Ultraculture With Jason Louv

Jason Louv and Temple Gold read reactions to r/exevangelical, starting with grandparents who never saved for retirement because they expected the Rapture, then a mother who drove her daughter to a church parking lot at midnight to read her diary back to her, and parents who turned away their own daughter but took in a disgraced ex-pastor for months. They talk about spiritual bypassing, religious trauma, true will, whether evangelicalism functions as a cult, and why "Christian witch" might be a contradiction in terms. They close on a lighter story about a cat named Beaker. Start Jason's free 15-minute Why Magick course. Five lessons, free account required, no card: https://magick.me/p/why-magick?utm_source=ultraculture&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=episode-242-witches-ex-evangelical&utm_content=show-notes Now enrolling: Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy, taught live by Jason from a new translation of the 1533 Latin. Founding enrollment is $797 and closes October 6: https://magick.me/p/agrippa?utm_source=ultraculture&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=episode-242-witches-ex-evangelical&utm_content=show-notes Topics: Reddit stories from r/exevangelical | Grandparents who didn't save because the Rapture was coming | A midnight diary confrontation in a church parking lot | Parents who sheltered a disgraced pastor over their own daughter | Spiritual bypassing and religious trauma | True will versus religious obedience | Is evangelicalism a cult | Christian witchcraft as a contradiction | A lighter closing story about Beaker the cat Transcript: https://audio.magick.me/ep_242.vtt

Jason Louv and Temple Gold read and react to tarot stories from Reddit and around the internet, starting with Temple drawing the Fool four times in a row. They cover a relationship pulled apart by ChatGPT tarot readings, a thrift-store deck with a bad reputation, and an oracle reading about a household goblin, then talk through confirmation bias, religious fear, and tarot as pathworking rather than fortune-telling. Start Jason's free 15-minute Why Magick course. Five lessons, free account required, no card: https://magick.me/p/why-magick?utm_source=ultraculture&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=episode-241-tarot-stories-reddit&utm_content=show-notes Now enrolling: Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy, taught live by Jason from a new translation of the 1533 Latin. Founding enrollment is $797 and closes October 6: https://magick.me/p/agrippa?utm_source=ultraculture&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=episode-241-tarot-stories-reddit&utm_content=show-notes Topics: Reddit tarot stories | Drawing the Fool four times in a row | ChatGPT tarot readings and a relationship falling apart | Confirmation bias and religious fear | Tarot pathworking | An oracle deck and a household goblin | Tarot court cards and elementals Transcript: https://audio.magick.me/ep_241.vtt

Angel Millar joins Jason Louv to discuss the supernatural woman who appears to men in dreams across Norse sagas, Celtic myth, and the Western esoteric tradition, drawn from his new book with Lua Valentia. They get into what makes a tradition a tradition and why traditions resist change, the difference between having a personality and having character, hypnotism and mesmerism as branches of ceremonial magic, and the things occult culture tends not to say out loud about teachers who withhold knowledge. Recorded shortly after the death of Peter Carroll, who initiated Angel into the IOT, the conversation turns to what chaos magick was and what it left behind. Start Jason's free 15-minute Why Magick course. Five lessons, free account required, no card: https://magick.me/p/why-magick?utm_source=ultraculture&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=episode-240-angel-millar&utm_content=show-notes Topics: The supernatural woman in dreams | Norse sagas and Celtic myth | Poetic speech and oracular utterance | What a tradition is and why it resists change | Personality versus character | Hypnotism and mesmerism as ceremonial magic | Teachers who withhold knowledge | Peter Carroll and the legacy of chaos magick

Mitch Horowitz returns to Ultraculture for a conversation with Jason Louv about his theory of human decline, the limits of spiritual optimism, and the resistance faced by paranormal researchers. They discuss practical esoteric methods, astrology and ghosts, Mitch's criticism of ideological skepticism, the state of parapsychology, Wikipedia's treatment of anomalous research, Blavatsky's influence on Gandhi, and the self-development programs behind political and spiritual figures. Start Jason's free 15-minute Why Magick course. Five lessons, free account required, no card: https://magick.me/p/why-magick?utm_source=ultraculture&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=episode-239-mitch-horowitz&utm_content=show-notes Topics: Human decline and spiritual optimism | Practices Mitch returns to | Astrology, ghosts, and evidence | Skeptical cognitive bias | Parapsychology and institutional resistance | Theosophy, Gandhi, and historical memory | Lenin and self-development Transcript: https://audio.magick.me/ep_239.vtt

Jason and his wife Temple react to and dismantle a viral video by ex-occultist-turned-Christian Jacque Marino, who appeared on Allie Beth Stuckey's show claiming shadow work is dangerous spiritual self-harm. Temple, a shadow-work practitioner, walks through the core misconceptions point by point—not to attack Marino, but because these critiques echo the 1980s Satanic Panic and reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of what shadow integration actually is. Shadow work, they explain, isn't about "becoming your shadow" or indulging destructive impulses; it's about consciously integrating the aspects of self that the ego rejects due to societal conditioning and shame. Discomfort and pain are signals—pointers to dysfunction, injury, or unprocessed trauma—and the practice is to remain curious rather than flee into substances or distraction. They trace shadow work's lineage through Jung's Red Book, William James, and modern somatic therapy, emphasizing the role of professional guidance and the scientific validation of approaches like CBT. The conversation pivots to analyzing the born-again experience itself as a psychological reframing—a subroutine that accomplishes real shifts in identification and self-narrative—and draws parallels to other "safe haven" movements, from Teal Swan to fundamentalist Christianity. They discuss monotheism's assumption that non-Christians embody evil, the fastest-growing religions in America, and the question of personal responsibility in how adults frame their childhood and past. Ultimately, this is about the return of radical fundamentalism—Christian and otherwise—and the cost of binary thinking in a complex world. Topics: What shadow work actually is and what it isn't | Integration vs. indulgence | Pain and discomfort as diagnostic signals | Jung's Red Book and the psychological lineage of shadow work | Somatic therapy and the role of professional guidance | The born-again experience as psychological reframing | Safe-haven movements and cultic dynamics | Monotheism and the demonization of the Other | The Satanic Panic returns | Personal responsibility and narrative reframing in adulthood | Fundamentalism across traditions. Watch the video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPiPg1Ufm-s

Private investigator and author Joseph Flatley joins Jason to discuss his new book on Timothy Leary's occult legacy. They cover Leary's Eight Circuit model of consciousness, its roots in his psychology work at Harvard and the psilocybin experiments that got him kicked out, and how Leary synthesized Freud, Jung, and Maslow into a single map of the human mind before expanding it into four "post-terrestrial" circuits dealing with cosmic consciousness, the Akashic records, and states traditionally accessed through magic and yoga. Flatley walks through how Leary mapped his 24-stage model onto the tarot major arcana (including two cards Leary invented: the Star Maker and the Velvet Hole), and how the system corresponds to the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and the four worlds. They get into the Starseed Transmissions, where Leary and fellow inmate Wayne Benner performed Enochian-style workings in Folsom Prison while Robert Anton Wilson was simultaneously doing Holy Guardian Angel invocations in Chicago and receiving telepathic impressions of Leary's escape. The conversation turns to Leary's SMI2LE formula (Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, Life Extension), how it prefigured the Silicon Valley transhumanist movement, and the uncomfortable question of how "follow your bliss" collapsed into consumer culture. They assess the boomer occult legacy honestly, discuss Antero Alli's critique that practitioners ignored the lower four circuits, and consider whether the internet and always-on digital life might be the actual evolutionary shift Leary was pointing toward. Topics: The Eight Circuit model and its 24 sub-stages | Leary's tarot correspondences and the Tree of Life | The Starseed Transmissions and Enochian magic in Folsom Prison | SMI2LE and the tech industry | Boomer occultism: what to keep and what to leave behind | Robert Anton Wilson's Prometheus Rising | Info-psychology as a technical manual for consciousness | Leary's deathbed and Doug Rushkoff's account. Watch the video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0z0lxbP4I8

Alan Chapman's new edition of Aleister Crowley's Magick Without Tears got his publisher sued by the OTO. We talk about that, the real story behind the Book of the Law, and whether this world is a Bardo we're just passing through. Topics: The OTO copyright lawsuit | The Book of the Law and Rose Kelly | What practical magic gets wrong | The Great Work as lineage | Global awakening — why it won't happen the way people think. Alan Chapman: https://barbarouswords.com

In this episode, Jason explores one of the most important texts in world spirituality: The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross. St. John was a 16th-century Carmelite monk who helped St. Teresa of Ávila reform the Carmelite order—and was kidnapped and imprisoned by rival monks for nine months, during which he composed this classic text on spiritual transformation. In this episode, you'll learn: - Why the "dark night" is not depression, but a necessary stage of spiritual development - The three signs that distinguish true spiritual purgation from mere lukewarmness - How God "weans" the soul like a mother teaching a child to walk - Why divine light appears as darkness to the unprepared soul ("a ray of darkness") - The ten steps of the ladder of love leading to union with God - How suffering is more secure than pleasure on the spiritual path Key quote: "He who shines with the greatest light shall cast the darkest shadow." If you've ever felt spiritually dry, disconnected, or like God has withdrawn His presence—this episode reveals why that experience is not only normal, but essential. --- 🔥 JOIN THE WINTER SOLSTICE WORKING — December 20-21 This episode connects directly to what Temple and I are doing this weekend: a live two-day intensive timed to the exact astronomical moment of the Winter Solstice—the longest night of the year, when darkness peaks and light begins its return. This is not a course you watch alone. It's a live working we do together: - Death meditations & shadow integration - Kabbalistic pathworking - Guided Bardo journeys - A ritual timed to the precise moment of the solstice Join us for the most potent time of the year for powerful, deep inner work. → solstice.magick.me

BLACK FRIDAY ENDS TOMORROW AT MIDNIGHT: friday.magick.me This episode goes out on the final day of the Black Friday sale for a reason. What you're about to hear is Eliphas Levi's chapter on The Magician from Transcendental Magic (1856)—the first chapter of the first modern book on ceremonial magic ever written. Levi is going to lay out exactly what it takes to become an adept—"a person who is achieved by will and by work." He's going to talk about the four powers of the Sphinx: To know, to dare, to will, to keep silence. He's going to talk about why most people never make it. And he's going to say something that hit me hard when I first read it: "Those qualified for initiation no longer finding initiators, and the leaders of conscience becoming in the laps of time as uninstructed as the vulgar, the blind have grown weary of following the blind." That's the problem I've spent ten years trying to solve. That's why Magick.Me exists. That's why I built The Adept Initiative. Listen to Levi. Really listen. And then decide: Are you ready? KEY PASSAGES: • "To know, to dare, to will, to keep silence—such are the four words of the magus" • "Those qualified for initiation no longer finding initiators, the blind have grown weary of following the blind" • "Once started, we must reach the end or perish. To doubt is to lose one's reason, to pause is to fail, to recoil is to plunge into an abyss" BLACK FRIDAY ENDS TUESDAY MIDNIGHT: → The Adept's Path — $397 Adept Initiative I & II + Solstice Working (Dec 20-21) This is where Levi would tell you to start. → Complete Mastery — $997 (Limited spots available) Everything + 12-month library access + Solstice If you want to go deep—if you want the complete toolkit—this is it. → ULTIMATE — $1,797 (Limited spots available) Complete Mastery + year of direct mentorship with Jason This is for people who heard what Levi said and thought: "I'm ready. I want an initiator." 👉 friday.magick.me Links & Resources: 🔥 BLACK FRIDAY SALE: https://friday.magick.me 🌈 Magick.Me - Online School for Magick, Meditation, and Mysticism: https://www.magick.me 🧘‍♂️ Free Guided Meditation and Mailing List: https://start.magick.me 🌌 See you in class! ✨

BLACK FRIDAY SALE: https://friday.magick.me — Our best three offers OF ALL TIME. Sale ends December 2nd or when we run out (slots limited)! In this episode, Jason dives deep into epistemology—how we actually determine what's true and what's not in an age of overwhelming information, AI-generated content, and competing narratives. He explores practical frameworks for critical thinking, discusses the difference between knowledge and belief, and offers tools for navigating uncertainty without falling into either gullibility or paranoid skepticism. Topics covered: epistemological frameworks, critical thinking tools, media literacy, discernment practices, the role of intuition vs. analysis, and how magickal practice can sharpen your ability to perceive truth.