Dr. Gregory Shaw | Iamblichus, Soul Work & Western Tantra

Conversation with Gregory Shaw on Iamblichus, theurgy, and their resonance with yoga, Tantra, shamanism, and contemporary practice. Shaw presents theurgy as an embodied technology of divine participation where ritual, mantra, imagination, and possession open the soul to Divine Mind, in contrast with magical will-to-power. He weaves biography, scholarship, and personal experience to show theurgy as a living Western parallel to Tantra and as a path toward co-creating reality with the divine.

• Distinction between magic that bends forces to personal will and theurgy that renders the practitioner transparent to Divine Mind.
• Shaw’s discovery of Iamblichus through ER Dodds and his realization that On the Mysteries describes the same energetic shifts he experienced in mantra and Tibetan chanting.
• Comparison between Iamblichus’s “meaningless” divine names and Tantric bīja mantras that carry intrinsic power.
• Presentation of theurgy as a world-affirming path that embraces body, emotion, and matter rather than seeking escape from incarnation.
• Deep dive into imagination, possession, and discernment, with bridges to shamanism, Santo Daime, and Jungian active imagination.
• Exploration of enlightenment as photagogia, “induction of light,” and of humans as sense organs through which the cosmos becomes conscious of itself.

• Theurgic ritual aligns the practitioner with Divine Mind; power flows through a receptive vessel instead of being accumulated by an egoic magician.
• Embodied practice (chant, gesture, ritual) activates states that purely rational philosophy struggles to access or describe.
• Divine names and mantras function as autonomous energetic currents; they work through the practitioner rather than arising from personal thought.
• Tantra and Iamblichean theurgy share a world-embracing vision where spiritual realization unfolds inside material, emotional, and relational life.
• Imagination opens a gateway to the divine realm when images gain autonomy and guide consciousness, which requires sharp discernment and humility.
• The deepest aim of theurgy is participation in cosmic creativity: becoming a conscious co-creator aligned with the generative movement of reality.

Shaw situates Iamblichus as a pivotal figure in late antiquity who fuses Platonic metaphysics, Chaldean solar ritual, and Pythagorean mathematics into a path of embodied divinization. Through his own experience of mantra practice, Shaw reads On the Mysteries as a precise phenomenology of energy, sound, and altered states rather than a collection of superstitions. This creates a strong bridge between Western Neoplatonism and South Asian Tantra.

The interview repeatedly returns to the contrast between ascensional paths that emphasize withdrawal from the world and theurgic or Tantric paths that invite full engagement with matter, emotion, and relationship. For Shaw, theurgy embraces fragmentation, passion, and daily life as the field where divine light enters. The Orphic myth of Dionysus torn apart becomes a map of human experience: wholeness reveals itself through an honest relationship with dispersion and incompleteness. Imagination in this view is not fantasy in the trivial sense; it is the organ through which divine images and powers emerge, possess, and guide the soul when approached with discipline and discernment.

The conversation frames theurgy as a Western lineage of embodied mysticism that resonates deeply with Tantra, shamanism, and Jungian depth psychology. Iamblichus appears as a teacher of a world-affirming path where mantra, ritual, and imagination allow Divine Mind to shine through a human life. Shaw’s testimony grounds this vision in lived practice and suggests that the true measure of such work lies in humble participation in reality, simple presence, and a felt connection to a meaning larger than personal narratives.

00:00:00 - 00:01:18
the way I put it in my book was instead of the theorist taking on the shape of the Gods which is what happens in theery uh in the magical tradition the gods take the shape of the magician the magician in a sense is sort of more of an egocentric sort of has an egocentric agenda where as a particular individual he or she wants to dominate the whole wants to dominate the world therein whereas in theery individual tries to become transparent to the Divine mind that permeates the world so that it can express itself


00:00:39 - 00:02:04
through that individual who then becomes kind of a face of the all instead of dominating over the all it's not there's no dominance in theery where you you do see a kind of dominance uh played out in magical circles [Music] so I'm interested to hear when you first encountered this figure yamus well I think the very first time I ever read his name um was reading Madame blavatsky's Isis unveiled but it didn't mean anything to me he she just listed him as one of the uh platonists who kept


00:01:30 - 00:02:57
alive uh what you call the ancient wisdom and that was it um and it didn't really sink in in any way that got traction with me until years later um specifically when I was in graduate school at UC Santa Barbara in religious studies um that's when it really began to the amplius really began to uh speak to me and connect with me um it was it was came out of a class that I had on religions in the Roman Empire and do you want me to explain that how that unfolded for me or because I'd be happy to yeah sure because I


00:02:14 - 00:03:38
think even in religious studies you don't always run into um you know people like yamus uh so yeah okay sure story my professor was really engaging and um stimulating Guy and um he invited me to read um amicus's on the Mysteries which is where he talks about theery and he also invited me to read erer Do's critique of theori at the end of um the Greeks and the irrational a very famous article that he had that dods had written I think in the late 40s um dods is a f fascinating person uh


00:02:55 - 00:04:24
in many regards but he was very very critical of theery and he thought thought that what amus was doing I think he characterized it as uh superstitious drivings um and and misguided and taking platonism down the path of superstition and irrationality um and the idea that um you could be possessed by the gods or that something could come in that was greater or more than your rational aware Wess was just unacceptable to dos and he thought it was very unpl onic so he was full of criticism for am amus and on the


00:03:40 - 00:05:17
Mysteries and theor but I read on on the Mysteries and um when I read it I realized that amus was describing uh experiences that I had had myself um mostly through uh performing chanting ritual uh actions um I'd experienced things that he described exactly in in his uh Treatise on the Mysteries I thought my God this guy really gets it I didn't know anybody especially in the western tradition was uh able to describe uh things that I had experienced myself using Easter techniques I was involved in uh yoga and


00:04:28 - 00:05:47
particularly I was doing um Tibetan chance and um he was he was capable of describing exactly what happened when I did those practices and so I thought I don't think dods gets it I don't think dods experienced uh for himself uh so that he could see that what amamus was describing and on the Mysteries was a very accurate and insightful reading on a psychological level of what was going on in these rituals so I wrote a paper um criticizing ER dods for my professor and that kind of got the ball rolling so


00:05:07 - 00:06:29
that's really was my introduction tolias uh so er dods I'm guessing that he was a Christian Theologian some kind ER dods I wouldn't call him a Christian Theologian he was a a classicist rationalist Victorian rationalist um very fascinating person well worth uh reading brilliant and by classicist I mean he was an expert in Greek and if it wasn't for ER dos we wouldn't know about neoplatonism in the English-speaking world today he translated process's elements of theology which uh was process's kind of


00:05:50 - 00:07:08
a description of how the one unfolds into the many and into this world and almost a perfect sort of um like a Bach fug just unfold fing geometrically from the one down into our world and dods uh translated it uh had incredibly good notes to go along with it and commentary so he was fascinated with the platonist I would not necessarily call him a Christian um nothing I've really seen about dod's life uh where where he espouses uh connection with Christianity was mostly he was a classicist


00:06:30 - 00:07:57
and a rationalist and uh he happened to indulge himself in in the reading of the neoplatonists which to other classicist seemed like an Indulgence that's why I Ed the word um I think Gilbert Murray who was dod's companion at Oxford referred to dod's work on the neop plonis as his own Sideshow but um you know because they didn't think much of neop platonism yeah I guess I I I associate that kind of condescension with um the kind of Christian attitude um toward any kind of magical practice or um


00:07:13 - 00:08:34
polytheism well the interesting thing is that the condescension um is much is is as strong towards uh Christianity but uh particularly towards Catholicism which is seen as a kind of an embarrassment to the rationalists because Catholics believe that something magical happens in the mass and that's just not rational and so um it's the condescension I think is much more from the rationalist perspective than even the Christian one the Christians in a way even back to Augustine recognized that the that this


00:07:53 - 00:09:03
world that amus was talking about was real and that they he believed that there were spirits and diamons he just thought they were bad right um and so uh the condescension is more like oh it's just nothing but it's Superstition it's that's more of a contemporary rational sort of critique and dods is a reflection yeah I I guess I should have specified um kind of assuming that we were talking about um Protestants you know maybe is we are dods from England yeah he's um he's English uh he's


00:08:29 - 00:09:59
actually he's Irish um and but as far as I know he had no connection with the church um he hung out with uh uh William Butler Yates uh the great poet Mystic and the Mystic and he was he was a member of the society for psychical research as well okay dods he opened he was very open-minded except he tended to be a materialist so that's where it was closed down he he didn't want to be suckered into believing in what was very popular at his in his day spiritualist circles where somebody would be possessed by a


00:09:13 - 00:10:44
departed spirit and then say things and dods didn't believe that and so he wanted to sort of disabuse his contemporaries of that kind of superstitious thinking and I think in some ways his critique of the amus was sort of also a critique of his spiritualists of his own day yeah okay and um so who was yamus when did he live what was the scene that he uh he was yeah yamus was um a descendant of a kind of prestigious Syrian family of priests and Kings um he came from I think a pretty well-endowed family financially because


00:09:58 - 00:11:25
he had a Villas he lived in in Syria in apamea um he's we what we know about his early life is kind of speculation but he was introduced to the platonic tradition he studied pythagoreanism uh in detail you could say more that he was a Pythagorean as much as he was a platonist um he supposedly studied with poery for a while uh who uh was the person who wrote that letter to ano that uh stimulated or resulted in the on the Mysteries which is a response to that letter um so he was introduced to


00:10:43 - 00:12:08
platonism and pythagoreanism uh very immersed in it he studied with um a mathematician named anatolius as well he went back to Syria apamea and he opened up his own platonic School there um what does that mean platonic school it was just some guy who knows platonism and he invited people to study with him and so as we we would call it a school I don't know what they would call it but he was attracting students and um he also believed in if believed in is the right way to describe it he also was


00:11:24 - 00:13:05
impressed by believed in the power of um caldian or Les uh these recipes that were received by priests in apamea in a temple there that were recitations or formulas for uniting with the gods and amamus believed that these were legitimate and powerful and real and he saw them as practicing theology um so he was an interesting kind of platonist who immersed himself in these caldian uh oracles and and explained them in fact he wrote uh several books um interpreting them but we they didn't survive but he was a


00:12:15 - 00:13:36
platonist was influenced by um caldian ritual magic you could say he wouldn't have called it magic because that takes on a certain connotation for him that wasn't positive and and so the caldian gods are we talking about the planets like the seven calan planets that's a good question and I would say my my I'm not an expert in in the caldian planets but I think that the primary um source for the caldian ritual is the sun and it was a very much of a solar kind of practice where they United


00:12:56 - 00:14:21
with the Sun but yes the planets were also seen as deities gods they were also associated with the platonic planetary Gods so amus United the the revelations of the calans with the uh information from platoo in the tus and other writings so he kind of fused together this kind of caldan ritual tradition with platonic philosophy and that's kind of what defines his own unique form of platon the I'm not sure if you mentioned it but I believe yamus lived in the 4th Century ad yeah he was born in


00:13:39 - 00:15:03
242 died in around 325 probably wrote um his book on the mysteries in around 305 or so so that's early 4th Century yes and um it was before Christianity had become the uh religion of the Empire which before become an imperial religion it was still just be growing so it wasn't a real threat yet um it didn't become a threat to uh thear just until later in the fourth and then in the fifth century where it became literally illegal to even practice the Tre so and on the Mysteries uh what kind of rituals and


00:14:21 - 00:15:34
experiences is he describing there that uh corresponded so much with what you were experiencing through your Yoga practices okay that's a good question and um the the experience that I had which was before I already amus was when I was doing chanting of certain mantras uh Tibetan mantras the experience I had was that I wasn't chanting them anymore the experience I felt was that they were being chanted through me that they had a kind of power in and of themselves that I was just entering into their current


00:14:58 - 00:16:20
you could say writing that energy and it was clearly that I wasn't the agent the Mantra was the agent and I was the recipient when I read what ambla said about the names of the Gods in these secret um uh ASA anoma which means meaningless sounds that the theist would chant um he said they have a power in and of themselves and that when you chant them um in effect they do the work and they recognize themselves through the chanting itself you you're you don't direct it it's not a product of your own


00:15:39 - 00:16:53
thinking in fact our our thinking has some value but it not in terms of making those connections yeah so um well I mean I have a background in yoga as well and I've done a lot of chanting and studied Sanskrit um but what he's talking about is what we call beer mantras these uh untranslatable uh syllables yes yeah that contain a kind of energy or power that when you chant them it uh it unlocks that power but it's not like this means that no it's not a matter of a meaning thing and py said well what do


00:16:16 - 00:17:30
these things mean and the amus say it's not about what they mean it's not a matter of how we think them it we have to do them what they do not what they mean yeah exactly yeah um I I emphasized that a great deal in this last in this last book I recently published called helenic Tantra where I try to make I try to help us understand what theor is or was for am amus by comparing it to um South Asian Tantra and by using the models that you just referred to the Bea mantras for example it's a much better


00:16:53 - 00:18:07
way of understanding what amas meant by the ASA anoma which means the meaningless sounds um he said they may be meaningless to us but they're not meaningless to the gods they're full of meaning to in the in the god world but not in our conceptual World um so it's exactly that and that's why I wanted to use Tantra as a way to invite people to understand what amus was doing right and I mean that works because uh Tantra has um well it continues to be practiced so we have something to refer to whereas


00:17:30 - 00:18:50
the the Greek Mysteries have been all but lost to us like we don't have um transcriptions of these mantras necessarily or how to chant them you know exactly um Tantra is still a living tradition and the ambl theology is not a living tradition I mean there's uh evidence of of it in texts and they're pretty good text to look at but a text is different from having a tantric master say like a muktananda or somebody else who who is a kind of AA you know a man or woman with Supernatural or supernormal powers and


00:18:11 - 00:19:29
we don't believe that anybody could have supernormal powers because we're materialists in the west but in the circles of the amas they did and again it's similar to what goes on in the yoga Traditions um you know there were reports of levitation telepathy the um even Socrates had supernormal powers so cities cities exactly yeah and even if the um the practitioner doesn't have um all these cities themselves or claim to uh they may be part of an unbroken tradition so these mantras the


00:18:49 - 00:20:06
practices rituals being passed down Orly for Generations right exactly and um um that's that was the great value of Tantra for me is why it's why I wanted to make that comparison in fact the title of the book um helenic Tantra was actually suggested to me as a kind of an insult uh from somebody who wrote to me and said what you're doing with the amus is nothing but helenic Tantra and he meant it in a disparaging way and I thought right on dude you know that's exactly what it is I thought it was a


00:19:28 - 00:20:27
very uh I was glad he he characterized it though I like the Ring of it it is H Little T threat because it could help people get a better sense of what they were doing um but yeah that I mean that also reminds me of that kind of um brahmanical condescension toward the ha yogis you know like even when Viva Cananda came over to Chicago and did his big introduction um to the west of his tradition um he talk about like those dirty haot yogis where he was much more interested in Raja yoga you know this


00:19:58 - 00:21:12
Roy path except his teacher ramach Krishna was a messy Tantra tantric D he was wild I mean he was colie worshipper or Channel even for Kali absolutely he wasn't anything like what vivando was promoting Yeah well yeah well that's really interesting and I was wondering actually why you chose um um Tantra really because like Tantra is so misunderstood here in the west as well so in a way you have to kind of like explain uh Tantra to the people before you say and then this um theor was a lot like


00:20:35 - 00:21:47
Tantra but like let's first dispel some of the um confusion around what Tantra is so maybe get into that a little bit would you uh well I I tried to do that in this um in this book I don't claim to be an expert on Tantra that requires incredible amount of study and knowledge of Sanskrit and there's no one can be an expert on it I mean it's too it's too broad and vast and complicated but I read the experts as well as I could as much as I could and I tried to desel the notion that Tantra is is is nothing but


00:21:10 - 00:22:35
a kind of um uh glorification of our sexuality or something like that it doesn't disparage our sexuality but but it's more of the emphasis I wanted to make was that it's an embodied form of spiritual path it's a spirituality that embrace Braes the body completely and so did uh theor and it's in that regard that I think that it's useful uh for us um and I think that that Tantra is not a dualist kind of spirituality it it's not trying to escape your body or escape the world but bring Divine experience into


00:21:53 - 00:23:13
your body and into the world so that it's different from let say s yoga where you're trying to get it R get away from all of the material world the prti all you know and and say no to everything and Tantra says yes to everything but in the right way so I I try to characterize Tantra as being worldly affirming as a way as a path towards becoming enlightened and that's what theology was uh and the parallel I found between the tantric uh um push against the say shankaras kind of yoga which was


00:22:34 - 00:23:59
sort of an austere internalized you know getting away from the physical um was similar to what I think am amus was doing with respect to the previous expression of his tradition seen in platinus and promoted by poery which was more of an interiorizing uh discipline and the amplius thought no you have to the only way you can reach the Divine is by going into the world and engaging um material things including uh materially um stimulated emotions as well is very much trying to work with the world that


00:23:16 - 00:24:31
we're in instead of getting away from it it's not an escape it's a transformation yeah because some of those other um early Greek Traditions were about ascending through the chain of being um the soul returning to the Noose to the one so very much like some of the yogic Traditions which are um ascensionist let's say ascensionist exactly yeah and uh a as a writer named go gor for forstein who writes about the asadian oh is he yeah he's he's a very good he's a good writer and um he talks


00:23:53 - 00:25:33
about the ascensional tradition uh which Tantra is not it's um bringing it down and um you know there's a part of me that became suspicious because I practiced yoga for several years uh myself before I discovered amas um reflecting on my own experience of being an essential Yogi um living in a very auster kind of life um I realized on reflection that it had a lot of value for me I'm not going to say that it was not worth doing but it was limited it was um it was to some degree Escapist and it was felt less connected


00:24:44 - 00:26:13
to other people and to the world and um I I thought that that wasn't the best path for me and uh maybe it is for some people but it wasn't for me and thought that e amus um exemplified how to embrace the body and embrace the world and that was useful for me too personally yeah I mean what I kind of came to in terms of the uh you know the upholding of non-attachment disidentification with the body with the material realm um that being maybe a an important step in terms of not being completely identified with personality


00:25:28 - 00:26:57
with the body so having that initial break but then re-entering the world with that um kind of perspective or attitude so it can kind of lighten your experience a bit um but uh you know so you're not so caught up in in suffering and dooka and all dramas of life exactly it's it's it's a funny thing U learning how to withdraw but not withdraw completely or forever or forever right right right um and that um ultimately um learning how to be gentle with our own attachments and not condemn uh the


00:26:12 - 00:27:22
fact that we're attached or that were angry or you know just let it be I think the stoics actually had a good handle on some of that stuff I think was Marcus aelia said it's not a problem to be angry that's just a natural reaction the problem is when you start to you know justify it or think about it and build up a world around it just let it flow through you you know it's just like being in the world um The Wind Blows By yeah let it go yeah uh well great philosopher um John lien Johnny Rotten


00:26:47 - 00:28:01
said anger is an energy you know and he repeats that in a song like a mantra and well he screams it uh but it's pretty great oh is that did you say Johnny Rotten yeah oh okay I know who he is sure of course Public Image Limited but uh yeah right right right yeah yeah there's an insight there yeah it's an energy and what does energy want to do it wants to move it wants to move through yeah right yeah um okay uh another thing that I found interesting um because when you know I hear people talk about


00:27:24 - 00:28:44
neoplatonism uh and you know how it kind of um re merges in the Renaissance with people like marcelio ficino uh it's often associated with magic and in the book you you say that Yus drew a distinction between what he was doing with theurgy and what other people might be doing with magic or sorcery right yeah um it seems like magic theor seems like magic and in fact when theor was um I guess you could say wiped out or RI pressed by by the institutional Church um The Academy was closed in the early


00:28:05 - 00:29:33
uh 6th Century um it went underground and it was preserved by well in a hidden way in certain Christian circles and then it filtered into certain Muslim circles but it also filtered into what we might call a magical tradition where people uh would invoke planetary powers or spirits of different parts of the natural world just the same way that the just would and so some of the practices of theori were preserved in the magical tradition I think the distinction that amamus wants to make and does make very clearly is


00:28:49 - 00:30:22
that he condemns um magicians so you the goes uh Sorcerers it might be a way of describing it because of the intentions of of what they do compared to what theorists do and it basically boils down to this um when a person performs theery uh he or she uh becomes receptive in a sense empty or passive so as to be able to receive the energies of the of the gods that flow through them and if they do that y says through the theurgical ritual they take on the shape of the Gods okay so the theorist takes


00:29:36 - 00:31:03
on the shape of the Gods by becoming empty you don't see a lot of that kind of um practice evidenced in the magical papy or literature of magicians they they usually include spells that a magician is supposed to perform in order to acquire power power beyond human capacity and it's not so much about being receptive as it is about acquiring power um maybe there is within the magicial magical tradition techniques for how to receive this power that that are very much like what the just do but


00:30:20 - 00:31:42
it seems as if the emphasis is on well the way I put it in my book was instead of um um the theor taking on the shape of the Gods which is what happens in theor uh in the magical tradition the gods take the shape of the magician the magician in a sense is sort of more of an egocentric sort of has an egocentric agenda where as a particular individual he or she wants to dominate the whole wants to dominate the world therein whereas in theery the individual tries to become transparent to the Divine mind


00:31:02 - 00:32:11
that permeates the world so that it can express itself through that individual who then becomes kind of a face of the all instead of dominating over the all it's not there's no dominance in theery where you you do see a kind of dominance uh played out in magical circles hey I want to take a moment to speak with you about this channel currently only 11% of viewers are subscribed to the channel I think those numbers are terrible so if you're enjoying this content and you want to help out the Channel please take a


00:31:36 - 00:32:45
moment right now to like this video And subscribe and if you really want to help out the channel you can become a member of the how in the wilderness patreon which will give you access to early release of full adree episodes plus access to the archive of the first 100 episodes of this podcast it would really help me out and allow me to keep creating content like the interview that you're watching right now okay thanks so much now back to the interview right or you know in um some magical Traditions


00:32:10 - 00:33:29
it's about enlisting the Gods uh in order to enact your will upon the world yes exactly and and there's nothing about that in theorey it's not about enacting your will it's really becoming receptive to the Divine will and and um that that's kind of um tricky um it's hard to understand that in a way It's Tricky all right I mean I that's core to um paneles yoga actually is uh the reason why you want to stop the um the fluctuations of the mind is so that the Divine self is revealed um because when


00:32:50 - 00:34:07
the mind's churning uh you you can't realize that you don't see it you cannot be um an expression of that yes exactly and it's interesting that patang doesn't encourage people to acquire cities um because they can be distracting it's totally understandable because as soon as power comes through um because our habitual state is to be self-absorbed and self-serving we want to say that's my power when it's not my power but as soon as it happens we think it's my power I think this happens to


00:33:27 - 00:34:44
artist s um musicians for example um nothing more exhilarating than being in front of a group of people and singing and having having something happen through you and then when the crowd starts to think that it's all you um you can even start to think yeah it's all me but the wise person somehow realizes no I'm just a channel for this stuff but it's not always easy to do right yeah the person identifies with the genius rather than seeing as the genius is uh uh working through them yes exactly


00:34:07 - 00:35:33
that's a nice way to put it they they think well and a little in a little kind of um kind of uh classical schooling could help people to not fall into that trap right because genius uh comes from the Greek idea of the diamon which was seen as a a tutelary being or a kind of Demi semi Divine Demi God that was there to kind of help you um what Follow Your Destiny right exactly and uh your Dion is not you but in a way it's a deeper you um and that's the um a colleague of mine uh Charles uh Stang wrote a book


00:34:50 - 00:36:12
called um our divine double which is all about how human beings have tried to engage this Divine twin or Dion or um Divine Spirit that's that's connected I'm speaking to Charles next week actually oh Charles Stang yeah we're gonna talk about the Dion so that's cool it's fantastic that Divine double is it's a brilliant uh and and very very well uh researched piece of work yeah you should have a good conversation with Charles St he's good um okay so yeah that's the distinction between the and


00:35:31 - 00:36:42
sorcery great explanation um there's also something there I mean as you're talking about this you know uh the similarities between the G and Tantra I also see a lot of similarity with um with Shamanism and you know I've written about the connections I see between yoga and particularly South American Shamanism um the use of chanting you know chanting these uh these phomes or these untranslatable sounds right uh um the use of sound to affect a transformation in the person's energetic


00:36:07 - 00:37:26
body and all this kind of thing um and there's also you know the idea that you can uh use your your ritual your magical powers for healing and and uh you know kind of creative helpful knowledge or you can use them for to enact your will upon others to to you know to make money to harm your foes and and that kind of thing so the idea of the the bruo or the the sorcerer sorcerer right black magician yeah is there as well you know um in the last part of this book um uh I'd never been a a real follower of um


00:36:46 - 00:38:06
aliser Crowley um but many people are and I'm sure you're familiar with him but I I delved into looking at what he did in working with uh the subtle body and trying to wake up the body of Light which is what he did a practice of um Carl Yung did that too but in a different kind of way but at one point um aliser Crowley said somebody who achieves this kind of power can um transform another human being through their through their will being directed they can also kill somebody he said well okay that that


00:37:27 - 00:38:33
doesn't sound to theurgic I mean that's that's kind of like moving into what you were calling the dark side but of course there is that uh capacity or potential for people to misdirect this um it's a wholly different type of practice though than what Yus was up to and so like when Yas Yus or I don't know like he probably didn't use the word Enlightenment um but what was the the goal of it like when we say Enlightenment what would he talking about because there's whole different


00:38:00 - 00:39:31
ideas about what enlightenment is right it's not far from we use the word Enlightenment but amus used fogia U which means um leading in the light was literally a practice of of drawing in Divine Light because they imagined that the Divinity was light so if we draw in the light and and it um takes possession of our uh imagination and our subtle body um that's what he would consider Enlightenment being truly filled with light um and and the specific uh phrase he had for it was fotag goia the induction of light um I


00:38:45 - 00:40:04
met a very interesting uh woman uh at a conference uh uh recently um uh junko uh Teresa ukaria uh who wrote a book on the history of photography and she sees photography as the capturing of light and she connects it directly with the neoplatonic practice of photog goia uh which is pretty fascinating um there's some really interesting people out there doing some really interesting work um okay so this uh this induction of light or yeah uh to what end uh to what purpose did he have some idea about it


00:39:25 - 00:40:53
being like to relieve personal suffering did have an idea that it would make a better world for all the big question yeah what's the point of any of this right that specific practice or any all you know instead of having a pat answer for you like as if I okay here's the answer to that question I'd rather not know the answer and and like take it in and ask myself again um what what initially um led me into this work and led me to amas and why did I get um so turned on by this work H how


00:40:10 - 00:41:33
did it work for me and I think ultimately we our culture and we individually need to feel as if we're connected to a kind of meaning that's bigger than just personal and bigger than just um my life but that somehow speaks to existence itself that I want to feel connected to the reason for our existence why we're here um that you know that question that a child says why am I here Mommy Mommy doesn't know you know because there's no rational answer to that question but I think we


00:40:51 - 00:42:22
all have that yearning to feel connected to a meaningful engagement with reality and I think this kind of practice photo goia is just a technique to open us up to our participation in a deeper way into our role in being co-creators of the world I think that that for me um ultimately theery allows human beings to become co-creators of reality I think ficino was U sensitive to that but certainly amus was um and well so I guess that would be my answer to the question what's what's the you know why


00:41:36 - 00:42:47
why do photoa why do any of this um to feel that you're hooked up to the a meaningful life in the most powerful way possible for you yeah yeah um but because the amus was writing about this and teaching it um I have to assume that at some point he you you know he stated the reason why you one would practice theurgy um you know what the outcome might be like with Vino it was clearly a therapy for him you know people were suffering with different ailments physical mental whatever and he would


00:42:13 - 00:43:26
prescribe certain practices and and uh you know stones and colors and music to relieve the suffering right to to generate health I think that um when he appas is distinguishing between theor and Magic he says that what theorist the goal of theor I mean he describes it in different ways sometimes metaphorically saying we're trying to get to the Divine fire we're the athletes of the Divine fire but when he gets to the Practical it's like what what is it we're doing our focus is not on trivial things


00:42:50 - 00:43:56
or like you know winning a horse race or getting more money it's on connecting us with the Divine mind the mind that's creating and has created the world that we're in and that's the focus that's the purpose of theery is a kind of um and you could say that that's the ultimate healing is connecting us with the Divine mind which we all have the capacity to connect with so he does state it pretty explicitly um it's in the later chapters of his on the Mysteries what he talks


00:43:23 - 00:44:46
about well you know he says we're not we're not doing trivial things here purpose of the is is um to seek the good and and the Divine mind the Noose is the word that they use for yeah and I guess to be an agent of the Divine mind here on Earth exactly thereby um propagating more goodness more Beauty more truth right exactly that yeah which is basically imitating what the demiurge itself is described as doing in the tus of Plato well he says that uh the demiurge did not um did not want to hold


00:44:04 - 00:45:23
the kind of the the beauty uh for himself for itself but wanted to expand it as much as possible in a kind of a generative kind of energy and that's what ultimately the theist would want to do is to become an embodied demiurge to be a demiurge in a human form mortal as well I think that's that's one of the things that I think wait a minute that's sounding awfully Christian huh that's sounding awfully Christian well Christians have some good things going for them you know um uh well I think except the fact that


00:44:44 - 00:45:59
only one man was allowed to be both human and divine that's the problem with Christianity is that they don't allow that kind of divine experience to be extended Beyond Jesus Christ who lived 2,000 years ago and also controlled and managed by the institutional Church etc etc they made it into a business you could say um and excluded everybody else but allowed people to tap into it and get some of the power it unfortunate how that worked out and I think that Emerson's Divinity School address uh was


00:45:21 - 00:46:39
one of the best um essays you'll ever want to read about his critique of Christianity and his admiration for Jesus but him also saying it's in every one of us just because Emerson was a platonist he knew that yeah just as you're saying it's not just one person every human soul yeah yeah and you have to well I don't know I guess I imagine that Jesus would have wanted that for everyone to realize that they are both human and divine yeah if he didn't he should have I agree I'd like to think you know if he


00:46:03 - 00:47:12
was a really special guy like a realized being that that's really what he wanted because that's what they all want you know when you get to it exactly I think that the deeper people go into their own connection with divinity the more generous their spirit is because that's what I see is that's my model for Divinity well yeah that's an aspect of the Divine Right is uh um generosity with no end exactly yeah yeah yeah yeah I I think he would have been that way so we can agree on that well let's imagine


00:46:37 - 00:47:55
him in that way anyway I I imagine I'll get along better with him if uh that's how I imagine him yeah um okay so another topic that I'm like always really interested in is the role of imagination and uh kind of um restoring imagination to its uh I don't know it's um its true meaning or its true position in terms of um not just being something that we've made up uh okay kind of denigration of imagination but you do talk about the the importance of imagination in the practice of theurgy which I was just


00:47:16 - 00:48:35
like rooting for like yes that's it imagination is everything for uh amus in theery um that um we're connected with with the divine through our imagination when it becomes possessed and inspired by the gods when phot goia happens when the Divine Light comes in and our imagination is possessed by these currents of divinity then we are LED into a deeper identity uh and it it's it's Fantasia but it's Fantasia that's possessed by by the Divine it's Thea Fantasia it's


00:47:56 - 00:49:23
divine fantasy not human um fantasy I think colorage made a distinction between um just the imagination we make up you know which is just trivial imagination and sort of a Divine imagination which is colorage says it's participating in the creation of the world um so the Romantic Poets understood the power of imagination along the lines that you're thinking about I think and um yeah imagination is is incredibly important in in this work um and we tend to We tend to trivialize it because


00:48:40 - 00:50:06
we're materialists and because our our habit is a materialist habit we think that imagination is just something I make up right but in fact it's not it's it can be more than that um where do our dreams come but it can also be that right and it can also be something I just make up and it can also be how would I put it you can be given visualizations to practice and then at that point you're making it up but if you if you're doing it in the right way those visualizations can start to take a life uh on a life of


00:49:22 - 00:50:40
their own and they become autonomous at which point it's no longer your imagination it's the imagination taking you and and I think that's that's the that's what I think um Yung was talking about with active imagination yeah it's when the images take on an autonomy they they have a certain kind of um identity that is as real as your own yeah uh I just found it like really interesting that yamus was making that distinction between um the the kind of self-generated vision let's say uh or


00:50:01 - 00:51:06
you know images and the one that is received so generated by something outside of oneself uh that they're both valid but you need to have some discernment around um you know the things that I'm generating and what's being received from somewhere else and I think like that's a key to understanding how active imagination Works in practice um what I found in the shamanic Journey circles that I is I have to give people a kind of education around imagination and and teach them that sometimes you have to


00:50:34 - 00:52:02
use your imagination to kind of get things rolling but then at some point something else will take over and you'll be more of a kind of unconscious participant in uh the imaginal unfolding so that we do some we do some of it on our side but it serves as a bridge to sort of Trigger or release a kind of um or to open to yes yeah to to a living imagination um at a conference that Charles Stang actually and I were both at not too long ago we had um a a participant give us a um a presentation about um


00:51:17 - 00:52:34
possessions that he as a shamanic priest of a santaria community um helps to facilitate and he he said you have to be very careful to discern when somebody is quote unquote possessed by an orisha you know a Divine Spirit um How Deeply they're possessed by the spirit What Spirit it is is it possible that the person's just um on an ego trip and is Faking it you know there's all kinds of levels of discernment that need to take place in these people that do these practices and I think that kind


00:51:55 - 00:53:14
of uh discipline and and understanding and intelligence is really important particularly in these fields that uh are dismissed often as woo woo you know one has to be really really Discerning in these quote unquote woo woo experiences and these people know what they're doing and and somebody at the conference said have you ever been possessed and he said yes I have you and he said it with a kind of humility but um people really have experiences like this they're real and um and what's beautiful is that amus


00:52:35 - 00:53:43
wrote about this in detail he says you have to discern what what God it is that's coming in and How Deeply you're possessed by the God is it just this level is it deeper or is it a complete possession um and some people don't understand that am amus was talking about real experiences um I've read some Scholars say oh he was just talking about rituals in ink in other words he was just making it up it was just you know his intellectual exercise of making up this no these people were really


00:53:10 - 00:54:33
having these experiences but until you've witnessed it or maybe done it yourself well experienced it firsthand yeah yeah because even witnessing it you could kind of um you know you could write that off as uh as you someone just acting out well yeah but you know I think that um the more witnessing you experience the more you can tell the authenticity or non authenticity you work with people in shamanic circles and and they have experiences where they become I gu connected with Spirits or powers or


00:53:51 - 00:55:02
something that's greater than them is that something that happens in your groups well in these one's really it's people uh kind of um entering into imagination but I have uh you know I've been in iasa groups where okay uh actually mediumship is practiced intentionally you know kind of an offshoot of the CIA traditions and things like that umand in the in Brazil and uh yeah discernment was talked about all the time because there was always the question like is this me acting out under the influence of this drug or is


00:54:26 - 00:55:34
this actually a real spirit and so it's kind of an an internal uh investigation but also you would have Elders who were pretty good at spotting when someone was just kind of making it up or acting out to get attention or to just right you know be filled with that kind of inflation where I'm special and you know and you know what I think that you know my initial kind of feeling about that is to be critical of people like that but we're all like that you know just happens because of our habitual need for


00:54:59 - 00:56:15
attention and so to feel powerful yeah it might just kick in and it's not like you're a bad person it's just a habit that comes through and if there's an elder there or somebody really U perceptive they can help you let go of it and then you can allows you to go to a deeper place where the possession becomes real and then there's less glamour to it it's more humble I would think a um this centeria priest um Jose Rando he's just emanated a s of humility um there was nothing


00:55:37 - 00:56:51
pretentious in the least about him yeah well in haian Voodoo um they call it being ridden by the spirit which being ridden good way to think about it or talk about it that's right that's what they do say and I think that's how he understands it as well I was going to mention that you you said that you have some experience with IAA and and um there's a fellow um I think he's um in the Netherlands wrote a book um about iasa and one of his chapters is um Santo daim are you familiar with Santo D is yeah I was


00:56:15 - 00:57:32
involved with that group for a while okay he says Santo daim as a theurgic religion yeah totally and he has an entire chapter explaining Santo DME using because his explanation of theor oh gosh do you if I find the title of that book I'll send it to you so find chapter it was very good he knew what he was talking about he was very good yeah yeah oh definitely I can see that for sure um okay I'm just going over my list here uh yeah we've already covered quite a lot uh that I wanted to talk about um


00:56:54 - 00:58:20
now of course I'm a big fan of James Hillman he's probably my favorite um U psychological writer um you bring him up in the book um yeah both the critique of Hillman's view of yamus and theery uh his misunderstanding of it as you put it but also as uh where he was taking kind of yung's ideas um into this uh you know polytheistic psychological imaginal practice uh talk about him like how did he come up in your work uh I've been reading Hilman for years and um I think he's one of the Geniuses of our age I


00:57:37 - 00:58:47
just think he's brilliant and and and deep and he doesn't have a Dogma you know it's not like oh now I under you know this is Hillman's View and then you know lock it down no i' say like maybe his Dogma is no Dogma yeah um but there's two two places where I've written about Hilman and I'm not sure I did it much in this book but but I might have a little there's a few mentions yeah his original take on on theor was that he was influenced by ER dods and and er dod's dismissal of theor as


00:58:11 - 00:59:44
trying to manipulate the gods and um dods was wrong and so since Hilman followed dods in that regard he was wrong but because Hilman is such a genius and so instinctively always doing the right thing he came up with insights that work perfectly well with am ambl and Theology and um I I used Hilman to help us understand theoy more um it's a an article I wrote about DreamWork um with Hilman uh and U so I admire Hilman a lot I think that he he um how you in fact I I really turned to Helman near the end of the


00:58:57 - 01:00:31
book um where he talks about dionisis as this kind of embodied manifestation of of the Divine uh and was it that um I think it's a it's a quotation from Yung that I used to uh to start that um chapter on the Divine Powers imprisoned in bodies are nothing other than dionisis dispersed in matter that's Carl Y which is a very neoplatonic thing to say um because the neoplatonists were immersed in a kind of orphic uh mythological reflection about how to understand who we are using the myth of Orpheus being


00:59:45 - 01:00:59
torn apart and shredded and dispersed throughout the Universe and that we're all parts of the body of dionisis trying to wake up to our own dionesium divinity but being torn apart is part of what we are so that we want to AC accept being torn apart and being kind of messed up as part of how we recover our wholeness and so there's a paradox there in order to recover our wholeness we have to accept our being torn apart and and that's where Hillman's good he he's able to work both


01:00:21 - 01:01:42
both sides of the of the U divide I think really creatively I I find Hilman taught me a lot he was a very interesting guy I went to a seminar once that he ran um he did not suffer Falls either no he did not yeah um and I just want to mention that like when um when we're talking about wholeness uh like from Hillman's perspective it doesn't mean reunifying all the parts into One Singular like unit it's it's maintaining the diversity or you know like he would say the polytheism of the psyche uh and and the


01:01:02 - 01:01:59
the wholeness is well I don't know you there's a diversity in the in the wholeness something it's it's always a hidden wholeness I guess I would say and it's found in our in the activity right because we don't know where the edges are we don't know what's being left out right and and our our tendency is to want to Define what the wholeness is and then crawl into it be safe it's not what it's about it's about losing that and and accepting the activity of losing


01:01:31 - 01:02:55
that which is the dionan myth of being torn apart by the Titans and being dispersed into the world that's who we are and that's what helman's so good he says yeah we have to accept this parness this separation this fragmentation and by I think by accepting the activity of being fragmented that's our wholeness but it's not a a thing wholeness it's an activity that allows us to feel whole by accepting our being separated and and maybe also accepting the incompleteness of our integration


01:02:12 - 01:03:30
individuation wholeness right yeah yeah not pret yeah not kind of um not not living in a fantasy that we've kind of reached some end point where we know all the dark corners and um you know and and I think that what I like about this and what Hilman is good at is that it's only by realizing that you you're incomplete that you have any hope of being complete it's only by accepting your incompleteness that that you start to feel what completeness is it's hidden in the incompleteness I think I mean but it's


01:02:51 - 01:04:03
never explicit it's always hidden yeah that's my feeling for it it's hard to talk about it yeah um but I like to wrestle with it you know these paradoxes um because they put me in a place of uh kind of um what would you say like ambivalence or ambiguity like the not knowing Place yeah and I feel like when I'm there that's probably the right place to be like I'm reminded of like what Socrates apparently said that that you know um true wisdom is is knowing that you don't know everything or yeah


01:03:26 - 01:04:48
no knowing nothing um uh and my ignorant my wisdom is is nothing you know there's nothing to my wisdom um he did say that it was one thing he did know which I I kind of find to be um telling he said yeah the only thing I know is TA erotica things that have to do with arrows or desire and I think that's who we are at our deepest level is that deep deep need for finding our our our completeness or if our completeness is uh our our sharing in creating the world um I think ultimately that's what we


01:04:08 - 01:05:33
want and isn't that what um gets us moving on a path uh like Tantra or theg is the desire to be like more in meshed with the world like when I think about Tantra you know an ambiguous kind of word because it can mean both like a weaving loom like the act of weaving itself uh you know it can it's later come to mean like a a book or a technique and so the way I kind of um hold it in my mind is that Tantra is a a technique that allows you to weave yourself back into the world and to participate in the weaving of the


01:04:51 - 01:06:16
world something like that I yeah I like that too and and it's the that that connects you to the world but also connecting you to where the world is coming from that you know the platonist would call it the noetic source of things the the Divine realities the the Divine forms or the Pythagorean decad you know that it pours into the world and somehow we find a way to weave it into our reality that's the that's Tantra yeah yeah it's really um it's a pleasure to to talk to you about this kind of stuff


01:05:34 - 01:06:43
I feel like um so this is the kind of you you do this kind of guided um visualizations with with groups that you work with or shamanic work or yeah well the way I really have come to look at it is it's um it's taking like what Yung called active imagination and utilizing shamanic techniques to facilitate that yeah uh for me that was always like a missing piece of um this yian practice of imagination it's like well you know that there are like all of these techniques that you can use to to make that happen


01:06:08 - 01:07:27
and to to make sure that there's less you involved in the creation of it right so you become more open receptive yes so whether that's drumming or or um you know different plants that you can embibe or breath practices or mantra um whatever you can do to kind of quiet the mind to empty yourself out um allows for this experience of the active or I think of it more as like um uh what would I say interactive imagination because active still feels like you know I'm being active I'm generating this experience whereas I


01:06:49 - 01:08:01
interactive is like I'm doing that co-creation move okay whatever it is that helps us not think that I'm in control and doing it myself but rather that I'm engaging something and that's taking me to a different place and I'm participating I'm in a way being ridden you could say using the the centeria kind of language um it is a kind of being ridden by these uh images yeah we being taken for a ride yeah for sure yeah in the red book I mean my God what he went through in there


01:07:24 - 01:08:44
was it's a hell of a Journey right yeah yeah yeah kind of against his will being taken on this wild Journey yeah yeah but saying yes to what was against his will that's the Paradox again there yeah right I think Yung was com an amazing genius for our time I think it was kidge right who also used the term uh poetic Faith which like um setting aside your your disbelief in order to enter into an experience and to act as if like young love to use that term like act as if right act as if it's


01:08:04 - 01:09:27
real um and something real will actually happen you know yeah exactly and and even that guy who I always had the most high amount of distaste for aliser Crowley said the same thing don't dismiss it as just its only imagination Just Go With It let let it happen um and um yeah you're I think your focus on imagination is the key is is probably right on target um I'm curious you as someone who's okay well one of the things I was going to mention earlier is when we talk about these Scholars who are kind of


01:08:46 - 01:09:54
misinterpreting some of these old texts you know for me um you know going to someone like um Mia iotti who wrote a lot about yoga and Shamanism two uh areas where I have a lot of experience being as a practitioner you know and then trying to understand my experience going to the scholars and I quickly realized well he doesn't actually get it because he's never practiced yoga and he's never experienced Shamanism and so he has all these ideas about um as like kind of ascensionist ideas of shamanism


01:09:20 - 01:10:32
the shaman is always trying to go up the tree of life to the Heavenly realm it's like not in my experience um you know so anyway but you come to your scholarship I think uh through your curiosity as a practitioner which um I feel an affinity for and I find more kind of trustworthy in terms of like taking what you write as uh being maybe closer to getting the the feel for what yamus was doing right um so I'm just curious like after going on this whole journey and getting really into somebody like yamas like devoting


01:09:56 - 01:11:13
so much of your life to his work um how does it show up in your life are there like little rituals that you do that are kind of theurgic in their way or are you like a more kind of overt practitioner of theurgy like how does it um manifest in your life you know not in a very satisfying way I would have to say that I don't feel like oh you know I've I I I would have to say that the work that I've done on amas I think it's really good I mean I feel good about it I feel like it comes from a a place of my own


01:10:35 - 01:12:09
experience that and I I don't think I distorted what he was doing and I tried to make it accessible on not just an intellectual level but on a Feeling level um what's the net result for me personally for that maybe it's too soon to say um I I I just I've just recently retired from teaching uh at the college I teach at so um I'm sort of Shifting how I look at myself and I've started to feel just recently an appreciation for existing through my human eyes and ears and body that


01:11:29 - 01:12:45
just existing is just kind of miraculous gift and I'm trying to appreciate that more instead of thinking oh I have to achieve this I have to make that argument with this I have to go to that conference I have to you know you carry on a sort of a a professional identity that's what a lot of Scholars do me included and you get your attention gets so wrapped up in your professional identity that you sometimes forget that you're just you're just existence in a human form and able to hear and have children


01:12:07 - 01:13:26
and and you know go buy food at the grocery store and cook dinner and um and I'm just trying to appreciate the Simplicity of life more now um I still love to write uh essays and and and to try to you know critique something that I'm interested in um and there's some people that that have sort of uh they don't like what I've done or they're criticizing it for this reason or that reason and instead of sort of being reactive to that trying to say sure uh why not have that point of view I mean


01:12:45 - 01:13:59
it's just I think criticism um and and living in the mind and doing it kind of like a little a lot of intellectual work is the point what's really important is how we live day-to- day and probably the work that you're doing with people in those shamanic circles is far more important than some article I think that I mean it has value sure to have an article out there or a book but making a real difference in people's lives is much more valuable I think and it might not be a it might


01:13:23 - 01:14:38
just be the way you talk to a person at the store you know quiet ways um anyway I'm trying to appreciate the small things in life more now yeah uh I love hearing that from you um at your stage of Life uh you know it's you know living with this question like what are we really doing here um you know often the answer comes back to me it's like to be a sensual being that is able to appreciate this Creation in so many uh ways you know through the smells through what we see through what we feel


01:14:01 - 01:15:11
what we taste and so maybe I'm just here is like a God's sense organ to enjoy and appreciate this creation that's what I was talking about I'm God's sense organ that's a nice feeling to have yeah and it takes a lot of the pressure off right it takes a lot of the pressure off because um you don't really have to do anything you're just there as as you're the universe being aware of itself through your body yeah yeah well this has been a really lovely talk um I've I've enjoyed it I've


01:14:36 - 01:15:37
enjoyed it too Brian yeah um you know it's great I mean this whole world of people doing podcasts um it's a whole new kind of world and I think you you did a good job of of engaging me I felt like you wanted to get out what was authentic and I felt like you did thank you yeah thank you you and thanks for showing up and not just giving us a lecture I appreciate when people are willing to engage in a in a dialogue and you know like kind of co-creating this conversation together yeah showing up


01:15:07 - 01:16:05
and giving a lecture is a way of not showing up right yeah I can't and unfortunately academics are the worst at that let me tell you everything I know and have memorized yeah you've heard on every other podcast I've been on yeah right anyway thanks Brian take care all right take care bye bye [Music]