The Numinous Podcast

"Not everyone can be saved, but everyone is worth loving." Jenn Richardson Jenn was a Mentoring client, who came to a couple of my retreats, and then Quest and is now a dear, dear friend and soul sister. More importantly, she is now coming out as a professional intuitive - hooray! Jenn is a queer feminist poet and yoga instructor and banshee-at-large, a fascinating person to know and observe as she moves through the world and comments on it. Today we're talking about growing up with an alcoholic and homeless father and how his death has impacted her life. She shares what I think many of us have experienced around the mystery of death and how covered-up it can be in western culture. And she talks about grieving as a physical process. It's an intense, close-up, very real conversation. Learn about Jenn and her intuitive readings on her website, jennthepoet.com Check out her art and poetry on Instagram. Listen to her in conversation about Quest with her fellow participants. Jenn references Clarissa Pinkola Estes' book, Women Who Run With The Wolves, and  we talk about the keeners and the banshees.

Thérèse Cator is a Spiritual Leadership Coach + Teacher, Shadow Alchemist, and Soul Artist and comes from a lineage of healers, spiritual teachers, intuitives, artists and activists. She was born in a country ruled by a dictator, her first language is French, and she's as comfortable working with Fortune 500 companies as she is teaching students in South Central LA or acting in Hollywood. In other words: she's got some stories! Today, we're talking about ancestry, grieving, life as ceremony, and she tells a harrowing story about being racially profiled and how that led to the liberation of her own Light. Learn more about Agape International.   Learn more about Vipassana Meditation.   Thérèse is leading a Shadow Alchemy Retreat in Tulum, Mexico. Explore her world at theresecator.com

Rachael Rice is an artist, teacher, musician, truth-teller, and whistle-blower amongst many, many other things. In this intimate conversation, we talk about the death of her mother and how it affected her creativity, her spiritual growth and her journey of recovery. Rachael was 22 when her mother died, and her mom was 49. Learn more about Rachael here. Purchase her original art here, and in her Etsy shop and more cool items on Society6. Listen to our conversation (including Marybeth Bonfiglio!) on Confronting Whiteness here. Find out more about the 12 Step approach here. Learn more about the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy approach here. Rachael mentioned Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, too. Check out Stephen Jenkinson's book Die Wise and Rachael's mom's favourite book on death, Who Dies?: An Investigation of Conscious Living And Conscious Dying by Stephen and Ondrea Levine.

My guest today is a literature professor who writes a blog called Dating Tips For The Feminist Man, under the pen name "Nora Samaran". Last year, she wrote an article that went viral, changed my life, and transformed my marriage. It's called "The Opposite Of Rape Culture Is Nurturance Culture". Just so we have a basic agreement of what is meant by “rape culture”, a quick Google brings up this definition: a society or environment whose prevailing social attitudes have the effect of normalizing or trivializing sexual assault and abuse. Wikipedia goes a little bit further: Rape culture is a sociological concept used to describe a setting in which rape is pervasive and normalized due to societal attitudes about gender and sexuality.  Behaviors commonly associated with rape culture include victim blaming, slut shaming, sexual objectification, trivializing rape, denial of widespread rape, refusing to acknowledge the harm caused by some forms of sexual violence, or some combination of these.  Nora's article does a beautiful job of summarizing attachment theory as it applies to adult relationships and then stepping back to look a the larger implications within a patriarchal culture. We talk about how western culture shames men for feeling and nurturing, how it invisibilizes white supremacy and anti-black racism for white people. In this episode, I give a brief summary of attachment theory and the four main attachment styles. You can read more here in the article where I dish about my own marriage. Off the top, Nora mentions The Icarus Project, along with bell hooks and Kimberlé Crenshaw. We also mention Tada Hozumi and cite his work over at SelfishActivist.com. Adrienne Maree Brown is quoted and she is definitely someone to learn from. The book The Dispossessed, by Ursula LeGuin, is described as well.

This is a gentle little episode. It's just a recording of me and my husband, Ruben, musing about appropriate rituals for the upcoming solar eclipse. The conversation meanders to ecological costs, the workers and the strangers, capitalism, extinction, co-parenting, the meaning of "shadow work", fine art in Paris, and how gleaning points to a way of living together that we each really value. In the end, we do sort of come up with some ritual observances to mark the eclipse. Things we mention: John O'Donohue's Grace Before Meals Daniel Quinn's essay, "The New Renaissance" Kelly Diels' essay, There Is No Flawless Position (newsletter, August 20, 2017) Agnès Vargas' film, "The Gleaners and I" Jean-Francois Millet's painting of The Gleaners and also The Angelus (originally titled, Prayer For The Potato Crop)

If you've listened for a while, you know that this podcast is a complement to The Numinous School, my online intuition development program. And you'll also know that registration only opens once a year with a limited number of spots because I do a limited print run of customized textbooks. If you didn't know that, well now you do and you're in a for a treat because today's episode is a peak behind the curtain. This is a recording of one of our monthly Tutorial calls where I take questions from students about anything related to intuition, divination, and the spiritual path. Questions answered in this class include: What's the difference between trance and meditation? How might I manage difficulties such as hyper vigilance when struggling to get deeper into meditation? What are some of the best resources for purchasing oracle decks, crystals and essential oils? What's the deal with reverse cards in tarot and oracle readings? Do we need to read them differently? My pendulum gives me contradictory answers - am I missing something? How can I find out what my personal next steps should be in my spiritual exploration? How can I develop my clairvoyance? Resources I recommend in this episode are: The Enchanted Map and The Wisdom of the Oracle decks illustrated by Jena DellaGrottaglia Instinct Art & Gifts in Victoria, BC or online Banyen Books & Sound in Vancouver, BC or online Aeclectic Tarot Healing Crystals For You The Crystal Bible by Judy Hall The New Crystal Bible by Cassandra Eason Silk Road Teas for essential oils in Victoria and Vancouver, BC or online Floracopeia for essential oils and resins The Spice School ~ Glynnis Osher Aromatherapy For The Soul and The Fragrant Pharmacy by Valerie Ann Worwood The Mary Magdalene Oracle and Angels, Gods and Goddeses decks by Toni Carmine Salerno The Mythic Tarot by Juliet Sharman-Burke and Liz Greene   Registration for the 2017-2018 cohort of The Numinous School opens Saturday, June 10, 2017! Hop on my newsletter to receive the announcement and link to secure your spot.

I'm so excited about this episode! It's me with four dear souls who've recently returned from their 12-day Wilderness Quests experience.  These are demigods, I'm telling you! They endured a tougher Quest than I ever have. If you have a fear about doing a wilderness quest, they have good advice for you. My guests today will address your questions and concerns about: - hunger and fasting - the dark and wild animals - enduring the cold - getting lost - logistical concerns about gear, preparation, and general safety - being bored/self-sabotaging behaviours - PTSD/trauma responses to being left alone in the dark and the wild - facing the abyss/existential dread - acting out/acting in  - not wanting to come back I also ask them, how did they know that a Wilderness Quest was the right next step for them on their spiritual path? ***   In this episode, Carl-Greger mentioned the book The Wind Is My Mother, by Bear Heart    

I'm so pleased to welcome Layla to the show, all the way from Qatar! Layla is a Black Muslim woman who has lived both in the West and the Middle East and has an interesting perspective on blending Islam and Catholicism, cultural appropriation in spiritual practices, and what it's like to live in a truly diverse and multicultural society. Layla also shares what it was like when one of her blog posts critiquing the "6-figure" business coaching mill went viral and how that prompted a spiritual awakening. We also explore the collapse of old forms that came with Layla's self-initiation as well as the healing power of Reiki and her work to heal the Mother Wound. Layla is not one to walk a single path or "stick to lineages" and she explains how she is synthesizing influences to create her personal spirituality.  We also jam about the overwhelming whiteness of most of the connotations that leap to mind with the word "priestess". Layla also confesses that she used to be afraid of big emotions like rage and even of the Wild Woman archetype. Update: she's over it. You can learn more about Layla's offerings at wildmysticwoman.com  

This is a delightful and animated conversation between two people who are, in many ways, kindred spirits. Nina Hirlaender is the founder of Dancing Spirit Tours, a company that leads sacred pilgrimage trips throughout Europe. Nina has a kind of breathless passion for mysticism that, honestly, is quite contagious. Today we're talking about some of the indigenous spiritual practices of Indo-European cultures such as Celtic shamanism. Nina shares her surprising journey from her Celtic roots to her passion for Catholic mysticism. Once again, the term "pan-Germanic" comes up again on the podcast. It's lovely to hear Nina share her stories of growing up with her grandmother in her native Austria, learning about the nature spirits and faeries. And hedgehogs! So magical! Nina experienced her spiritual initiation after her cancer diagnosis and recovery. Hearing about her journey is both harrowing and inspiring. And of course, we can't have a good conversation about Catholic mysticism without talking about some of our heroes including Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, and Mary Magdalene, and some of its sacred places like Chartres Cathedral. I was also very compelled by Nina's reminder of the Marian/Goddess tradition within Catholicism. (A book I highly recommend if you're interested in Mary Magdalene is The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity by Cynthia Bourgeault) It was a pleasure to talk to someone who, like me, loves grief and declares it ecstatically like a true mystic.  

When was the last time you spoke with a Mayanist? When did you last have a conversation where someone dropped the term "terra nullius"? Let's talk about the Mayan calendar glyphs and the New Agers – what's up with all that? Juliana does forensic science for Operation ID, a project that excavates bodies of migrants who've died in the desert trying to cross the Mexico-US border and help identify them so their families can know what happened to their loved ones. I found this topic extremely difficult to hear so, trigger warning...This is mature content: rape, murder, genocide. We're talking about a harrowing humanitarian crisis. This is an interesting conversation about colonialism in academia, cultural appropriation in personal spiritual practices, the trauma of the Inquisition carried by white people (especially women), along with some super interesting stories about entheogenic spiritual experiences. An excellent essay – truly a seminal piece of work – that Juliana led me to is called Decolonization Is Not A Metaphor by Eve Tuck and K.Wayne Yang. It should be required reading for settlers trying to understand what decolonization really means.