Episode 36: The Feast of Saint Irenaeus
Merry Feast of Saint Irenaeus, dear Golgothites! In another holyday to close out the month, it is a delight to get together once more and welcome you to a lovely little chat about heresy, the divine spark, and the containers and connections we cultivate and celebrate to be able to cast that sacred illumination before us upon the path ever ahead.
So pull up a pew and please to be enjoying discussion of Saint Irenaeus, from whose writings against heresy have been derived glimpses of Gnostic cults, as well as a catchy little interpretation of the four beasts of Ezekiel’s vision as characterizing the four Evangelists of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Our demon of the season is the enigmatic Tharithimas, notably absent from most well-known manuscripts of the Verum family, but who yet appears in those of Fontanelle in his ascriptions of these devils to the Exus of Quimbanda. We are thus graced with a little more time to talk about the counterparted spirit Exu Kaminaloa as well as reflect on the influences and histories of the cults of Quimbanda more broadly.
Our blessed Herb of the episode is the prodigious Hazel, tree of so much lore and so many wands, batons, staves, switches, and Mosaical rods, as well as maidens’ garlands and tanning loops. Mercurial indeed – with both a capital M and without – we celebrate the many virtues and traditions associated with this noble tree: from its distinctive leaves to its nutting ways and much more.
Furthering such mercuriality, our Mineral of the hour is the quicksilver called Mercury itself, the living liquid metal of Neolithic cinnabar, Maya tombs, and countless laboratories and technological developments, which leads us into the underworld of colonial histories of enslavement and empire.
Returning to our saint’s legacy, our Magic up for discussion this time is Gnosis: from consideration of the historical variety of people-called-Gnostics, to their spiritual practices, and on to the term’s importance in Chaos Magic, and the twists and turns of that tricky but important topic of “Unconfirmed Personal Gnosis” as we seek some clarity trying to eff the ineffable and take a look at what “confirmation” can look like, both in community and in personal praxis.
Moving from mercurial mediums to the means of building our containers of worldly wisdom, our geomantic Figure in this episode is Carcer and its Saturnine Earthy mysteries of deadlines, discipline, and what we do with the limited time afforded by mortality. This conversation is ably assisted as always by reference to what can be said of its morphologically-similar Odu of Ifa and Diloggun, Odi Meji.
Continuing this encircling of the world and both its problems and promises, our Arcanum is The World: from its earliest depictions as the renewed geocentric Paradise of Revelation’s City of God, to the Assumption of the vesica’d Virgin and the shift in her interpretation as the very Anima Mundi; as well as saluting our goodly humoural pals, the four cherubic heralds of the Evangelists.
Finally, our beloved Dead Magician is Charubel, the Welsh curative medium and author of the text of plant spiritism that would come to be called the Grimoire Sympathia, which undoubtedly influences the green-craft and sigil-staves of modern herbariums (herbaria?) of Traditional Witchcraft, and which offers us profoundly grounded means to connect and heal with the flora and mineralia of the world as allies and not merely ingredients.
It is always a joy to get together and co-enthuse about our intended topics as well as our long walks on short tangents together. We hope you enjoy this – our latest two-headed ramble-child of a cast pod of co-stoked excitement and intrigued interest – as much as we did committing it to digital ear-ink. And so from us and ours, to you and yours, merry Feast of St Irenaeus! May all your revelations be held in the ever-widening circle of a broadened horizon and recommitted resolve to walk towards what best lights your soul. So there.
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