S2 #99 / The Cunning Farmer with Todd Elliott

What happens when you take ceremonial magic out of the ritual room and into the fields? This week I sat down once again with Todd Elliott, author of the newly released The Cunning Farmer: Agrarian Magical Practices, Mythology, and Folklore, to explore the rich intersection of esoteric tradition and working the land.Todd shares his journey from urban life to farming in Kentucky, where over nearly three decades he has woven together Western ceremonial magic, astrology, animism, and shamanic practice into a living, breathing spiritual path rooted in the soil. Drawing on the cunning folk of 17th-century Britain, the folklore collected by James Frazer and Alexander Carmichael, and the philosophical traditions of Hermeticism and Neoplatonism, Todd has developed a uniquely eclectic approach to land-based magic that is both historically grounded and deeply personal.Together we dig into how astrology and magic actually work, the role of spirits and consciousness in the natural world, and why restoring a sense of the sacred to agriculture matters more than ever. Todd also shares stories of ancient Adena mounds and Paleo-Indian arrowheads found on his own land, and reflects on what it means to work with the spirits of a place with respect and reverence.Whether you're a seasoned practitioner or simply curious about the magical traditions woven into our relationship with nature, this is a conversation you won't want to miss.Show notes:The Cunning Farmer is available now.https://thecunningfarmer.substack.comKeep in touch?https://linktr.ee/darraghmason

In this episode of Spirit Box, I sit down with Dr. Lenni George to talk about her new book, The Rites of Hekate: From the Dirt to the Divine. Released in December and praised by Peter Mark Adams, it’s a rare work that stands firmly in both scholarship and lived devotional practice without compromising either.We explore how the book came into being, and the very personal experiences that shaped it. Lenni shares the story of creating her moon and poison gardens — six white-flowering beds dedicated to lunar rites, a Strophalos wheel set into the soil, and a dark moon garden of baneful plants. What began as a strange inner shove became something tangible, culminating in the discovery of an old key unearthed from the earth — a potent symbol for a goddess of thresholds.Our conversation moves into a powerful regression hypnotherapy session in which Lenni encountered herself as a deaf beggar woman in medieval Europe. That experience took on deeper meaning as she was writing about Hekate’s hordes — the gathering of the lost and the forgotten. Later, while teaching in Greece, she saw how deeply that current resonated with others who recognized their own experiences of grief, death, and exile within it.We also discuss:Hekate’s evolution from pre-Olympian titaness to Chaldean cosmic mediator — and her later distortion during the witch trials into a dark caricature of feminine power.How patriarchal narratives reshaped the image of the goddess, and why her resurgence now feels culturally significant.Lenni’s four-quadrant magical framework — beginning with dirt, ancestry, and embodied practice before reaching toward the cosmic and ceremonial.The necessity of critical thinking, ethical boundaries, and non-transactional devotion in serious magical work.Lenni also shares her transpersonal work, including encounters within what she calls her “inner lab,” and a striking experience with an entity known as the Timekeeper that reframed a personal health crisis through symbolic ritual.In the Plus Show, we go deeper into liminality — not as an aesthetic, but as a lived condition. We unpack Hekate’s role as psychopomp and threshold-walker, the metaphysics of in-between states, and why so many modern practitioners feel called to borderlands — social, ancestral, ecological, and spiritual. We talk crossroads rituals, altered states, hybrid identities, and the initiatory tension of standing between worlds.This is a conversation about soil and scholarship. About lost souls and moonlit rites. About grounding devotion in ethics and lived experience while still daring to stand at the crossroads.If you feel called to the threshold, this one’s for you.Show notes:Get the Book: https://www.foyles.co.uk/book/the-rites-of-hekate/dr-lenni-george/9781916756373?srsltid=AfmBOoqJkwtxuSU8BbDyfflNp0dyjadqJd2KLlCsGGCvn-2qyw6hGgpDHouse of Zophiel (Events) https://www.houseofzophiel.com/Voice of Zophiel Podcast https://houseofzophiel.libsyn.com/

In this episode of Spirit Box, I’m joined by author, creative director, and hypnotist Angel Millar to discuss his book Transcend the Chaos—a sharp and timely guide to navigating modern life in the age of artificial intelligence and what’s been called “liquid modernity.”Angel introduces the framework of the Six C’s—Connection, Creativity, Craft, Culture, Character, and Consciousness—and makes the case that in an unstable world, these deeply human qualities are no longer optional. We explore why most companies haven’t meaningfully benefited from AI despite the hype, why younger generations may be absorbing unseen costs, and why the real survival guide for the future is less about technology and more about character.We talk architecture, ritual and the erosion of meaning, martial arts as philosophical training, and why voluntarily facing difficulty builds resilience. Angel shares insights from his background in hypnosis, including the power of self-talk and self-hypnosis as tools for relaxation, creativity, and personal transformation.The conversation ranges widely—from presence and authority to the strategic use of strangeness, from habit formation and ten-minute disciplines to sleep, diet, and the importance of deep conversations in a world dominated by distraction.We also touch on mythology, the supernatural feminine, and the forgotten philosophical roots embedded in everyday cultural practices.This is a grounded, practical, and wide-ranging discussion about cultivating structure, meaning, and strength in a chaotic age. If you’re feeling the pressure of rapid change, this one offers perspective—and a path forward.Show notes:Angel Millar https://angelmillar.comAngel's insta https://www.instagram.com/angel.millar_author/Keep in touch?https://linktr.ee/darraghmason

In this episode of Spirit Box, I’m joined by Jonas Kristensen, a Reiki master from Denmark whose journey into energy healing and spiritual practice began with a profound awakening in his early twenties. Jonas comes from a background in podcasting and video creation, and now runs popular YouTube channels dedicated to Reiki healing, hypnosis, and mantra work.We talk about the books, experiences, and inner shifts that first opened him to expanded states of consciousness — from reading I Am the Word to experiencing powerful energy activations that changed the course of his life. Jonas shares how he focused on service to humanity, and how this led him to explore pranic healing and the transformative Twin Hearts Meditation.Jonas also opens up about his kundalini awakening and how it propelled him toward becoming a Reiki master. He explains Reiki as a universal life force that supports not only physical healing, but spiritual development, manifestation, and personal evolution. We explore what it really takes to walk this path — the lifestyle changes, character refinement, and heightened awareness that come with long-term energy work.We discuss the Twin Hearts Meditation in depth, its emphasis on selflessness and planetary healing, and why Jonas continues to recommend it even as his own practice evolves. He shares how he creates accessible Reiki sessions online, and why he encourages people to commit to at least 30 days of practice to develop genuine sensitivity and trust in the process.Our conversation also covers Reiki as a tool for manifestation, the balance between serving others and pursuing personal goals, and the idea of working in alignment with one’s highest good — even when that involves difficult lessons. Jonas reflects on how, over years of practice, his energy system has transformed, shifting from localised sensations to a full-body channel for healing and awareness.In the Plus Show, we explore themes of ascension, soul purpose, and spiritual discipline in modern life. Jonas offers practical advice for overcoming blockages and procrastination, speaks about protection through higher vibration, and touches on angelic realms, subtle entities, and the importance of embodied practice over abstract theory.Show notes:Reiki Master - Jonas Kristensen: Focused on Reiki energy healing sessions and spiritual guidance. www.youtube.com/@ReikiMasterJonasDivine Manifestor - Mantra Music and Reiki Healing: Offering mantra music combined with Reiki healing to facilitate meditation and manifestation practices. hwww.youtube.com/@divinemanifestorHypno Guru - Subliminal, Reiki, and Hypnosis: Focused on a combination of subliminals messages, reiki and hypnosis techniques for personal development. www.youtube.com/@HypnoGuru1111Maestro De Reiki - Jonas Kristensen: Free Reiki healing and empowerment aimed at helping the spanish speaking population. www.youtube.com/@ReikiMasterJonasSpanishKeep in touch?https://linktr.ee/darraghmason

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, I’m joined by folklorist and writer Icy Sedgwick to celebrate the release of her new book Bring Me Love — a deep dive into the strange, beautiful, and sometimes unsettling traditions of love magic.We begin by talking about why it might make the perfect gift for lovers of folklore and the esoteric. From there, our conversation wanders through centuries of romantic divination, courtship rituals, and charm magic, including dumb cakes, St Mark’s Eve rituals, wishing wells, and the curious payments once made to fairies.Icy explains how love charms were passed down orally, how mistakes became tradition, and why simple, material-free magic was often the most powerful. She explains everyday divination with cheese, eggs, and household objects, and looks into deep connections between plants, flowers, and courtship — from yarrow and hemp seed spells to the Victorian language of flowers and the dangerous allure of the mandrake.We also venture into darker territory, with stories of poppets, sympathetic magic, and unsettling historical love spells, alongside more playful customs like shoe-throwing for marriage, Valentine’s bird omens, and cowslip divination games.In the Plus show we continue with Poppets, cartomancy and magic to stop one's lover straying. We also get into Icy's other work on ghostlore from around the world. And Icy tells me about her upcoming projects exploring Northumberland’s rich mythic landscape.It’s a wide-ranging, thoughtful, and often humorous conversation about love, magic, and the human need to seek connection — whether through flowers, charms, spirits, or superstition.Show notes:Get the book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bring-Me-Love-Finding-Divination/dp/1786789744/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0Icy's Books: https://www.icysedgwick.com/books/Fabulous Folklore Podcast: https://pod.co/fabulous-folklore-with-icyIcy's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/icysedgwickIcy's Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/ladyicypopKeep in touch?https://linktr.ee/darraghmason

In this episode of Spirit Box, I’m joined by researcher and author Judith Dillon for a deep conversation about runes, alphabets, and the hidden patterns behind magical and divinatory traditions.We talk about Judith’s latest book 'Futhark Rune Mysteries, Origins of Magic and Divination in the Primal Alphabet' on the mysteries of the Germanic runes and trace their roots back to ancient Semitic alphabets and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Along the way, we explore how early writing systems, oracle traditions, and symbolic templates share remarkable similarities across cultures — from Celtic tree lore and tarot to nursery rhymes and sacred texts.Focusing on the first four runes, Judith unpacks their mythological, magical, and life-cycle symbolism, showing how they map stages of human development, healing, and spiritual transformation. She also shares fascinating insights into how ancient systems preserved meaning through precise positioning and pattern, even as languages evolved — including the remarkable history of the Hebrew Torah script.We move through mystery traditions, underworld myths, celestial cycles, and the enduring power of symbolic order in human culture, reflecting on why these ancient systems still matter today.This is a thoughtful and illuminating conversation for anyone interested in runes, esotericism, ancient knowledge systems, and the deep architecture of meaning behind our oldest symbols.Show notes:https://www.innertraditions.com/futhark-rune-mysteriesKeep in touch?https://linktr.ee/darraghmason

In this episode of Spirit Box, I sit down with Chad Andro, host of the podcast Radical Elphame, to talk about his journey into witchcraft, animism, and the search for right relation while living inside an imperial system. Chad reflects on an early entheogenic awakening and his eventual move away from chaos magic toward traditional witchcraft, fairy lore, and a more primal, land-rooted practice shaped by initiation rather than belief.We explore animal encounters as genuine moments of spiritual threshold—bears appearing during ritual, deer as initiators, and the presence of wolves, foxes, and owls in magical work. Our conversation moves through symbolism, shamanic experience, and the difficulty of maintaining spiritual seriousness in a modern, distracted world. We also reflect on what it means to practise witchcraft beyond self-improvement, and how magic can force a reckoning with fear, responsibility, and moral consequence.In the Plus episode, our conversation turns to Chad’s work as a winemaker and his experience of creating talismanic wine as offerings. Chad explains how wine, intention, labour, and land become inseparable in devotional magic, and shares the thinking behind a recent occult-focused wine release designed to be worked with rather than collected.From there, we move into podcasting and writing as acts of discipline and devotion, Chad’s Substack work, and the writers currently shaping his thinking, including Lee Morgan’s A Deep Without Name. We end by talking frankly about empire, exhaustion, and the uneasy possibility that real transformation—personal and collective—may only come through collapse, and what it means to try to remain in right relation as that process unfolds.Show notes:Chad on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/radicalelphame/Chad's substack: https://thefoliatehead.substack.comA deed without a name: https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/products/deed-without-a-name-a-unearthing-the-legacy-of-traditional-witchcraft-book-lee-morgan-9781780995496?sku=GOR006392626Radical Elphame podcastKeep in touch?https://linktr.ee/darraghmason

In this episode of Spirit Box, I’m joined by Robert Peter to talk about what it actually means to work with angels—beyond dogma, aesthetics, or blind faith. Robert shares his journey into angelic practice and how consistent guidance, personal resistance, and hard-earned sincerity shaped the way he works today. What emerges is a grounded, practical approach to angelic contact rooted in discernment, self-knowledge, and emotional stability.We talk about angelic encounters, synchronicities, prayer, and communication without assuming a fixed religious framework, alongside the importance of personalisation, skepticism, and virtue as an active magical principle rather than a moral performance. Robert reflects on how angels often redirect our desires toward what we actually need, not what we think we want, and why sincerity consistently outweighs technique.In the Plus Show, we go deeper into the risks of angelic work: spiritual inflation, obsession, misinterpretation, and the very real danger of losing grounding. We speak frankly about spiritual psychosis, misplaced certainty, and the ways online magical culture can amplify delusion rather than understanding. We also get into therapy as a magical tool, the importance of keeping some practices private, and how to stay human while working with forces that don’t always encourage that.This episode is less about summoning angels and more about becoming someone capable of listening to them without losing yourself in the process.Show notes:https://robertpetermagi.substack.comhttps://www.instagram.com/robertpeterservices/Keep in touch?https://linktr.ee/darraghmason

In this episode I’m joined by author and Scarlet Imprint founder Peter Grey for a wide-ranging conversation around his book Lucifer Praxis—a work that approaches Lucifer not as a static figure or moral symbol, but as a living current of rebellion, imagination, and spiritual authority.We explore the deep mythic roots of Lucifer and the fallen angels, tracing them from ancient sources and early biblical material—where these beings were associated with the transmission of magic and forbidden knowledge—through their later demonisation under Christianity. Peter explains how John Milton’s Paradise Lost radically reshaped the image of Lucifer, transforming him into a defiant figure whose influence carried forward into Romanticism through writers like Blake, Shelley, and Byron, helping to form the foundations of modern Luciferian thought.Our conversation moves through early Christian exorcism and its relation to grimoire magic conjuration and Pauline theology. We also spend time on Peter’s argument that the French Revolution of 1789 marked a decisive cultural rupture—a symbolic regicide and deicide that signalled the death of God and the emergence of a modern Luciferian worldview. Paris itself becomes part of this story, reshaped through monuments, symbolism, and revolutionary ritual.Peter also outlines his approach to magical practice and teaching: drawing on ancient traditions while deliberately avoiding rigid systems or prescriptive methods. We discuss the importance of personal gnosis, the risks of over-identifying with deities, and the need for open structures that allow practitioners to find their own way into the spirit world.Show notes:Get the book: https://scarletimprint.com/publications/p/lucifer-praxisJohn Milton - Paradise Lost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_LostWilliam Blake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_BlakePercy Bysshe Shelly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Bysshe_ShelleyLord Byron: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_ByronRomantic poetry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romantic_poetryThe Book of Enoch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_EnochThe French Revolution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_RevolutionLouis XVI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XVIThe Spirit of Liberty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_ColumnKeep in touch?https://linktr.ee/darraghmason

In this episode, I sit down with paranormal investigator, researcher, and author Kate Ray for a conversation that wanders through fear, folklore, and the many strange beings that linger just outside our line of sight.Kate begins by telling me how she stumbled into paranormal investigation almost against her will — starting with a night at St Breville’s Castle that absolutely terrified her, but ultimately broke the lifelong fear of ghosts that had held her back. That moment pushed her into Barry Guy’s events team, and set her on the path to becoming the investigator she is now. As we talked, she traced how her understanding of the supernatural shifted over the years, shaped by experiences in both her childhood home and a deeply haunted house she lived in throughout the late 90s.We found ourselves comparing notes on haunted properties. Kate spoke about the oppressive atmosphere, strange smells, and constant noises she lived with for years, and I shared some of my own memories and we reflected on how that atmosphere can feel suffocating until, eventually, fear gives way to curiosity.Then the conversation took a fascinating turn. Kate outlined her theory that many poltergeist cases may actually be fairy activity rather than the spirits of the dead. She talked about the electrical nature of fairies, the mischievous, non-human logic that underpins coin drops and strange object movements, and how these behaviours align with centuries of folklore. She’s noticed more people reporting this kind of activity, and attributes that partly to her efforts to reintroduce fairy lore to the paranormal community.Kate recounted a chilling case she investigated — a family plagued by rippling walls, frantic footsteps, and coins dropping out of nowhere. She had gone there just to interview them, but ended up witnessing things that are astonishing. Kate shared more of her personal cases, including working as a psychic artist on Help My House Is Haunted. She described remote impressions of a grumpy spirit and dark masses, the moment something grabbed her coat on location, and the uncanny realisation that her sketch matched a photograph of a former homeowner.We finished with the story of her book on the Wollaton Gnomes, the 1979 incident where children encountered hovering gnomes in cars in a deer park. The idea arrived while she was writing for Dr. Simon Young, and the book practically wrote itself within seven days, through what she describes as automatic writing. This episode is a weave of hauntings, folklore, high strangeness, and the strange intelligences that share the world with us — and Kate’s insights remind me again and again just how thin the veil really is.Show notes:Kate's instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kateharegirl/?hl=en-gbFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/HareGirlparanormal/Hare in the Hawthorn Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@kateharegirlrayWoolly Snotts: The Curious Case of the Wollaton Gnomes: https://amzn.eu/d/3TUzJ5fSupport the show:https://linktr.ee/darraghmason