Occult of Personality podcast

Artist Natan Alexander is our guest in podcast episode 160 to discuss the magickal art of tattoo and more.“Natan Alexander is an award winning tattoo artist, an officer of the Ordo Templi Orientis at Knights Templar Oasis in Salem, Massachusetts, and an occult artist working in various mediums in addition to tattooing. He owns and works out of Witch City Ink, Salem’s finest tattoo studio, and Lightwave Tattoos, in Saugus, Massachusetts. Once a year, Natan also organizes the Boston Tattoo Convention, the largest international tattoo event in the New England area and now in its fifteenth year.”“Thelema and magick have been a huge shaping force in Natan’s development, both as an individual and as an artist. As a Master Mason for over a decade and a member of the A.’.A.’. , he brings an initiate’s understanding of the symbolism and inner meanings behind the art he creates. Natan is a regular and devoted world traveler, researching the origins and energies of the cultures and ideas that inspire his art.”I’ve known Natan personally for a several years now and consider him a friend and brother. His artwork is truly magickal and has the power to transform. Creative, talented, well-spoken, well-traveled, and with years of magickal practice under his belt, Natan’s success is built upon a solid foundation. I think you’ll enjoy this interview as much as I did, and don’t miss the second half of the interview in the membership section!In the Occult of Personality Membership Section, artist Natan Alexander discusses his near lifelong interest in Thelema and magick, the Star & Snake artist residency and retreat space, altered states of consciousness, advice on achieving success in magick and in life, and much, much more. Don’t miss that fascinating conversation. Just go to occultofpersonality.net/membership and join now. It’s the best way to support the podcast while receiving access to a tremendous amount of additional exclusive content.

Guido Mina di Sospiro, the award-winning, internationally acclaimed author of The Metaphysics of Ping-Pong: Table Tennis as a Journey of Self-Discovery, is our guest in podcast episode 159. Listeners may recall that Mina di Sospiro co-authored The Forbidden Book: A Novel with scholar of esotericism Joscelyn Godwin, featured in podcast episode 121.To spin or not to spin? – that is the metaphysical question.When a mortifying defeat to his teenage son rekindles his lifelong passion for table tennis, keen philosopher Guido Mina di Sospiro sets out to learn the game properly.Guido’s love for spinning a feather-weight ball takes him from his local ping-pong club, populated by idiosyncratic players with extraordinary stories to tell, to training drills with a world-class coach. This seemingly harmless game also leads him into sticky situations in the CIA headquarters and the ganglands of Washington, D.C. Woven throughout his ping-pong epiphany are philosophical ruminations on Plato and Aristotle, metaphysicians and empiricists, Jung’s dark shadow, Sun Tzu’s war tactics, the I Ching, and much more.As Guido’s journey takes him from Big Sur to a nail-biting showdown in China against a string of elite players, he finds ping-pong can teach us a surprising amount about life.“Down the centuries Taoism, Zen, and Sufism have created a large repertoire of short and seemingly mundane stories whose goal is that of violating logic and challenging our assumptions. Twentieth-century traditionalists have done much of the same by turning received notions upside down. Ping-pong, as i will show, has so many baffling and refreshingly illogical qualities about it that, whenever I happened to play an occasional game, somehow it echoed inside me in a new and increasingly more resonant way. And as a result, I marveled all the more at how magical it was that little ball and make it fly and bounce on the table and off the opponent’s racket in mysterious ways.” – Guido Mina di Sospiro, Prelude to The Metaphysics of Ping-Pong, p. 7Guido Mina di Sospiro has been fascinated by table tennis since childhood and regularly plays competitively. An award-winning, internationally acclaimed author, he has written four books published worldwide.

Wicca: The Ancient Way, recently republished by the Hermetic Arts Learning Center, is the subject of podcast episode 158. We’re joined by Apollonius Mithras who is part of the Isis-Urania lineage of Traditional Witchcraft, the same that produced this text.http://astore.amazon.com/occulofperso-20/detail/1505287898

Literary journalist and novelist C.M. Mayo, author of Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and his secret book, Spiritist Manual, is our guest in podcast episode 157. An El Paso, Texas native, raised in Northern California, educated at the University of Chicago, C.M. Mayo is an award-winning literary journalist, novelist, poet, and translator, who has been living in and writing about Mexico for over 25 years. She is also host of the long-standing lit-blog, Madam Mayo, and the Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project.Her most recent book, a paradigm-exploding and profoundly researched examination of the esoteric philosophy of the leader of Mexico’s 1910 Revolution, is Metaphysical Odyssey Into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and his Secret Book, Spiritist Manual. In 2015 it won the National Indie Excellence Award for History.In a blend of biography, personal essay, and a rendition of deeply researched metaphysical and Mexican history that reads like a novel, award-winning writer and noted literary translator C.M. Mayo provides a rich introduction and the first translation of the secret book by Francisco I. Madero, leader of Mexico’s 1910 Revolution and President of Mexico from 1911 to 1913.“Mayo… provides not only an English translation of Madero’s Spiritist Manual, but also a lively intoduction… The author argues effectively that Madero’s manual is essential to understanding his revolutionary zeal.”http://occultofpersonality.net/c-m-mayo-metaphysical-odyssey-into-the-mexican-revolution/

Carl Abrahamsson, author of the anthology Reasonances, published by Scarlet Imprint, is our guest in podcast episode 156. In addition to his writings, Abrahamsson is known for his work in music, film, art, culture, and occulture.http://occultofpersonality.net/carl-abrahamsson/

Craig Williams, author of Cave of the Numinous: Tantric Physics I, from Theion Publishing, returns as our guest in podcast episode 155.http://occultofpersonality.net/craig-williams-cave-of-the-numinous/

Angel Millar, author of the groundbreaking new book The Crescent and the Compass: Islam, Freemasonry, Esotericism, and Revolution in the Modern Age, published by Numen Books, is our guest in podcast episode 154.http://occultofpersonality.net/the-crescent-and-the-compass-with-angel-millar/