Hi folks,
As some more behind-the-scenes content, here are two new lectures from my class on Roman religion. One was recorded at home, the other in class (hence the difference in sound between the two lectures).
2023-03-03 17:01:21 +0000 UTC View Post
The Bacchic Conspiracy of 186 BC
By Titus Livius (or Livy) (59 BC – 17 AD)
Translated by Evan T. Sage, 1936
Text: https://archive.org/details/L313LivyHistoryOfRomaXI3839/page/n259/mode/2up?view=theater
2023-03-03 13:13:47 +0000 UTC View PostHi folks,
Here's another piece of behind-the-scenes content recorded from my Roman religion class. This one is a lecture on Roman temples specifically. I hope you all enjoy it!
2023-02-28 13:28:47 +0000 UTC View Post
The Hermetic excerpts from Iamblichus' De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum
Translated by Alexander Wilder, 1911
2023-02-16 23:25:05 +0000 UTC View Post
Julius Obsequens was a Late Antique tabulator of prodigies, omens, and portents officially recognized by the Roman state and its priests. Although he wrote sometime in the late 4th or early 5th centuries AD, his records covered the period from 249 BC to 12 BC, and the surviving portions of his work stretch from 190 BC to 11 BC. His own account was mainly derived from the Roman historian Livy’s partially extant writings, who himself began every year in his famous history Ab Urbe Condita ...
2023-02-07 16:01:26 +0000 UTC View Post
Believe it or not, Marcus Tullius Cicero's 'Somnium Scipionis' or 'The Dream of Scipio' is one of Western Esotericism's most foundational documents. Drawn from Book VI of Cicero's Republic, it describes the famous night journey and astral ascent of the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus, two years before he oversaw the sack of Carthage in 146 BC. Modeled on Plato's 'Myth of Er' and emulated during the Middle Ages by such visionary works as Dante's Divine Comedy, this ancient text provides us wit...
2023-01-28 13:01:37 +0000 UTC View PostHey folks,
Lately I've been teaching a class at a nearby university on Roman religion and today was a freezing rain day so I decided to deliver the lecture from home and post it online. Most of my material for this course is not recorded, but today's class was, so if you're interested in some behind-the-scenes content in the form of a brief overview of the Roman pantheon, here it is!
2023-01-19 18:45:28 +0000 UTC View Post
The Religion of Numa (Part 2/5): The Reorganization of Servius
Written by Jesse Benedict Carter (1906)
PDF available here: https://archive.org/details/religionofnumaot00cart/page/n5/mode/2up
2023-01-18 16:30:24 +0000 UTC View Post
The Religion of Numa (Part 1/5)
Written by Jesse Benedict Carter (1906)
2023-01-12 00:08:55 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey folks, sorry I haven't been as active this month, I got COVID earlier in the month immediately followed by a nasty (and ongoing) sinus infection, so my ability to record has been hampered temporarily. Nevertheless, I managed to put together this brief video containing 147 of the Delphic maxims in Ancient Greek as preserved by Stobaeus (the very same Stobaeus who preserved so many Hermetic fragments and other texts like the Sentences of Sextus). Hopefully it's a worthy addition to the arch...
2022-12-20 21:34:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Written by Thomas Taylor
Full text available here in PDF format: https://archive.org/details/miscellaniesinp01taylgoog/page/n38/mode/2up
This work is part of a larger collaboration on Platonic philosophy with:
- Esoterica
- Seekers of Unity
- Let's Talk Religion
- Angela's Symposium
- John Vervaeke
Full collaboration project will be ...
2022-12-07 11:46:09 +0000 UTC View Post
The Ars Notoria (or Notary Art) is a medieval grimoire of scholastic angel magic constituting a series of prayers and knowledge sigils (or 'notae') used for rapidly learning the seven liberal arts (the Trivium: grammar, logic, and rhetoric; the Quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy).
Translated from the Latin by Robert Turner (1657)
- Full text here: https://archi...
2022-11-23 16:09:29 +0000 UTC View Post
"On the Beautiful" by Plotinus (d. 270 AD)
Translated from Ancient Greek by Thomas Taylor
Read by Dan Attrell
This text is in the public domain, and can be found here with an accompanying introduction and notes by Taylor: https://archive.org/details/essayonbeautiful00plotrich/mode/1up?view=theater
2022-11-04 12:47:46 +0000 UTC View PostThere was a sale on so I just upgraded my video editing software. I also started using some live plug-ins for my recordings, so I've gotten better and more efficient with my time when doing voice work. Thanks everyone!
2022-11-03 15:23:56 +0000 UTC View Post
A reading of The Story of King Solomon and Ashmedai (or Asmodeus, the Prince of the Demons), written circa 1340, and based on the Munich Codex of the Babylonian Talmud (Gittin 68a-b).
"The Temple, while it was being built, was made of whole, draft stones. Yet, hammers and axes, or any instrument wrought of iron, was not to be heard in the Temple while it was being built." – (1 Kings 6:7)
2022-11-02 12:53:43 +0000 UTC View Post
An early medieval Historian's account of the Six Ages of the World.
(Introduction by R. Pearse, from www.tertulian.org, here abridged): "With St. Isidore of Seville (Isidorus Hispalensis, born ca. 560, d. 636 AD), the patristic age in the West comes to an end. He became Archbishop of Seville in 600-601. He was a very industrious author, and exercised an immense influence on medieval Europe. His works are mainly compilations from earlier authors, but of great value beca...
2022-10-28 17:35:33 +0000 UTC View Post
This ritual is drawn from a papyrus book from Egypt, composed circa 300 AD. The book contains the prescriptions of a Late Antique magician, and the following ritual full of divine names is drawn from Folio 33, line 2993 onwards. You can also find this ritual in Hans Dieter Betz's more up-to-date and accurate translation (PGM, p. 95-97), wherein he rightly splits the operation into two separate sections, a pagan root-cutting ritual beginning on the previous folio, and the exorcism prayer by th...
2022-10-20 17:35:16 +0000 UTC View Post
Translated by F. C. Babbitt (1928)
Read by Dan Attrell (2022)
On Images (or "On Statues") by Porphyry of Tyre [Audiobook]
Translated by Edwin Hamilton Gifford
Read by Dan Attrell
2022-10-13 22:40:59 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's a reading of a 17th century English translation of the Arbatel de magia veterum (English: Arbatel of the Magic of the Ancients), a Latin grimoire of Renaissance ceremonial magic.
2022-10-06 21:20:14 +0000 UTC View Post
To celebrate the beginning of the Halloween season, we turn our attention to a magical experiment: using one disembodied intelligence, the Midjourney AI, to generate the shapes familiar to another set of disembodied intelligences: the spirits of the seven planets drawn from the Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy (attributed to Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa).
Excerpts from https://archive.org/det...
2022-09-27 21:37:21 +0000 UTC View Post
The third in a series of three readings from our new translation of Marsilio Ficino's On the Christian Religion (De Christiana religione): "Chapter 15 - The Generation of the Son in Eternity and His Manifestation in Time."
"Marsilio Ficino: On the Christian Religion" (UTP, 2022) available for pre-order here: https://amzn.to/3POdTOQ
2022-09-23 15:47:59 +0000 UTC View Post
The second part in a series of three readings from our new translation of Marsilio Ficino's On the Christian Religion (De Christiana religione): "Chapter 14 - The Order of the Heavens, Angels, and Souls around the Trinity is like the Order of the Spheres around the Centre"
"Marsilio Ficino: On the Christian Religion" (UTP, 2022) available for pre-order here: https://amzn.to/3POdTOQ
2022-09-23 15:45:13 +0000 UTC View Post
The first in a series of three readings from our new translation of Marsilio Ficino's 1474 'On the Christian Religion' ('De Christiana religione'): "Chapter 13 - On the Generation of God's Son in Eternity."
"Marsilio Ficino: On the Christian Religion" (UTP, 2022) is available for pre-order here: https://amzn.to/3POdTOQ
See attachments for MP3 file
2022-09-23 15:06:37 +0000 UTC View Post
Henry Morley (1822-1894): On Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy and Reuchlin's Cabala
Excerpts drawn from p. 224ff in "The Philosophy of Natural Magic by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa", ed. L. W. de Laurence ed. [1913]
2022-09-17 01:41:18 +0000 UTC View Post
In collaboration with Dr. Justin Sledge from Esoterica, here's part 2/2 of a series covering the 1517 treatise of the German Humanist and Christian Cabalist Johannes Reuchlin, De arte cabalistica, which was one of the most important texts in the history of Western Esotericism leading up to the publication of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's De occulta philosophia libri tres and John Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica. Such a text was widely read and consulted by Elizabethan wiza...
2022-09-10 14:50:23 +0000 UTC View Post
In collaboration with Dr. Justin Sledge from @Esoterica - this is part 1/2 of a series covering the 1517 treatise of the German Humanist and Christian Cabalist Johannes Reuchlin, De arte cabalistica, which is one of the most important texts in the history of Western Esotericism leading up to the publication of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's De occulta philosophia libri tres.
2022-09-09 00:51:08 +0000 UTC View Post
This section contains the commentaries of Pletho and Michael Psellus explaining the meanings of the Chaldaick Oracles of Zoroaster. For the Oracles themselves, see part 1/2.
2022-08-31 13:57:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Edited and translated to English by Thomas Stanley (London, 1661)
Read by Dan Attrell
This section contains the introduction by Thomas Stanley, and the Oracles of Zoroaster themselves. For the commentaries of Pletho and Michael Psellus explaining the meanings of these oracles, see part 2/2.
For the original text (including facing page Greek and Latin translations), as well as an MP3 file, see attachments.
For more on Thomas Stanley, see 2022-08-31 13:00:33 +0000 UTC View Post
Part 3 of "The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries" by Thomas Taylor
This is one 18th/19th century Platonist's account of what the Orphic mysteries of Dionysus were all about.
2022-08-17 20:15:33 +0000 UTC View Post