don’t know… that’s not to say there weren’t ritual practitioners or cunning people, certainly those existed but I don’t think there’s evidence of survivals in a strong sense and that those survivals were taken up and confused or conflated with what the inquisitors called maleficia.

AP: Yeah and I feel kind of bad that I’m always mentioning that in my videos but at least you know we’ll give more of a background because obviously, our answers here are kind of brief, so I have a video called Is Wicca the Oldest Religion? Where I talk about the thesis advanced by Margaret Murray in “The Witch Cult in Western Europe” and “The God of the Witches” which was foundational for Wicca and for other witchcraft traditions to claim that there was a continuous unbroken line of practices from the Pagan pre-Christian times that survived through the centuries and arrived to today. And that thesis has been largely disproven in the ‘70s. But even in her own time nobody believed her. Gardener was literally the only one who believed in Murray’s thesis. So in the Ethnographical Society, nobody believed her, no other scholar supported the theory. That’s why I always say that when since I talk so much about academic scholarship on my channel, I always say that science and academic knowledge doesn’t work in isolation – it works in collaboration. That’s why the peer-review process is so important. You know if you have that one study, a small-scale study it doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have other supporting evidence from other studies. So yeah it’s been largely disproven and so whether there were pre-Wicca initiatory witchcrafts? Well that’s possible but that they continued to the present day, that’s something that is extremely unlikely because we just don’t have historical evidence, you know, we just have speculations but we don’t have any historical evidence to support that claim. And as I always say, that doesn’t mean that it is any less important or any less valid because, you know, why the fact that something is older should validate it more. There are things that are very old and are not that valuable like patriarchy, for instance. You don’t say, oh that’s Millennia old so it means that it is valid and true and beneficial. So I think that contemporary Paganism and contemporary Witchcraft are extremely fascinating but obviously, these claims have no historical backing.

JS: Yeah I often find this discourse around ancestors and tradition very interesting considering I come from a tradition that’s all about ancestors but I’ve always said that tradition when it’s good it’s great, but when it’s not it’s just like peer pressure from dead people. And I think we all learn good lessons from our parents about giving in to peer pressure and why should I give in to peer pressure from dead people. And so again I think it’s interesting that even with cases like Ginzburg’s on the Benedanti like they actually were shape-shifting to go fight Witches. For whatever reason, that part gets lost in the story, that they thought of themselves as shape-shifting, not because they were engaging in witchcraft but because they were engaging and fighting it. And for whatever reason, it’s always struck me as ironic that people will use that example as an example of perhaps a survival of a kind of Shamanism or something that existed in the survival from the pre-Christian period. But insofar as it survived, it survived precisely in the interests of Christianity. It’s a peculiar example if it is one.

Teeny Dakini – this is a great one. What are Dr Puca’s thoughts on the Rites of Eleusis and the historical data showing women as the leaders of magical rites making a comeback through culture and books like the “Immortality Key?” Thank you.

JS: This is not a place where I’m terribly learned about the Rites of Eleusis as little as we know aside from Alcibiades getting drunk and telling everybody what they were that time. That was pretty funny. He got into a lot of trouble for that.

AP: Yeah, I don’t think they have an answer for that question, unfortunately. I have studied the rights of Eleusis but it was so long ago that I wouldn’t want to just give inaccurate information.

JS: yeah and I think also that we the thing with the Oracle at Delphi we can somewhat overstate the degree to which women were actually in control of that situation or the Vestal Virgins in Rome. They were powerful in a specific, very carefully curated sense.

AP: Yeah, I think that sometimes the role of women tends to be overestimated.

JS: They weren’t emancipated in any strong sense. I mean the girl that became the Oracle of Delphi didn’t even choose, she was just basically kidnapped by the administrators there. So yeah, I think that again this is a place where looking back to history to sort of get modern ideas of women’s emancipation or feminism, I don’t know that it pays great dividends. Because those are all examples of… and also the Rites of Eleusis were very polarizing in the ancient Greek world. It wasn’t like everybody was on board with them, lots of people had lots of negative things to say about them. That they were basically foreign, that they weren’t really Greek and that’s ditto with the cult of Dionysus and all that stuff. We think of them as prototypically part of a Greek religion but I think that the traditional cult, the relationship would have not been a copacetic one, in some ways.

AP: It makes me want to do a video on that.

JS: We always need a list of things we can collaborate on because I always love working with you. And if we can just be like hey, let’s do a thing on – I know the rites of Dionysus or Eleusis or whatever. You know Dan Attrell also knows a lot about that stuff he was a he was a classics undergrad. So he comes out of the classics world so he’s pretty strong on that stuff.

And Vocatus is a friend of both of our channels.

AP: Yeah, hi Mark.

JS: Yeah, thank you Mark for your always generous support of our work. Folks making sure, folks making it possible that we can do this kind of work of taking questions and making videos and this kind of stuff.

All right let me see if there are some other ones – a little bit of time left. Yeah, let me scroll up and get some folks who did not do SuperChats just because I really want to always make sure that I try to get as many – all the SuperChats because obviously, someone’s paying to have their question answered but also I really want to be able to get folks who may not be able to pay money to get a question answered. This is maybe one for you, Angela. This is more of a 20th-century question that I don’t have a lot of knowledge about:

Can you discuss the US cultural revolution of the early ‘70s as a force popularising Paganism and Witchcraft and the roots are the same?

I would extend that also not just the US culture but UK culture too.

AP% Yeah but I think when it comes to Paganism I think that actually, the US was particularly central in that respect because the birth of contemporary Paganism came from Britain and from Wicca but then during the ‘70s, as Astro was saying, it takes roots in specific types of movements in the gay and women’s liberation movements. And it kind of starts gathering connotations that are more feminist and more, in a way, also political in that I hear many American Pagans and American Witches even from that generation that talk about Witchcraft and I have an interview on the channel where we discussed that. They talk about Witchcraft as something that is inherently political and inherently rebellious and against the status quo. And I think that those are all the elements that Paganism acquired during the ‘70s in the US. And then you have the Dianic movement, for instance, and other Pagan movements that tend to be quite feminist or even the ones that are not openly feminist they are very open to LGBT+ communities and they have a very open-minded environmentalist approach to the practice and to the religion. So I’d say that all those elements, where the American ‘70s and the culture that was there, kind of reshaped a little bit Paganism and Wicca and then it went back to Europe and obviously in other countries as well in that reshaped form. So, for instance, in Italy, when Paganism arrived in Italy, which was in the ‘90s, or 2000s, it was more the American version than the British version. So I think that that helped a lot the popularisation of Paganism and Witchcraft too because it was seen as a force of rebellion against… so it wasn’t just about the religion it was also subversive and it was a way of fostering that sense of being subversive and it was a part of a larger counter culture, I would say. So yeah, definitely I think that the American ‘70s were quite important historically in shaping, reshaping Paganism giving different connotations and also it was, as you say, a popularising Force because it was seen as associated with certain counter-cultural ideals and that allowed for Wicca and Paganism to get more traction in the US because that Association was created.

JS% That’s a great answer, yeah, I don’t have anything to add there. Thank you, Angela.

Jim’s asking, can you recommend books as an introduction or survey of Stoicism?

I will say that this is what I was looking at just a second ago. That Tad Brennan’s “The Stoic Life” is absolutely the best book on Stoicism that’s out right now. Like all those popular books on Stoicism are just like bowdlerised versions of Stoicism. Brandon, if you want to learn about historical Stoicism and the arguments that they actually made and the arguments against them, for instance, famously the lazy argument that was made against Chrysippus. Tad Brennan really, I think, provides absolutely the best introduction to historical Stoicism that existed. It’s a fantastic book, it’s a little dense because he’s like he’s an analytic philosopher but it’s really good and not just reading the stoic fragments, I mean…

AP% I noted it down because now I want to read it. Because I studied the Stoics in Italian and ancient Greek, so it’s not for everything that I’m not familiar with the English versions.

JS% It’s really good I mean and it’s a pity because Stoicism, despite the fact that it was terribly influential, so little work survived. Chrysippus, Diogenes Laërtius as much as we can believe Diogenes Laërtius, he said that Chrysippus wrote 705 books – nothing survives like fragments. So it’s amazing you know aside from a little bit of Seneca and stuff like that we have nothing, Zeno wrote an entire book called “The Republic,” famously argued in defence of cannibalism and incest in that book and that was really scandalous at the time, scandalous now but it doesn’t survive. Virtually nothing of the middle Stoa survives. But anyway the brilliant book is, in my opinion, the best book in terms of reconstructing Stoicism as a systematic philosophy. But the analytic people are good at that kind of thing, God bless them. But that’d be my recommendation. The literature Stoa and Stoicism it’s not is not good, mostly, at least popular literature.

Thank you, Nick.

AP% Oh hi Nick, long time no see. He’s a patron but, yeah. I look forward to seeing you in the community. Thank you for the birthday wishes. I think that yours is coming up.

JS% Yeah my birthday is either the 9th or the 10th of February. It’s not clear exactly when. There’s some debate apparently about when I was born, it’s either the 9th or the 10^th. The federal government says I was born on the 10th so I’m gonna go with that. But yeah it’s funny, our birthdays are pretty close together. actually.

AP% Two Aquarians.

JS% That’s true, as much as we’re Aquarians. I guess we’re not close to the cusp because otherwise it probably moved on. We’re probably something else by now.

Do a lecture on the book of Allogenes.

Yes, I actually want to do a… there are two Gnosticism episodes that I really want to do soon. One is on the Platonising Sethian tradition of which Allogenes and Zostrianos are the two principal expressions, in fact, Zostrianos is the longest book recovered in Nag Hammadi. It’s also very fragmentary, sadly. But I want to do one on that and also I want to do an episode on what’s called the Jeuic form of Gnosticism represented by Pistis Sophia and the book of Jeu which doesn’t get any attention, no one talks about Pistis Sophia in the book of Jeu even though they represent a completely distinct form of Gnosticism that is not Sethian or whatever. So I want to work on both of those.

Folks, if you’re not also following Jason’s Channel which Jason you should put in the chat if you can, Jason’s been interviewing a bunch of top scholars on this kind of stuff and he’s going to have Dylan Burns, who I had the pleasure of meeting once in Amsterdam, who’s a scholar of Gnosticism. The excellent book “The Apocalypse of the Alien God” may be one of the best books on Gnosticism to come out recently. He’s going to have Dylan on his channel soon and I’m looking forward to that conversation. Now that’s an excellent book by the way. And also if you’re interested in Pistis Sophia and this Jeuic theory of Gnosticism there’s a great book called “Pistis Sophia and the Books of Jeu as Handbooks to Eternity” both really excellent books, by Brill though so sell your kids get it.

AP% Don’t talk badly about Brill.

JS% Why shouldn’t I talk badly about Brill?

AP% Who knows?

JS% Who knows? Would it be the case that you might be that you might have a conflict of interest in this conversation? Maybe?

(Laughter)

No, you should get your book published but anyway you can. I’m happy, I’m super happy for you. I won’t be able to afford it but I’ll look at it online.

AP% I’m sure you will find it.

JS% I’ll just admire it from their website.

All right, let’s get a couple more. Angela, you said you could only stay for about an hour so I’m not gonna keep you any longer than that.

This is an interesting idea.

Can we have some kind of convention after you build up this proto-community a bit more? I‘d pay out the nose, you have Brill money then, to have these kinds of conversations in person.

There’s money and there’s real money.

AP: Yeah it’s actually a great idea. We should have like you know some kind of conference type of event.

JS: That’d be great. I mean the only problem is that we’d all have to pick a location.

AP: Yeah that would be the most difficult thing.

JS: Yeah, I would I would actually argue we should do it maybe somewhere that’s come totally separate from all of us, like do it in Egypt.

AP: Nobody would come. I think that we should probably do it in the US just because I think that most of our audiences are from the US.

JS: It’s probably true. Yeah, we could do it. I mean you can go out to Salem or something, something like that.

AP: I like that. I’ve never been.

JS: So it’s like a giant tourist trap. I mean it’s cool because it’s Salem. But imagine. like I mean maybe if you’re a fan of kitsch you would like it because it’s like witch kitsch to the extreme. So you may like it. Definitely don’t go anywhere near there anytime near Halloween because it’s just completely impossible to even move.

Mark says he’ll photocopy the book for me, your book, Angela. Thank you, Mark.

AP: Thank you, Mark. At least you will buy it now.

JS: Now that they took down BOK.org or whatever. The damn FBI took it down. Now there’s no way I’m gonna get these Brill books.

AP: Yeah, the problem is Brill is kind of a leader in the publishing world of esoteric books, that’s the thing.

JS: Esoteric Monopoly, the esoteric Mafia, these people.

AP: Also Oxford University Press.

JS: Yeah Oxford has it, then I will say they’re a little more affordable. But look Woulter Hanegraaff’s recent book is still like over a hundred dollars and I think even with the 20% off code we got, it was still over a hundred dollars at ESSWE. It’s like they’re proud of their books. I guess they’ll come out and paperback and be a little cheaper but…

AP: I always find it funny how academic books are so expensive when if you’re an author and you publish with a non-academic publisher you will earn so much more.

JS: Yeah, well they’re I mean the print runs are so low. I mean they’re printing them basically for libraries to buy them they’re not printing for me to buy them and I mean institutional buying. I’ll give you an example of this; at the level of antiquarian books – when I go to, well I’ll be in New York at the end of April for the big New York Antiquarian Book Fair. If you’re there buying on the part of an institution, like Harvard or whatever, you’re gonna pay three times what a private person will pay. Because the idea is that they have these giant endowments that Harvard does, I think their endowment’s larger than the GDP of Guatemala. And so basically the Brill price is institutional buying and it’s just that the expectation is institutional libraries can spend a ton of money on these books. And they are printed really, really well. I mean they are made to last a long time but you’re talking about small print runs and institutional buying. They don’t have me in mind when they’re setting prices and making their book products. Still no excuse though, I would get them a big copying machine we would crowdfund them a copying machine just so they could just do the cheap paperback version so that I can read the damn things.

AP: But even e-books are super expensive. Even if you buy the e-book. So it can’t be the printing.

JS: Yeah, it’s definitely not just the printing. It’s the expectation that institutions are buying these books. They even wanted to charge me half or 75% of the price to even get a desk copy because I was actually teaching one of their books. I’m like desk copies are always free but not with Brill, the pirates of the esoteric book industry. I wonder if they know how much shade I threw at them. I bet they don’t care.

AP: Should I tell them?

JS: Yeah, please. I want you to do a supercut every time I throw shade at Brill, make it and send it to them and they will just tell me, yeah that’s great, now I’m going to cuddle with my pile of money.

AP: No. I don’t know because knowing people that work with Brill, you know, there are very nice people – so I feel like I should defend them.

JS: I’m sure that they’re nice. I mean it’s a Dutch firm, I love the Dutch. But again, I would just like I bet we could crowdfund them one of these print-on-demand machines and I could get the print-on-demand version of Angela’s book for like thirty dollars or something.

All right let’s get maybe one or two more questions and maybe Angela could call it a day.

All right let me see. Even with the slow mode on there are so many comments, you guys are amazing. I really appreciate all the thoughtful comments and

it’s all the things that you guys include. Let’s scroll back down. I’m not seeing any.

Don’t forget Brill does have, yes to Jason’s credit, they do have a lot of Open Access stuff.

That’s true, again, but it’s the preponderance of the issue and they just lure you in. It’s just like drug dealers, like here kids you want some drugs and you’re like yeah and like here because you want some Esotericism I’m gonna get you hooked now you have to spend $600 on some book by Geber or something. They’re just getting you hooked on Esotericism with the free stuff. I know that trick. I’ve seen those guys.

All right let’s see here Daniel enjoyed your collaboration on Platonism. JSTOR has an article on Neoplatonism in the poetry of William Blake by John E Brown that draws parallels between Blake and Plotinus. Worth checking out.

Yeah, definitely. Dan Attrell pointed this out and I think he’s right, and Dan Attrell would know that Blake was pretty close to the community around Thomas Taylor who obviously is one of the great Neoplatonists of modern times. And there’s definitely the case that Blake is being influenced by Neoplatonism as probably being introduced in that circle, the Cambridge Platonists and all those guys. So yeah, that’s a great point it’s a good catch, should check that article out. The Neoplatonism was a lot of fun, Angela. I thought that was a great …

AP: Yeah me too.

JS: Megatron.

AP: I enjoyed making it. I was a bit worried it wouldn’t come up well in terms of video quality because at the time I was in Italy. But I wanted to do it.

JS: It was great. I liked yours on Iamblicus and Plotinus. I think this is also a thing that people, people including maybe me, and maybe us, that we often also think of Neoplatonism as kind of a homogeneous thing. When in fact they really just they really disagree with one another or they would have if Plotinus were alive or when Iamblicus was around. That it’s an internally diverse school of thought and it’s a contemporary conception. They didn’t think of themselves as Neoplatonists, we think of them as Neoplatonists.

AP: That seems to always or almost always be the case. I mean you don’t give yourself a name. It’s always the other that gives you a name.

JS: Yeah and also these categories like Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, they often do just as much harm to understanding the text or the ideas as they help us. They can be helpful but they can also be a real limiting factor for really getting into a deep understanding of them.

Yeah, next time I come to the ESSWE conference I’m going to make a Brill shirt.

AP: What are you going to have on that?

JS: I don’t know. It’s gonna be some kind of like mild shade. But yeah, I should because they had a table there last time I’m sure they’ll have a table there this time. Maybe I should just sit down and talk to them, we can have some negotiations. But no I don’t think we could even negotiate because what do they say in Thucydides in the Melian debate that the strong do what they can and that the weak endure what they must. I don’t think I have the chops to be able to go, I can’t bring anything to the table.

So all right folks, this is a funny one.

I just watch to hear Justin’s jokes. I have no meaningful questions.

I don’t have any meaningful jokes.

(Laughter)

Maybe I’ll just literally steal their logo and put it on an Esoterica shirt and be like, yep this is what happens when you make your book so expensive – people just rip them off. Maybe I’ll do that and violate the copyright before their very eyes. I should be more kind. I’m glad that they published the books that they do but… Thank you, Jacqueline. I’m glad you like my jokes, my sense of humour and I appreciate it.

All right folks, well, Angela, thank you for taking some time to come hang out with me and field some questions. I’m really glad, again this is why it’s so wonderful to have you on because there are so many questions that you know and I just don’t have the expertise to field and it’s really great to have you on where you’re able to do that. I appreciate it.

AP: Yeah, I always love hanging out with you and with the people in the chat yeah.

JS: It’s a lot of fun. Well folks this is a busy week here at Esoterica. We had the long conversation with Dr Dzwiza. Today I’m going to hang out with my wonderful friend and colleague Angela Puca. Tomorrow I’ll be hanging out with Zevi to do our weekly Zohar study, which is a lot of fun if you’re interested in the foundational book of Kabbalah. It’s a lot of fun to study this book and so we get to win studying it and making our way through the Yanuka Section, so we’ll be doing that. And then Friday I have an episode on the Cathars coming out on the “Book of the Two Principles.”

AP: That’s a lot.

JS: It’s a busy week. So it’s full throttle with Esotericism this week.

Angela do you wanna you want to say anything about what you got coming out this week or do you want

to keep it secret?

AP: Yeah and now I can say it. I have a video on D&D Dungeons and Dragons coming up on Sunday. And it’s gonna be kind of a review of the academic studies on D&D both in terms of the psychology and religious elements in D&D. And yeah I’d be happy to see you guys on my channel, Angela Symposium. And subscribe and let me know that you come from this conversation in the comments on one of my videos.

JS: Yeah, definitely check out Angela if you’re not subscribed and also make sure to take a look also at Angela’s Patreon. We all got to support each other, support your local creative content, and educational content creator.

AP: Local.

JS: Yeah local. Hey, you’re in the room with me as far as I’m concerned.

AP: Yes.

JS: We’re both in a box, You know we’re very close to each other in this box. So definitely support the folks that you like their content.

My friend Russell is in the chat. Russell and I played Dungeons and Dragons way back in ancient days of what, middle school, early high school? We played Dungeons and Dragons a long time ago. I still have one of your character sheets, Russell.

AP: We need to do a collaboration on Dungeons and Dragons.

JS: Yeah we definitely do. One we need to do a collab on D&D. Two we should also just find someone who has a Twitch Channel, we should just like do…

I have a Twitch Channel but I don’t use it very much. I just stream on there since I have the option of streaming on numerous platforms. I created the Twitch Channel but I don’t really curate it that much.

JS: Yeah, well maybe we can just do it in Streamyard. Maybe we should schedule a Dungeons and Dragons game with me and you and anyone who wants to get involved. I think that would be hilarious

(Laughter)

So that’d be great. maybe we can plan that one day. It’d be fun. Maybe for my birthday, I’ll make people play Dungeons and Dragons with me.

AP: You will make me what? That sounds like…

JS: You get magic powers on your birthday. You can compel people to do things. At least that’s what my family believes.

Awesome, thank you Baabaa for the SuperSticker.

All right folks. Well, I’m gonna let Dr Puca go eat dinner or whatever they’re going to do. But again, thank you, Angela, for hanging out with me and for sharing some of your expertise with these fine folks in the chat.

AP: Thank you so much for having me on and I hope to see you guys on my channel too.

JS: Absolutely, well folks go check out Angela’s Symposium and I’ll see you maybe tomorrow for Zohar study, maybe.

AP: Maybe? I mean…

JS: I’ll be there and Zevi will be there, we’ll be there. Like I said hopefully other people will be there too, so maybe see folks tomorrow. Take it easy – have a good afternoon.

First streamed 3 Feb 2023