Exploring West Marin County, California, one might observe the imprint of a particular artist without ever knowing the name “Ernesto Sanchez.” The seaside village of Bolinas is home to his outdoor piece “Emergence of Spirit” (sometimes called “The Lady of Bolinas” shrine), a nonspecific goddess not representative of any particular belief system, yet still fondly adorned with the prayers and flowers of admirers. In the town of Point Reyes Station, in front of the West Marin Pharmacy, one will find that the phone booth has been converted into a shrine, another Sanchez creation, with a mirror-mosaic encircling twin serpents and a singular eye. A short walk to the opposite end of town one will find the artist’s studio, with a window and yard open to the public, showcasing the art of Ernesto Sanchez.

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Season Three Trailer

Arnemancy
Arnemancy
Season Three Trailer
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The Arnemancy Podcast is back for a third season full of interesting guests, fascinating interviews, and strange history!

Join your host, Reverend Erik—that’s me!—on an exploration of your favorite topics, including Tarot, magic, the occult, and the history of Western Esotericism. This season, we welcome a bunch of new guests alongside some of your favorite returning visitors. We will be exploring modern applications of technology in magic. We will also take a close look at the works of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa.

You can find the Arnemancy Podcast at arnemancy.com, as well as wherever you find the rest of your podcasts: iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts—and now also on YouTube! Subscribe today at arnemancy.com/subscribe so you’ll be ready when season three’s episodes are released!

Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/arnemancy
Listen on Podcrypt


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On Thursday, September 9th at 6:00 PM Pacific time, I will be running a workshop for my Tarot and the Art of Memory series! Enroll now and strengthen your Art of Memory techniques!

If you are interested in taking this class, you will want to take one of my previous classes in the series. They are available on-demand here!

The Art of Sigil Craft

A sigil is but a word in a language so complex that it defies the boundaries of dictionary or thesaurus, a language so universal it relies on emotion and intuition, instead of equation. A sigil is an idea, more than it is a sentence. It is a wish and it is a command, but it is also an art. The art of sigil craft demands your patience as much as it demands your creativity. Concoct your meaning, divine your sentence, but then you must extract it from what you believe it to be, and abstract it into a form wholly unique. Solve et coagula. In this way, we encrypt our meaning into a form that may be impossible to decrypt.
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Arnemancy
Arnemancy
Mucha's Masterpiece with Thomas Negovan
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Thomas Negovan is the director of the Century Guild Museum of Art and author of Le Pater: Alphonse Mucha’s Symbolist Masterpiece and the Lineage of Mysticism. He joins me in this special bonus podcast episode to discuss the work of Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939), especially his incredibly symbolic and deeply esoteric masterpiece, Le Pater.

Mucha was a Czech painter, illustrator and artist who lived in Paris during the Art Nouveau period. His distinctive style is recognized today as being among the defining works of that period, and is probably best known for his posters promoting stage actress Sara Bernhardt. However, Mucha was also a Moravian Christian and Freemason, and his esoteric interests and mystical pursuits enfused the artwork of his incredible masterpiece, Le Pater.

This is such an important piece of esoteric artwork that I agreed to produce this bonus episode to help Thomas get the word out about his Kickstarter to produce a paperback version of his book on Le Pater.


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But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart’s knowledge.
You would know in words that which you have always known in thought.
You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.

Kahlil Gibran

One of the joys of the Tarot is its paranoia. Each deck promises to be a book containing the universe in all its detail—the physical and the metaphysical: that which is, was, will be, could be, isn’t, and wasn’t—as long as you know how to read it. And as the deck connects to everything, so everything connects back to the deck; thus the world becomes a conspiracy of meaning.

I say this by way of a caveat. Nothing I’m about to say is definitive, or even wholly justified, but rather a record of trying to follow a thread, and then getting tangled in other threads, until the little web of etiologies and etymologies is strong enough to lift the searcher off the ground. And in the spirit of a kind of paranoia, I intend to find my way by going too far.

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Arnemancy
On a Boat with Captain Tres Henry
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You’ve got permission to come aboard this podcast episode! My guest in this episode is Captain Tres Henry, who also joined me back in April. We discuss divination, destiny, magic, and reality. Divination is not just a read-only operation, and we discuss what this means for the diviner who is also a magician.

This is a nerdy episode. We build up a metaphor between computer programming, divination, and magic. We dive into the notion of randomness and how it is connected to free will and determinism, a topic also at the heart of my chat with Allen Drake. We discuss a number of other esoteric topics, but take some time to also discuss boats. Get ready to learn about rigging and masts and other sailor terms like that.

We also talk about the Captain’s two pieces of software, Urania and Georatio. The former is astrological software geared toward magicians, and the second is a geomancy tool.

I am also joined in this episode by guest co-host Matt Anthony, who you will doubtlessly recall as one of my co-hosts from My Alchemical Bromance. If you want to see what else Matt has been up to, check out his YouTube channel, Mattatarian!

This episode marks several important milestones:

  1. It is my first episode recorded on a boat!
  2. It is my first in-person recording in a long time. My last was with Alexx Bollen in October 2020.
  3. It is the last episode of season two! The podcast will return with season three in September.

Links

The featured image for this episode is Zeegezicht met oorlogsvloot (1821) by Cornelis Ploos van Amstel. Original from The Rijksmuseum.


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Tarot is one of the most profound initiatic tools. The 22 Major Arcana cards reflect the inner alchemy process of consciousness expansion, and the different stages we must undergo in our personal transformation. These cards, when properly understood and channeled, can offer steps that can guide you through Soul ascension and growth.

One of the cards that has always fascinated me and found its way into my awareness is the Magician. Not only is it the first building block in Tarot, but it is also a well of symbolic and initiatic teachings.

In this article, I will lead you on a deeper dive into one aspect of this card, especially in its relationship with the four elements of matter, the Platonic solids—more specifically, the Dodecahedron. First, let us begin by taking a look at the beauty and importance of sacred geometry.

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Arnemancy
Arnemancy
Armchair Harpsichording with Alexander Eth
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Okay, stay with me here. You are going to have to hear this one to believe it, because my guest on this episode is Alexander Eth. That name is probably familiar, because Alexander is the host of the esoteric Glitch Bottle podcast, which covers topics we are all curious about: magic, mysticism, grimoires, necromancy, and other mysteries of our weird universe. Alexander is a classical ceremonial magician and researcher into grimoires.

Did wizards just make all of this up? Alexander and I talk about the modern renaissance of grimoire magic and what he’s learned from all of the amazing magicians, researchers, scholars, and translators he has talked to. Is there technology to trace? How much of it is innovation? I have been waiting for so long to have this conversation, and Alexander’s insights are fascinating.

In exploring this subject, we will discuss many of your favorite grimoires, well-known magicians both modern and historical, and a number of popular techniques. We discuss ritual implements, the history of such implements, and along the way we reveal that Alexander’s mind is a vast and impressive encyclopedia of magical goodies.

We also talk a lot about the nature of spirits. What are they? Why can we talk to them? How can we do it better? Why does it work in so many different ways? We ask these questions and then we absolutely try to answer them!

As a bonus at the end of the episode, Alexander and I share our pro tips on organizing podcast playlists. How can you spare your brain? Well, listen to the end and find out.

Anyhow, you can tell from the description, I suppose, that the episode had to be a long one. It also had to be a long one because this is an interview with Alexander Eth!! Enjoy!


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