Shows
The Hollow Path - Art & MagicEpisode 14 - Rosie Whinray - A Room of One's OwnThis episode of The Hollow Path features one of our absolute favourites, Rosie Whinray: artist, writer, magician, and Wizard of Wellington! We start off with a really fascinating discussion of what it means to be a Wizard, and how one might be called to such a path; of how such a vocation interacts with and depends on one's Place, one's Community, and a whole way of being in the world. The interwoven nature of a rigorous artistic practice with magic, and the necessity of giving a special quality of attention, of always being in that receptive state...2024-10-141h 35
The Hollow Path - Art & MagicEpisode 13 - Lee Morgan - Dreams from the Witch-HouseFor this episode we welcome Lee Morgan, one of my absolute favourite writers and teachers on Witchcraft. Decades of experience as a practitioner and writer have resulted in an amazing body of work. Books on Traditional Witchcraft such as A Deed Without a Name, Standing and Not Falling, and Sounds of Infinity have gained praise and interest worldwide, and have been central texts in my own practice and discovery of my path. A series of contemporary novels charting the path of a protagonist, Christopher Penrose, on his path from youth to experience, encountering the world of Witchcraft and the...2024-10-031h 01
The Hollow Path - Art & MagicEpisode 12 - Vic Hyland - The Direction is not the DestinationVic Hyland is a consummate artist: musician, songwriter, teacher, community-builder, spirit-medium, dowser, trickster and sage - a veritable Renaissance Man! I'm so pleased to have him on to talk about his new book, Music, Magic, and NLP, which is an incredible compendium of Vic's ideas, theories, techniques, and a thread of personal memoir in which he recounts his rich and strange life, and how it has brought him to where he is now, and the snapshot of his work that this text represents. It's a wild ride through the history of Western music, the behind-the-scenes workings of 20t...2023-09-261h 32
The Hollow Path - Art & MagicEpisode 11 - Darragh Mason - A Vocation of SpiritsIt's a genuine pleasure to welcome Darragh Mason to The Hollow Path in this episode. His podcast, Spirit Box, has become one of the most profound and thoughtful reflections on how our lives are intertwined with Spirit, and the Spirits, the Otherworld, that is out there. Darragh has a soft-spoken and wise manner mixed with an incisive and searching intelligence and curiosity, and he applies this to his in-depth interviews with experiencers and experts in the Realm of the Spirits in the broadest sense. One of the most fascinating aspects of all of this is how he e...2023-06-301h 31
The Hollow Path - Art & MagicEpisode 10 - Georgia van Raalte - Vectors of Initiation(from her online bio)"Dr Georgia van Raalte is an academic researcher whose work focuses on mystical and esoteric literature, as well as an esoteric theologian and an author of emic esoteric texts. She is also a poet and an artist as well as a practising occultist and a pagan Priestess. Her academic research, artistic practice, and magical work are all concerned with initiation: with mystical, literary, and artistic provocations of transcendence, and the personal, social, and cultural transformations that are catalysed thereby."Pretty awesome, huh...?Georgia has an amazing ability to integrate...2023-06-291h 10
The Hollow Path - Art & MagicEpisode 9 - Harriet Nwyfre Sams - Object LessonsIn this episode, I speak to Harriet Nwyfre Sams, who is an archaeologist, a therapist, a scholar, and a Druid! There's a very rich discussion here, particularly on the "beingness" of Objects ; how we may, from an Animist perspective, begin to question the very concept of an "inanimate" object, and rather to deal with the objects and materials things in our lives with respect, to be in relation with them rather than their "owner", or "user" only, and to acknowledge the idea that they have their own raison d'être, their own volition and purpose. Harriet's insights are fascinating, a...2023-06-051h 31
The Hollow Path - Art & MagicEpisode 8 - Thea Wirsching - The Stars Are RightToday's guest is Thea Wirsching, author and academic, Astrologer Extraordinaire and creator of the American Renaissance Tarot Deck! Thea works at the intersection between literary studies, magical and visionary working, and the weavings of Fate through the Stars and the Cards ... We had a wonderful discussion about the ins and outs of the Academy, and how things have changed and are changing with regard to the study of the Occult and the Esoteric. Much of her experience resonated with my own, as we made our way through the strictures of academic life and tried - with greater o...2023-05-221h 19
The Hollow Path - Art & MagicEpisode 7 - Amelia Hogan - The Song a Living ThingAmelia Hogan is an Irish-American singer and musician, someone who carries the culture of sean nós (Old Style) singing, encountering and interacting with this older way of being : her performances are deeply spiritual and enchanting, casting a spell of communion with the Song and enabling the audience to enter into this relationship for themselves. Amelia and I discuss this vital element of relationality and interpersonality, both as a way of approaching music and approaching magic. The conversation takes in the neurological experience of music, and its place within the arts, as well as the status of t...2023-05-201h 09
The Hollow Path - Art & MagicEpisode 6 - Melinda Reidinger - In The Groves of SymbolsOn the occasion of the release of her book The White Deer, we welcome Melinda Reidinger to the podcast. Melinda is a scholar, a translator, a professor, and a writer of that liminal intersection between Myth, Magic, Folklore, Anthropology, Art History, Eco-criticism, Sociology, and History. Basically, she has set up her camp right at the Crossroads where we most like to linger ... We explore together the genesis of the White Deer project, and what this Uncanny and Otherwordly creature has meant, and means, to us: a harbinger or a herald, of the Strange and the Wonderful. We...2023-04-221h 02
The Hollow Path - Art & MagicEpisode 5 - Passion PlayWhat do we do with these Christian stories, myths, traditions, festivals, we who are now Apostate? We who are now Atheist, or "Nons"? We who are now Pagan, Animist, who renounce all religion, and practice a spirituality that is no Organised Religion at all? How do we deal with the damage it has done? How do we salvage that which is worthwhile in it? How do we come to terms with it, and still draw on this part of our culture, of our literature and art? How do we tell our children about it? On reflection, on...2023-04-081h 02
The Hollow Path - Art & MagicEpisode 4 - Paddy Bushe - A Poetry of PlaceA few years ago now, I had the great good luck to correspond with and then meet Irish Poet Paddy Bushe, first around our shared interest in the figure of Amergin from the Lebor Gabala Erann, and then further, our research and study of questions of Poetry and Place. I asked Paddy to do an interview with me "for my podcast", which at the time never actually materialised. I am delighted now to share this interview with Paddy, who is a generous, insightful, and full of wit and wisdom person to share thoughts and observations with. ...2023-03-301h 22
The Hollow Path - Art & MagicEpisode 3 - History vs MythThis time with the Mecha-Builder students, who are among the best and brightest that France has to offer ... Engineering is at the apex of French social and intellectual aspirations; and so, Engineering students are taught not only their craft and trade, but also Culture, Art, History, Language. And as these are the best students, often they are more equipped, both socially and intellectually, to deal with Literature and Culture than those who choose to study those things, as those who choose to study those things can only become ... teachers. And teachers are very low down the social spectrum in Fra...2023-03-2430 min
The Hollow Path - Art & MagicEpisode 2 - Myth and the Insular ImaginaryAnother Fly-on-the-Wall Episode. This is the introductory lesson in a course I started teaching at the Invisible College in Paris, and the Institute of Superior Mechanisms in Saint Ouen, in the Plague Year, 2020. It was a Masters Seminar, entitled Myth, Magic, Fantasy, and Faery - On the Origins of the Insular Imaginary. The idea was to trace the History of the Imaginal Heritage of Ireland and Britain, from, as they say in France, "its beginnings to our days". When I told people who were not academics about this, they said "Oh cool, sign me up!" When I told p...2023-03-2445 min
The Hollow Path - Art & MagicEpisode 1 - We Set Forth Upon the Hollow PathThe Hollow CollectiveOur name is Legion, for we are many. We are the Hollow Ones; there is nothing to us but a false surface, of pasteboard and plaster. We are simulacra. We are puppets. Porcelain dolls, wax dolls, corn dollies, Russian dolls, nested one inside the Other. We are empty. We are echoing. Within us is a heart-shaped hole. We are spaces waiting to be filled.We are tired of waiting. We have tried to make our voices heard. We have cried in the Wilderness. We have spoken our names into the...2023-02-2033 min
The Hollow Path - Art & MagicThe Beginning - Being Sixteen in 1926This was my very last day.They didn't know it yet, but I did.My last day as a secondary school teacher. I knew I would walk out that door and not come back. This was a brilliant group of bicultural Anglo-French kids, and we were just getting to know each other. They had a reputation for being "troublesome", but I knew they just need the right kind of attention.We were studying Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, a wonderful, troublesome book. And we were studying it as ex-pats in Paris. I k...2023-02-171h 07