Radio Free Golgotha - Radio Free Golgotha

[https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/586f532229687f84110099ab/251eb80a-8efd-44ce-91be-661622fda4d3/Episode+44-+Chair.png?format=1000w] Welcome dear gentle listener to our forty-fourth episode, in which we honour the Feast of the Chair of St Peter. This holyday – dedicated less to a saint than their relic – sees us talking about the seat of papal authority of Rome, the Petrine importance of Antioch, the matryoshka qualities of medieval-style reliquaries, the “throne of Theseus”, apostolic succession, and what it means to be the Rock upon which the Church is founded. Our patron Demon for today is Trimasael, alchemical and many-aliased devil of the Grimorium Verum, by which we talk powders of projection and transmutations of metals; as well as muse on their sometimes-counterparted Exu of Quimbanda, Seu Pimenta, pondering on what it means to be a spirit who is (like) a pepper… Our Herb of the hour, Storax, allows us to delve into some resinous mysteries of archaeo-botany and consider when plant-names are more descriptors than definitions, as well as how both recipes and titles are informed by ancient trade routes, and how planetary associations can shift. Our Mineral this time is Cinnabar, ancient and once more alchemical ore of mercury, and constituent of the pigments called vermillion; by whose red-tinted light we illuminate a bloody history of mining, mercury poisoning, and Renaissance tips on getting the best colours. Our emblematic Beast is the Wolf, the night-wanderer, the wild and ravenous one who infiltrates civilization, both guileful and blood-simple; considering animals fables, the birth of Rome, animalia materia, and choleric virtues and vices. Planetary Hours are the Style of Magic we tackle this episode, considering rules-of-thumb for natural kairotic (rather than quantative public) time, Chaldean zeitgeists, the peak magical moments of a day, and the cross-pollinations of astrological hours and days to tailor our sorcerous strategizing. Our Figure of the episode is the geomantic Laetitia and the Odu Obara, leading us to discuss both fieriness and the fiery-in-the-watery, along with the refreshing artisanship of joy and the revivification of inspiration. Our journey into the Minor Arcana of the Tarot continues with the Ace of Cups, exploring not only the mysticism of primal waters and phlegmatism but the hearth and wellspring of the family home, intersocial harmony, and the overflowing heart. Our explorations of Mesoamerican calendricals comes to Cuetzpalin, the Lizard: considering times of rapid transformation, turnarounds, and reversals of fortune under the patronages of tricksters and winter powers. Finally, our honoured Dead Magician this time is Arthur Gauntlet, the mid-seventeenth-century London cunning man who left one of the richest working-books of early modern folk magics: we consider not only what this spellbook offers us but also discuss working necromantically with Uncle Arthur’s bawdy ghost. We hope you enjoy this interweaving co-ramble of alchemical reddenings, chronomantic projections and proscriptions, and the chairs we leave out for the dead. As always, it is a ever-multiplying joy to sit down and record, and we at RFG HQ thank you for lending your kindly ears. FOOTNOTES: Footnotes for this episode will soon be available for selected tiers of our Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/radiofreegolgotha]. This episode is also available on YouTube [https://youtu.be/SQrKTBDB0Q8], Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/radio-free-golgotha-radio-free-golgotha/id1193023651], and Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/2YjY0YUnCCiO06QQk9u4N7]. You can support our work and deep dive into the episodes and RFG via our Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/radiofreegolgotha]!

[https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/586f532229687f84110099ab/070108b0-e323-4a1b-a6a7-9eedcfe65e25/Episode+43-+Feast+of+the+Ass.png?format=1000w] Happy New Calendar Year, Golgothians one and all, and merry Feast of the Ass! We kick 2025 off with an episode celebrating the many forms of the Festum Asinorum: a holyday drawing on early traditions of the Feast of Fools as well as dramatised ecclesiastical processions of prophets, honouring the sacrality and popularity of the humble donkey in Scripture and indeed in churches. Our featured Demon is Bifrons, the Two-Faced One; affording both our usual discussion of grimoiric sourcetexts and spirit catalogues, as well as reflections on the semblances of monstrosity, epithets of Janus, the mysteries of Exu Dos Cabeças, and further two-headed co-ramble on both sides of the coin of duality. Our Herb of the hour is the Apple, by whose savour we consider its great mutational variety in orchards (and indeed wherever its pippins take root!), Greek myths of Kallisti and Atalanta, Edenic Temptations and Falls, Anglo-Saxon charms, early modern physick and Shakespearean wit, enchantments of love and lust, and the prankish theologies of Discordianism. Our hallowed Mineral is Sulphur, through whose stinking fumes we survey brimstone from its use and conjuration in – amongst other things – hellish exorcism and mephitic malediction, Saturnian incensings, and spirit-vexing. Our emblematic Beast is the Hare: phlegmatic and ever-watchful escapologist and weather-teller, folkloric witch-form, fecund hermaphrodite, and ancient and still popular triskelion of The Three Who Share Ears. Our Geomantic Figure for this episode is Caput Draconis, the Dragon’s Head; Earthy figure of the Benefics of Jupiter and Venus; signifier of slow seedling development, spiritual elevation and responsibility, benevolent forest magic, and the ways Nature can gently surprise us. Such discussion leads us to comparative contrast with the mysteries of its morphologically similar Odu to consider when the surprises of Nature do not seem so gentle… Our Daysign is Calli, The House, allowing us some rehearsal of Mesoamerican calendrical cycles of durational moments and momentums, as well as some honouring of Tepeyollotl, the Heart of the Mountain and Jaguar of the Night; by which we evaluate zeitgeists recommending time spent at home with loved ones and trusted friends. Our Style of Magic this time is Calendrical Divinations, for which we distinguish moments or singular days good for divination from durational auguries made across several days, concentrating on the foretellings of the year in January: discussing the year-walk of Årsgång, the delightful complexities of Latin American and Spanish la sistema de las Cabañuelas, and the Italian Giorni Della Merla. This episode marks the progression of our forays into the mysteries and meanings of Tarot beyond the Major Arcana into the elemental realms of the Aces, beginning here with the Ace of Coins, Disks, or Pentacles: by which we consider some traditions of reading and even deck-keeping found in Baraja Española, how Coins make sense as Fiery rather than Earthy, and what it means to plant a seed. Finally, our Dead Magician is one Samuel Lidell MacGregor Mathers, polyglot, translator, ceremonial magician, ritual attire enthusiast, public dramatist, psychic nemesis of Aleister Crowley, and curriculum-setter and otherwise instrumental contributor to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, by whose lux we muse on the influence of the Victorian “Occult Revival” on modern magic, neo-paganism, and grimoire sorcery. By these seeds scattered, strong scents aired, and braying amens we bid you welcome to the new calendar year, and hope that January finds you watchful in both eyes of every double-faced turn, surprising first-leaves, and all the signs in sky and ground of the promises and choices of tomorrow. FOOTNOTES: To access the footnotes for this episode, follow this link [https://www.patreon.com/posts/footnotes-43rd-119993477?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link]. . This episode is also available on YouTube [https://youtu.be/SQrKTBDB0Q8], Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/radio-free-golgotha-radio-free-golgotha/id1193023651], and Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/2YjY0YUnCCiO06QQk9u4N7].

[https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/586f532229687f84110099ab/4ada4324-d9cb-4239-8d63-9b6a2a6163c1/Episode+41-+Martinmas.png?format=1000w] Happy Feast of St Martin and, indeed, merry Martlemas, dear listeners! We welcome you to the forty-first episode of our folk necromantic co-ramble. On the tail end of the Hallowstide, we honour not only the hallowed hagiography of the historical St Martin of Tours – former soldier, bishop, and miraculous cloak philanthropist – but the many calendrical reasons for the season of the feastday itself: from the migration patterns of geese, the bonus ‘settling-day’ of pre-modern village-life, to the Anglo-Saxon ‘blood-month’, and various Irish and Scottish apotropaic rites of Martinmas. Our Demon of the month is the many-aliased goetic king, Purson, lion-faced granter of familiars, who gently guides us through survey of nigromantic spirit catalogues and the roles and significances of such devilish kings, as well as affording a little consideration of European bear mysteries. Our honoured Herb is White Ginseng, the aged and elusive King of Dreams who favours only the most eagle-eyed of root-hunters; under whose advocacy we discuss both the economics and the medicine of botany, as well as First Nations lore, Catskills terroir, and much more besides. Our lauded Mineral this time is Aquamarine, the watery beryl of phlegmatic healing and sensitivity, harmonious marriage, tolerant communication, and sanguine amity; considering not only Neptunian and Venusian image magic, but the links between sagacious clarity, the origins of reading-glasses, and some folkloric accounts of scrying. Introducing a brand new topic, we begin our sorcerous Sesame-Streeting of Beasts with celebration of the natural magic and folklore of Toads, discussing the watery and earthy banes and blessings of venom, traditional witch-familiar lore, and its heraldic emblematics of choler, moisture, weaponized melancholy, and storms. Further expanding our fields of episodic topics, we pay homage to the meanings and mysteries of the Daysign of Cipactli/Imix (aka Crocodile) in Mesoamerican calendrics, delving into the leviathanesque, the Toad With A Thousand Jaws who consumes the Sun, and the nature of beginnings, as well as providing some foundational orientation in how such day-signs inform us about underlying cosmo-visions, naming practices, and the heats of tripartite souls. Our Style of Magic this time naturally follows on the creeping heels and occult thermodynamics of toadbones to analyse the Horseman’s Word: affording us opportunity to discuss the rites of trade secrets, union initiations and hazings, the folklore of animal-handling, the uses of hippomane, the influence of Masonic oathing, and the prestige of horse-whispering in traditional witchcraft. Our brace of divinatory topics begins with the Geomancy of Acquisitio, the Fiery Jupiterian figure of Gain, expansion, increase, as well as the strictures and loopholes of formality, the risks of overcommitting and taking too much on, and both the wealth and pressures of tradition in ancestral relations, inheritances, and expectations. From figure to Arcana, our triumphant Tarot Trump this time is the Chariot: vehicle of Mystery itself, historical icon of military advancement and the victory parades of the polis, and indeed the qabalistic means of conveyance into the Supernal realms, by which we discuss the horses-that-become-sphinxes, the harmony of steed and driver, Ezekiel’s visions, and where the rider ends and the wheels begin. Finally, our featured Dead Magician is both the monstrous Black Annis and her likely point of inspiration, the “denigrated” remembrances of the anchorite Agnes Scott. Considering the shades of Reformation propaganda and pagan (re)articulations of Blue Hags, we explore folkloric practices – including precautionary children’s tales, the land legends of Leicestershire, and the dragging of anise’d cats – to celebrate the potent hag-ography of both nigromantic history and myth, the queerness of monstrosity, and both the historical trauma and reclaimed power that makes witches. We hope you get as much from listening to this broadcast of lore and legend, miracles and medicines, myths and histories, and the container-and-contained of rider and ridden – as we got from co-rambling it. May all your horses be kindly whispered, your resources carefully managed that they may be sustainably shared, your dreams ever more expansive vehicles to sensitive realisation, your venoms properly alchemized (or at least meticulously deployed), your devils delightful, and your hags potent. Merry Martinmas! We will of course continue to update the website and our facebook page when footnotes become available. This episode is also available on YouTube [https://youtu.be/Rts4tRlGPm8], Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/radio-free-golgotha-radio-free-golgotha/id1193023651], and Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/2YjY0YUnCCiO06QQk9u4N7].

[https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/586f532229687f84110099ab/04def1aa-5f8c-4e64-8c82-7ca8e4705f7e/Episode+40-+Halloween.png?format=1000w] Happy Hallowstide, listeners! We are delighted to invite you to an especially-very-special episode of Radio Free Golgotha – our 40th episode! We took this anniversary opportunity to do something a little different: rather than pick individual foci amongst the topics of our usual sorcerous Sesame Streeting, we got into the fields of the topics themselves: what and how we are continually inspired by getting to talk about Saints, Demons, Herbs, Minerals, Types of Magic, Geomancy, Cartomancy, and of course the folk necromancy of Dead Magicians. In other words, welcome to our Oops All Types of Magics episode. In considering the Magics of Saints and Hagiography we got into (re)assessing the virtues of ritual time and liturgical calendricals of feastdays and the holy in these holidays, as well as celebrating the mysteries and meanings of the famous, infamous, and lesser-known sacred dead. We also got into – amongst other things – hagiographic blur, value centers, saint-masking, bottom-up folk veneration, and the protocols and practicalities of canonization. In extolling the dark arts of the Magics of Demons and Demonology, we chatted about the values of grimoiric spirit catalogues not only as means for navigating infernal hierarchies, but demonstrating the interrelationalities of such ‘unclean’ spirits, and the organizational tools and perspectives that they afford the karcist working alongside their Good Devils. In discussing the natural medicines and miracles of the Magic of Herbs and Herbalism we touched on plant allies, engagement with landscape and the natural cycles of the year, as well as what it means to conjure an ingredient – from the exorcising of unhelpful influences to (re-)baptizing our materia (and their substitutes) into that which deemed necessary for the operation. This discussion naturally extended into considerations of the Magics of Minerals and Lapidary: from the archeo-geological blurring of names-which-are-more-descriptions in medieval books of stones, to the yes-and of working by a knowledge of both natural substances’ modern physick and their pre-modern spiritual virtues. Turning the mirror upon itself we also got stuck into the Magic of Magical Techniques, Technologies, and Typologies, and touched on both the shortcomings of over-compartmentalizing sorcery as well as the crucial importance of celebrating the (especially differing) cosmologies of the world’s cultures and histories which underlie the common and uncommon strategies which humans (not to mention non-humans) apply in our spellcrafts and solutions when we make such horizontal comparisons and contrasts. In highlighting the importance of the containers we develop and preserve to hold and empower our magics, conversation rather naturally turned to divination: firstly, to our beloved Magics of the Figures of Geomancy and their counterpart mysteries in the corpus of the Odu of Ifa and Merindiloggun, especially these Figures as markers of potential, “shelfmarks of reality”, patterned flavours of the cosmos, archives of befallen Fate, collections of historiolae and precedents, muster points of possibility, menus for operative sorcery, and haunted doorways. In expanding our appreciation of divination we turned to the Magic of Tarot & Cartomancy, considering the uniting lingua franca that the grammar and shared understandings that tarot provides to find a common language with which to read for querents and help them navigate time’s meanings, the destiny of decisions, and the consequences of our actions; which included weighting the role, ethics, and best practices of diviners to communicate with their clients, and to search not only for forecasts but also strategies and forwards-motions of remediation. Finally in turning to the appreciation and ongoing engagements with the Magics of Dead Magicians, we got far further into developing and cherishing this thing-we-call folk necromancy: further adumbrating how and why we may usefully consider the everyday encounters and engagements between the living and the dead; and how not only appreciation of the witches and wizards who came before us is good practice, but how inspiration and direct guidance from the ancestralised sorcerous dead may offer us both increased agency and efficacy, but also deeper and more fulfilling orientation, organization, and coordination of our wyrding ways. In the course of all of this, it was wonderful to remind ourselves what we love about what we get to do at RFG, and to share some of our ideas with you all about where we would like to take our discussions and co-rambles next: especially proposing new episode Topics such as Beasts, Sky-Things, Mesoamerican Day-Signs, and perhaps more! In all this thoroughly invigorating refreshment of our goals and lenses and ways forward, we gladly reiterate how grateful we are to our editors Mark and Cooper for all their help crafting these ramble-bouquets of topics into cohesive episodes that can appear to you in both a comely and timely manner, and once more offer our sincere thanks to all our listeners and supporters for joining us along the way. We are excited for the next forty episodes! We wish you all a powerful Tide of the Hallows, full of as much merriment and medicine as you would have, here amongst the treats and the tricks of saints and devils and all the shades of the turning night and dawning light. Hail to the road ahead and those who walk it with us. We will of course continue to update the website and our facebook page when footnotes become available. This episode is also available on YouTube [https://youtu.be/N5jtcP1x3S8], Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/radio-free-golgotha-radio-free-golgotha/id1193023651], and Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/2YjY0YUnCCiO06QQk9u4N7].

[https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/586f532229687f84110099ab/92b8cc47-bd4f-4b72-94a2-2c0954aa917d/Episode+39-+Saint+Hildegard.png?format=1000w] Merry Feast of Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Golgothites! We are delighted to invite you into the Green for an especially verdant celebration of Hildegardmas and our patron saint of the day’s many attendant magics of natural physick, faith, feminist history, and more. We begin, as is our custom, with the hagiographic reason for the season, celebrating the twelfth-century abbess, visionary, healer, and composer of both music and Unknown Language, Saint Hildegard of Bingen. We discuss Hildy’s biography and extensive bibliography, considering her letters – both known and Unknown – as well as her ‘equivalent canonisation’ by sheer popular appeal of her reverence. Foraging for the medicines and mysteries amongst the hairy barbs of the earth, we find our Demon Heramael (sometimes Meramael), the Grimorium Verum’s premiere daemon of plant remedies and healing, and follow the paper-trail of the German Honorian manuscripts to consider some of this spirit’s identifications with other spirits of the goetic corpus, including Buer of the Goetia of Solomon and Gemer of the French Book of Spirits. We also discuss this spirit’s counterparted Exu in the Quimbanda of Fontenelle et al, Seu Curador, and grasp to apprehend the stinging antidotes of agency in the forest. Our honoured Mineral for our virescent feast is Peridot, discussing its gleaming facets as treated in the lapidary lore of chrysolite, prassius, and other leek-green mineralia. We praise its piercing protections against demons, melancholy, and the phantasms of the night, as well as its greening ways of sharpening eyesight and gladdening the heavy heart. Our treasured Plant of the episode is Nettle, in all its urticating potency. We consider its Martial and Fiery virtues in early modern herbals, its peppery tonic properties, the burning of its leaves and stems, and its enduring popularity in modern wort-crafts. Our especially Hildegardian form of Magic is Viriditas itself: the ever-juicy viridescent mysteries of life. We explore both the humoural physick and spiritual medicine of this sap of vitality as explicated by Hildegard and scholars of her works, as this greening force of the vital and vivacious cosmos itself replenishes and revitalizes against the brittle aridity of the dry and dusty. We mark the Venusian points of the earth that constitute our geomantic figure of the hour, Puella – the Maiden, the Hostess – through which we cherish amity, “soft power”, and queenly authority, as well as beautiful craft, artistic integrity, and feminine wiles and wisdoms; as this figure reminds us to hold close to our bosoms that which still stirs our senses and keep us young at heart; as well as meditating on the crafty mysteries of message and messenger in her sister-figure of Otura Meji. Our Arcana is The Hierophant, by which we consider both the crossed and unlocking keys of tradition, pedagogy, and religious authority and transmission. We trace this card’s especially (folk) Catholic papal iconography, and discuss what it means to be a spiritual advisor, as well as understanding Tradition itself as matters of evolution and personal development. Our lauded Dead Magician of this feast’s festivities is none other than twentienth-century witch, astrologer, and TV personality Sybil Leek. We share thoughts on her life, writings, and Complete Art of Witchcraft, touching on her distinctions between witchcraft’s veneration of nature and the obsessions with power and control over other others that characterized her conceptions of “black magic”, as well as her doubts about the limits of teaching magic outside of in-person apprenticeships. We hope you find something truly livening and maybe even a little in-spiring in the Green of All Things by aid of these wordy wanderings through the forest of language we’ve co-rambled this time. As always, it is a pleasure to bring them to you as a bouquet of picked topics and blossoming tangents. Our profound thanks to Cooper for his editorial prunings of our (b)rambles. And so we wish you a very merry Hildymas, one and all. Stay juicy. We will of course continue to update the website and our facebook page when footnotes become available. This episode is also available on YouTube [https://youtu.be/RWG_Kwoss_U], Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/radio-free-golgotha-radio-free-golgotha/id1193023651], and Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/2YjY0YUnCCiO06QQk9u4N7].