Having laid out fairy-magic as a genre, and discussing some of its characteristics, we are delighted to speak with Daniel Harms about the people and social circumstances behind the texts and practices of fairy-magic.

Did you know that there is a whole practical and occult-philosophic corpus dealing with the summoning and controlling of faeries? Samuel Gillis Hogan tells us about his research in the archives of early-modern British faerie-magic.

Say no more.

We dive deeper into the evidence for Jewish reincarnation around the time of the Temple's destruction with Sami Yli-Karjanmaa, who has done the work. Philo of Alexandria and Josephus come under the metempsychotoscope.

Moving on from the theories of the Pythagoreans, Platonists, and related folks, we turn ion this episode to the question of Jewish reincarnation in antiquity. There doesn't seem to be any. And yet ....

Having reviewed the roots of reincarnationism in the west, we move forward in time, looking at the Hellenistic and especially the imperial man eras. We then focus in on the inheritors of the Pythagorean/Platonic legacy, the Platonists.

In Part II we discuss the reincarnational mythoi and logoi found in Plato's dialogues. These are, in many important ways, the foundational documents of western reincarnationism.

In Part I of a thematic series, we begin to explore the long secret history of reincarnation in the west. in this episode we consider our earliest evidence, which clusters around two resonant names: Pythagoras and Orpheus.

We penetrate further into the dream-labyrinth of the Hypnerotomachia with James Russell, exploring the book's many early readers. These include a pope, a playwright, and an alchemist. Codes, rebuses, polyvalent images, esoteric architecture, and more meet in the melting-pot of Humanism.

We introduce one of the strangest and most nigglingly-intriguing esoteric books of the Italian Renaissance, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. James O'Neill is our guide through nested dream-landscapes, erotic initiations, and weirdly-specific garden design.

What if the scientific study of religions, a.k.a. Comparative Religions, History of Religions, and so forth – the academic discipline wherein the academic study of western esotericism largely finds its home – was founded by, well, western esotericists? In this interview we examine the history of the history of religions with two historians of religions and find the Theosophical Society right there at the beginning.

Music was seen as a crucial tool for the elevation and transformation of the human soul in ancient esoteric philosophy from Pythagoras to Olympiodorus, and beyond into the western esoteric traditions of later eras. We discuss the theory and practice of anagogic music in the ancient Pythagorean/Platonist tradition with Sebastián Moro Tornese.

In the first of a short series of synoptic episodes looking at the esoteric in ancient Platonism as a whole, we approach the scale of virtues, the ladder by which the Platonist sage, following in the footsteps of Socrates, was to practice ascent to likeness with the gods, while still engaging in daily life.

We explore the intersections of fine art practice and magic with artistic practitioner Judith Noble. Tricksterish subversion as standard.

We discuss the work of Ioane Petritsi (eleventh to twelfth centuries), a Georgian intellectual whose translation of, and commentary on, the Elements of Theology of Proclus is a historical anomaly in a number of ways. It turns out that everything in Proclus' metaphysics – even the henads – could and did make it through into a Christian work in twelfth-century Georgia. Come for the surprising story of a radical Georgian intellectual, stay for the Georgian origins of the medieval Christian saint, the Buddha.

We discuss the long, convoluted, and often tendentious reception of Proclus and Proclean ideas in the eastern Roman empire. From late-antique debates about the nature of being and participation, through medieval reappropriations of philosophy, through to the radical debates of Plethon and Scholarios in the final days of the empire, Proclus emerges as a curiously-persistent figure of many guises.

We discuss the Occult in Modernist drama with Sørina Higgins. Yeats, Waite, Williams, Crowley, and a cast of supporting characters appear on the stage. The line between ceremonial magic and dramatic performance gets a thorough rinsing.

We discuss the translation, adaptation, and evolution of Proclus' Elements of Theology into and through the Arabic and Latin thought-worlds with Peter Adamson. Come for the monotheist Proclus who is Aristotle, stay for the digression on Plethon.

We speak with Alireza Doostdar on his field-research exploring alternative forms of spirituality in Iran. Come for the new-age exorcisms, stay for the the true spiritual significance of The Exorcist.

In our second A House with Many Rooms interview, we discuss the intersections between AI and magic with machine learning engineer Karin Valis. Come for the divination, ensouled statues, golems, homonculi, and alphanumeric cosmology, stay for the techno-magical intervention at the end.