The Hermetic Hour

On Thursday April 18th, 2019 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will air a discussion on the future impact of Artificial Intelligence on human creativity and individual expression. Will it serve us or will it dominate us? We will start with a recent article in the L.A. Times April 16th: "That Computer can call my Agent" which deals with A.I.s writing screenplays. We will look back at Asimov's "Foundation." We will visit "Drell Master" (2001) and its World dominating computer "Jaskamoor" and finally the final chapter of "Adamson's Quest" for the Hermetic perspective. So if you wonder whether they will serve us, or we will serve them. Tune in and make up your mind (before they make it up for you!)

On Thursday March 21st, 2019 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will present a discussion on the various traditions of the Underworld from the mythologies, religions and folklore of cultures around the world with our guest Very Honored Frater Solomon. Michael Johnson (Frater Solomon) is a Bible scholar with a background in Social Science. Mike has compiled maps of the underworld which locate the Hells of the major religions. Your host (Frater Thabion) will join in with references to Kenneth Grant’s “Tunnels of Set”, Shaver’s dero caverns, the underground kingdom of Agartha and the Shamanic under and over worlds and the proto-psychological Kabbalistic metaphore of The Nepesh, the Nechamah, and the Ruach. So if you want to take the E-ticket ride through the Great Fun house below the horizon, tune in and we’ll go below.

On Thursday April 13th, 2023 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will present a discussion on our new bookstore at Poke Runyon dot com. Opened last year and finally running full blast following the release of our long anticipated 450 page expanded Second Edition of our 1996 Magical Classic "The Book of Solomon's Magick." This is a beautiful hardcover, illustrated volume that you will be proud to own. Each copy signed by the author. Like our other Church website, this one was designed and is managed by the creator and producer of this podcast, The Hermetic Hour, Very Honored Soror Zandria, Lawren Freebody Runyon, my wife and business manager. The theme is Magick and Adventure and the website offers most of our published and produced books and DVDs in both genres. At a lower price than elsewhere because you are dealing with us directly. Also we have reduced prices on some titles to encourage circulation. Be sure and visit Poke Runyon dot Com and check us out.

On Thursday March 7th, 2019 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will review and comment on the 1948 science fiction novel by Stuart J. Byrne “Prometheus ll” recently republished by Armchair Fiction. This remarkable work, like so many early science fiction efforts was set in a future time, in this case 1970, and predicted a Third World War between the United States, its traditional allies and post Soviet Russia. Of course Russia did not become post soviet until the 1990s, but the Russian leader in Byrne’s novel seems and acts a lot like Putin. In this story the Russians are allied with China and they have conquered all of Latin America. They are on the verge of swarming our southern border. But their leader Nicholas (not Valdamir) has literally made a deal with the devil (the deros of the subterranean world) which has escalated World War lll into another dimension and brought in the forces of Agartha, the subterranean good guys and finally the Elder Gods (the original ancient astronauts) who arrive from hyperspace just in time to save the human race. Of course we have a pair of young Army officers and their sexy Army nurse girl friend, who team up with the underground good guys and Space Gods to help save America and humanity. It would have made a great Saturday Morning serial but at least it got its debut in Amazing Stories, March 1948.

On Thursday March 30th the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will present a discussion on his new updated and expanded "The Book of Solomon's Magick, Second Edition." Just released and now available from PokeRunyon.com. This is the ceremonial magick classic which has been a best-seller since its original publication in 1996. The book has Finally been brought up to date with new equipment designs, more training methods and more research on spirits, angels, Qabalah and Yoga. We will be joined by Very Honored Fraters Solomon and SithMeth, (Mike and Max) who contributed research on the Goetic spirits. This is a big, 450 page hard cover, gold stamped volume profusely illustrated with 24 color plates of temple equipment and spirt portraits. We have actual operational log entries and accounts of actual exorcisms. This is the one Magick book you really must have in your library or in your temple. Available only from pokerunyon.com, sixty-nine dollars in the United States postpaid. Signed by the author. We have only fifty left in stock so order today.

On Thursday February 28th, 2019, the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will review and discuss "The Eighth Tower" by the late UFO investigator John A. Keel (1930-2009). He was most noted as author of "The Mothman Prophecies" (1975) and film (2002). Keel was more interested in monster sightings, like the mothman and big-foot than he was in UFOs but he believed that the two phenomenon were related and emanated from the same source. He was an ardent successor to Charles Fort "The Book of the Dammed" (1919) which was a collection of fantastic anomalies such as UFO sightings, monster sightings and other fantastic events such as rains of frogs and ghost ship sightings. Mostly newspaper clippings collected from the beginning of the industrial age to the First World War. Like Charles Fort, Keel was a journalist who continued the collection from the 1920s, through the UFO era. The Eighth Tower is a Fortean book but with an agenda that Fort was very cryptic about. What do all these strange things mean mean? Fort concluded that "We" humankind, "Are property." Keel expands on that. After continuing Fort's bizarre collection he brings in Carl Jung's Collective Unconscious, the world soul, universal mind and the Seven Demonic Towers of the Yazidis and postulates an Eight Tower that is a sort of empyrean Godforce over the rest. This is not an easy book to get through but it will take you down the rabbit hole, so join us for some Fortean adventuring.

On Thursday February 14th, 2019 The Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will present a discussion on the first Ancient Astronaut Theorists, before Van Daniken, Sitchen, and the rest there was Richard Shaver and Ray Palmer and the Shaver Mystery. In recent years more and more of their fantastic 1940s revelations about Ancient extra-terrestrial Aliens and their high technology and their continued influence on, and interference in, earthly affairs (mind control and child trafficking and madness) has been confirmed and exploited by later whistle-blowers such as Tom DeLonge, Corey Good, David Wilcock and others. It seems that Shaver and Palmer wrote their History Channel documentary scripts but are never credited as the source. Are these Ancient Aliens still with us? "Our original Ancient Astronaut theorists say yes!" So tune in and let's return to the thrilling days of yesteryear and revisit The Shaver Mystery.

On Thursday March 9th, 2023 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will present a discussion on the philosophy behind his 2001 science fiction novel Drell Master and its forthcoming sequel Drell Mistress. The novel is set on a planet called Thoon which has suffered a human generated apocalypse dividing it into three eco-zones: Sky Islands, a poisoned surface world, and an industrialized cavern world. Its human population is divided into groups which inhabit these levels. A Secret Society strives to reunite them. It programs an artificial intelligence in the form of the three planetary gods with a prime directive to serve the best interests of Humankind, but the prime directive would relegate humans into a hive society. And the hero Brand of Valadeen and heroine Lira of Jhalimar as Master and Mistress of the drells struggle to save humankind from the living death  of a drell hivedom. Like all good science fiction this is metaphoric. Put your thinking caps on and tune in.

On Thursday January 31st, 2019 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will air a discussion on the life and work of Victorian Age British artist and writer William Morris (1834-1888) on the modern Hermetic revival. Morris was a Renaissance man of many talents. An Oxford scholar who idealized and romanticized the medieval period and yearned to recreate Camelot in the modern era. He was appalled by the pollution, social misery and esthetic mediocrity caused by the industrial revolution and he believed that Karl Marx held the key to creating a utopia (although Morris admitted that he could not understand Marx) But we need to understand Morris in order to fathom the continuing fascination our cultural elite have for Marx's continually failing system. So, come with us back to the Gas-light era and we will see where a lot of today's progressive ideas got started.

On Thursday January 17th the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will review and discuss "The Cygnus Mystery" (2006)  and "The Cygnus Key" (2018) by Andrew Collins. These recent books are in the tradition of "Hamlet's Mill" (1969), "The Sirius Mystery"(1976) and Gordon White's "Star Ships" (2016) and they all fall into the category of popular celestial archaeology. Most importantly for us in the Hermetic community they all seek to validate our ancient Initiatic Code which holds that we descend from the Heavens and to the Heavens we shall return via the Milky Way as our "River of Souls." Like so many of his predecessors in this Collins locates the ancient Shamanic origins of this in old Hyperborea in North Central Asia. He presents a good case for Cygnus the Swan bringing down the souls like the stork brings babies. He suggests that the  Paleolithic genius-giant Denisovan hominids recently discovered in Siberia were the originators of of our Celestial mythology and that they carried it all the way down to ancient Egypt. I am not sure I agree with all his ideas but for the most part he seems on the mark -- so if you want to follow the Starry Path to immortality, tune in and we'll fly with the swans.