Rejected Religion Podcast Stephanie Shea

Episode release date: May 12, 2024

Dr. Tara Smith is an interdisciplinary academic that works in the fields of science fiction, literature, and popular culture. Currently, she is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School, writing on religious ideas and experiences of people who paint and play within the science fiction 'grim dark' universe of Warhammer 40,000. She is currently visiting Amsterdam's HHP Centre at the University of Amsterdam in her Fellowship role.

In this interview, Tara discusses how there is a lacuna in the area of Religious Studies when it comes to researching the relationship between religion and tabletop games. Her work demonstrates that Warhammer 40k encourages players to talk and think about religion. We discuss the game and its influences, as well as the role of 'play' in Tara's research, which suggests that there is more imagination and interactional thought about religion than was previously presumed. As this is a work in progress, Tara also discusses her different approaches and her interests in broadening her research scope.

Guest Mike Marinacci, author of Psychedelic Cults and Outlaw Churches: LSD, Cannabis, and Spiritual Sacraments in Underground America

In this very engaging conversation, Mike starts by talking about what inspired him to write this book, and then we jump into discussing several of the major psychedelic groups he discusses in his book. A few highlights of our interview: The Native American Church and their struggle to receive legal permission from the United States government to use peyote in their rituals; how non-indigenous people also tried to gain this legal permission for their own churches; the highly eventful life of Timothy Leary and his engagement with LSD, and his later League for Spiritual Discovery; the forerunner to satirical groups such as the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Neo-American Church; the introduction of ‘crisis response’ help with the use of LSD by the Church of Naturalism; the switch to the use of legal drugs by the Church of the Tree of Life; the success of the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church with the Rastafarians, and the downfall of the Church after the group became too highly involved in drug trafficking; and the complicated efforts to profit commercially from the use of entheogens by the present-day Ayahuasca Healings group.

This interview was recorded December 7, 2023.

Dr. Randall Hall is professor of music at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, as well as a performing saxophonist and composer. He's also writing a book about 'speculative' and 'weird' music as it relates to the Sacred and ritual experiences. In this special Spotlight interview, Randall shares his process of creating music that attempts to re-create a modern theurgic repertoire. (Theurgy is the practice that refers to the ascent of one's soul to the divine.)
In the first part of our interview, Randall talks about his first 'encounter' with the concept of 'the harmony of the spheres' and his search to find it, and then explains the concepts of 'speculative' music that reach back to the Pythagorian-Platonic tradition. He also briefly traces a history of the development of musical ideas about consonance and dissonance, and how musical theory has changed with regard to the idea of 'Divine' music.

Speaking about 'weird' music, Randall shares how the Divine is not always 'beautiful' but oftentimes terrifying to behold. Following the writings of Porphyry, when one sees or experiences something 'weird,' this is our indicator that we should pay attention to it, and that it signifies an opportunity for higher learning. Esotericism became the key for Randall to begin digging into these strange mysteries. He discusses his ideas about how music and esotericism are intertwined, and yet how there's not much discussion about musical practice in conjunction with ritual. Randall is trying to create a hermeneutical crisis in the listener, through set and setting, to allow the imagination to 'kick in' and allow the 'weird' to speak.

There's much more that Randall shares in this interview that can't be summarized here!

Clips used in this video, from the album Oracle, Voces Mysticae and Mithras Liturgy, are used with kind permission from Dr. Randall Hall.

This video aired on March 31, 2023 on Rejected Religion's YouTube Channel. New courses are available at Owlhouse Seminars.
Sue Terry has an MA from the University of Surrey where her dissertation was _The Magician Goes Further: The Occult Oblique View in the Short Fiction of Mary Butts_. Sue is now a PhD candidate at Surrey researching feminist occult modernist novels of the 20th century, and she is teaching open access courses in "Literature and the Weird" through her new venture Owl House Seminars.
Sue co-founded the Magickal Women Conference in 2018 and after almost five successful years as director, she stepped down in January 2023 in order focus on her doctoral research, on Owl House Seminars, and her writing on the fiction of Alan Garner, which is destined to become a book.
In this interview, Sue begins by talking about her rich history with the Magickal Women Conferences. We then move the conversation to her new venture, and Sue gives us a sneak preview of several upcoming seminars that she has planned. She then shares about her PhD research that investigates female literary responses to occult ideas and practices, and we close with an interesting look into her research and writing about the author Alan Garner.
Sue is a wonderful storyteller and I found this discussion fascinating and extremely engaging!

In Part 2, we sit with the concept of accelerationism, how it is occultural in its original form in Bob’s opinion, its problems, its appropriation by far-right groups, and the related sticky problems of capitalism and neoliberalism that are currently associated with accelerationist thinking in these circles.
The conversation from here continues to expand.
Bob also discusses the explosion of digital technologies and how contemporary spiritual currents and esoteric movements are enmeshed with technology. This leads us into a more detailed exploration of the CCRU and conspiracy theories, as well as the irony of how the esoteric concept of perennialism (or the idea that there is one everlasting Truth with a capitol T), has gained traction with some magical practitioners.
As a little tangent, we also talk about trauma, as this is the ‘elephant in the room’ when discussing Slenderman, as well as the current focus by many on ‘healing’ and how esoteric currents AND neoliberalist viewpoints have also influenced the discourse around healing and wellness.
Lastly, Bob shares his current work into the works of JG Ballard and Simon Sellars. Bob sees these works as esoteric texts that add to his interests of researching not only historiographical aspects, but also what is happening now in modern esoteric currents.

In Part 1, Bob begins by explaining the terms “the weird” and “the eerie” and how these literary concepts have helped to fuel the social imagination; as well as the tricky issue of how one discerns between ‘fiction’ and ‘reality’. With the help of philosophical concepts such as ‘the hyperreal’ and simulacra taken from Baudrillard, as well as other concepts from French philosophers such as Deleuze, Guattari, and Lyotard, Bob discusses the effects of signs, symbols, and other images on our understanding of what’s ‘real’, as well as the dissolving boundaries between ‘the real’ and ‘the artificial’.

This all takes us into the area of hyperstition, the CCRU, and a case study that is a good example of a hyperstition found in the Slederman character, and later incident in 2014 involving Slenderman where two girls come to believe that he is a real entity, attempting to kill their friend because of it. Bob also talks about how such a character becomes implanted in our collective consciousness through digital interactions such as memes, and later becomes a part of our cultural history. Bob also touches on the concept of acceleration, which he later expands upon in part 2.