Back from the Borderline

Mollie Adler
  • 4.8 (582)
  • Spirituality
  • Updated Weekly

Back from the Borderline explores how human beings construct, inherit, interpret and sometimes misunderstand the ideas and beliefs through which they experience reality. Through depth psychology, religious history, Western esotericism and philosophy, I investigate how we come to believe what we believe, who influences those beliefs and how they affect the way we understand ourselves and the world. A lot of my work comes back to the relationship between consciousness, belief and power. How do institutions influence what people consider true, and why do we sometimes defend explanations we’ve never seriously questioned? Following these questions has taken me into some pretty unexpected territory, from early Christianity and the Western occult tradition to Jungian psychology, artificial intelligence and anomalous experiences. I’m also drawn to the ways spiritual teachings change as they’re passed between generations, and how institutions can preserve extraordinary wisdom while sometimes interfering with the very spiritual development they were meant to encourage. You’ll find conversations with scholars and independent researchers here, alongside long-form essays where I spend time with historical sources and competing interpretations. Some of the ideas I explore are controversial. Others have been debated for centuries, although most of us were never taught much about them. I don’t assume an institution is correct because it has authority, or that an unconventional theory is true because someone claims it was suppressed. I’m willing to reconsider my own conclusions as I learn, and I hope you’ll feel encouraged to do the same. I started this podcast years ago while trying to understand my own mind. Those early investigations into psychological suffering gradually led me toward the philosophical and religious traditions through which people have understood consciousness and human experience for centuries. There’s quite an archive here now, and I’ve kept much of it available, including episodes that reflect ideas I’ve since reconsidered. If you’re new, you can start wherever you like. There’s no need to go all the way back to the first episode. Even the title has taken on a different meaning over the years. Back from the Borderline now speaks to the boundaries I keep finding myself investigating, between psychology and theology, science and spiritual experience, accepted knowledge and ideas that have been pushed aside. I hope this can be a place where we explore those questions together, develop our own judgment and consider how what we learn might change the way we live. You can explore the full podcast archive, House of Cards, my ongoing Tarot series, and MOODS, my reflective intelligence app, at backfromtheborderline.com. Patreon members can also connect their membership to Spotify to listen to the complete archive there. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. 1d ago

    The Cathars, the Inquisition and the Women Who Defied Rome (Anne Baring Part 7)

    In medieval southern France, a woman stood up during a religious debate and challenged the men who claimed the authority to speak for God. A Catholic cleric told her to return to her spinning, because theology was no business of hers. Her identity was Esclarmonde de Foix, and she belonged to a Christian religious culture in which women could teach, exercise spiritual authority and administer sacred rites. This is Part 7 of my series with Anne Baring, a writer and Jungian analyst who has spent decades studying Christian mysticism and the forgotten feminine dimension of divinity. If you’re new to the series, I recommend starting with Part 1, The Forgotten Feminine Face of God. ☽ In the last episode, Anne and I explored the Black Madonna, the Grail and the possibility that teachings associated with Miriam Magdalene survived in medieval France. Now we enter the Languedoc and the world of the Cathars, a Christian religious movement whose beliefs brought them into direct conflict with Rome. Through Esclarmonde’s life, Anne introduces us to a society where women could participate in theological debate and religious leadership, and where Christianity was understood in ways that would eventually be condemned as heresy. The Catholic Church launched a crusade against these communities in 1209. What followed remains one of the most devastating episodes in medieval European religious history. Anne believes the Cathars may have preserved teachings associated with early Gnostic Christianity and Mary Magdalene. After our conversation, I return with some personal reflections, including the extraordinary experiences that first led me toward Esclarmonde years before these interviews. I also discuss recent reading that has challenged some of my own assumptions about Catharism and made me reconsider how easily we can romanticize the religious past. ☿ ANNE BARING Writer, Jungian analyst and author of Divine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit: The Forgotten Feminine Face of God. Explore Anne’s work and writings at annebaring.com. STUDY COMPANION ✦ John and Caitlín Matthews, Walkers Between the Worlds ✦ Arthur Guirdham, research on Cathar reincarnation and past-life memory ✦ Jehanne de Quillan, The Gospel of the Beloved Companion ✦ Gilles Quispel, research on Gnosticism and the Apocryphon of John ✦ Margaret Barker, research on First Temple theology and Divine Wisdom ✦ Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief ✦ Peter Kingsley, In the Dark Places of Wisdom EARLY CHRISTIAN AND CATHAR TEXTS ☿ The Apocryphon of John ☿ Liber de duobus principiis (The Book of Two Principles) ☿ The consolamentum, the Cathar rite of spiritual baptism RELATED LISTENING ✦ This Episode Isn’t About UFOs, It’s About You (Part 1) ✦ This Episode Isn’t About UFOs, It’s About You (Part 2) The first two episodes document the synchronicities and experiences that eventually led me toward Esclarmonde and Anne’s research. Buckle in, it’s a wild ride. SOURCE NOTE: This conversation moves between documented history, medieval legend and esoteric interpretation. Some of Anne’s proposed connections remain speculative. I’ve included these resources so you can investigate the evidence and reach your own conclusions. ☽ WANT MORE BFTB? Join the paid membership → https://www.patreon.com/backfromtheborderline. There are hundreds of private episodes going back to 2021, plus new Premium audio, House of Cards (my ongoing Rider-Waite-Smith tarot study). WANT SOMEWHERE TO TAKE WHAT THIS EPISODE BROUGHT UP FOR YOU? Try MOODS → https://www.moods.world/ MOODS is my reflective intelligence platform for dream work, tarot, symbolic reflection, and deeper inner inquiry. Bring it a dream, a question, something happening in your life, or an idea from the podcast you want to spend more time with. You can start free for 7 days at moods.world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    The Cathars, the Inquisition and the Women Who Defied Rome (Anne Baring Part 7)

  2. Oct 6

    The Black Madonna, the Grail and the Survival of the Feminine Tradition (Anne Baring Part 6)

    A spiritual teacher dies, her community has to continue without her, and centuries later the written record can no longer tell us exactly how her teachings moved from one generation to the next. What, if anything, survives? This is Part 6 of my multi-part series with Anne Baring, a writer and Jungian analyst who has spent decades studying Divine Wisdom, Christian mysticism and the feminine dimension of divinity. Each conversation can stand on its own, but they build on one another. If you’re new to the series, I recommend starting with Part 1, The Forgotten Feminine Face of God. ☽ Last week, we focused on Miriam Magdalene and early Christian writings that present her as a woman with spiritual authority of her own. This week, Anne takes us west. In the tradition Anne works with, Miriam travels to Gaul after Yeshua’s death and spends the rest of her life teaching there. After her death, the historical record gets much harder to follow. Centuries pass before medieval France gives us another dense concentration of religious images, stories and devotional practices that Anne believes deserve serious examination. That gap sits at the center of this episode. A book can be confiscated or burned, while people can continue visiting a statue, singing to her, asking her for healing and teaching their children to make the same pilgrimage. How much religious knowledge can survive that way, even when later generations no longer fully understand what earlier generations were preserving? Anne takes us into the Black Madonna tradition, sacred caves and medieval devotion, and later into the Grail stories and the wounded king whose dying country can only recover when someone finally asks about his suffering. We also spend time with the Lady of courtly love and an old attempt to teach men trained for war another relationship with women and power. After Anne and I finished recording, I kept reading Jessie L. Weston’s From Ritual to Romance, which Anne recommends during our conversation. I discovered that I had misunderstood an important piece of the Grail material we had just discussed. I come back after the interview to tell you what I found, why it changed the way I hear the Grail story, and why I’m now wondering how often a culture keeps the image, ritual or story while slowly forgetting how earlier generations understood it. ☿ ANNE BARINGWriter, Jungian analyst and author whose work explores Divine Wisdom, Christian mysticism and the recovery of the feminine dimension of divinity. Explore Anne’s work: annebaring.com STUDY COMPANION✦ Jessie L. Weston, From Ritual to Romance ✦ Annine van der Meer, research on the Black Madonna and Mary Magdalene ✦ Peter Kingsley, In the Dark Places of Wisdom ✦ James George Frazer, The Golden Bough PEOPLE AND TRADITIONS DISCUSSED☿ Black Madonna devotion ☿ Parmenides and ancient incubation rites ☿ Chrétien de Troyes and the Grail romances ☿ Eleanor of Aquitaine, troubadours and courtly love ☿ The Knights Templar, Sufism and medieval intellectual exchange ☿ The wounded king and the Waste Land SOURCE NOTE: Anne and I move between documented history, medieval legend and esoteric interpretation throughout this conversation. Some of the connections proposed here are speculative. Read the sources, compare competing interpretations and see where your own research takes you. Next in the series: Esclarmonde de Foix, Joan of Arc and the Cathars. ☽ WANT MORE BFTB? Join the paid membership → https://www.patreon.com/backfromtheborderline There are hundreds of private episodes going back to 2021, plus new Premium audio, House of Cards (my ongoing Rider-Waite-Smith tarot study), and an even larger Ultra Premium archive with access to Votive House, my twice-monthly live conversation series. WANT SOMEWHERE TO TAKE WHAT THIS EPISODE BROUGHT UP FOR YOU? Try MOODS → https://www.moods.world/ MOODS is my reflective intelligence platform for dream work, tarot, symbolic reflection, and deeper inner inquiry. You can start free for 7 days at moods.world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    The Black Madonna, the Grail and the Survival of the Feminine Tradition (Anne Baring Part 6)

  3. Sep 29

    Mary Magdalene, The Beloved Companion (Anne Baring Part 5)

    Mary Magdalene has spent nearly two thousand years buried under other people’s interpretations of her. Repentant prostitute. Devoted disciple. Apostle to the apostles. Mystic. Wife of Jesus. Suppressed leader of early Christianity. This episode asks us to actually meet Miriam before deciding who she was. This is Part 5 of my multi-part series with Anne Baring, a writer and Jungian analyst who has spent decades studying the Goddess tradition, Christian mysticism, Divine Wisdom, and the feminine dimension of divinity. If you’re new to the series, I recommend starting with Part 1, The Forgotten Feminine Face of God. ☽ Our previous conversation explored the Essenes, the Therapeutae, and the religious culture Anne believes surrounded Yeshua. Here, we focus on Mary Magdalene as a spiritually educated woman and an initiate in her own right. We look at early Christian writings in which Mary repeatedly understands teachings that other disciples struggle to grasp, then ask the question at the center of this episode. How much spiritual authority did Mary possess? Her relationship with Yeshua is part of that investigation. We discuss The Gospel of Philip, the Greek word koinōnos, traditions concerning their possible marriage, and the consequences of understanding Mary as Yeshua’s spiritual counterpart. We also discuss The Gospel of the Beloved Companion and Annine van der Meer’s Mary Magdalene Unveiled, which examines proposed connections between the Beloved Companion material and the canonical Gospel of John. These claims are extremely controversial. Anne finds the case persuasive, and so do I. I’ve included key sources below so you can examine the material yourself. Near the end, Anne reads an initiatory teaching attributed to Miriam concerning ascension, direct spiritual knowledge, fear, and power. After the interview, I return for a longer reflection on why I think this teaching deserves serious contemplation. ☿ ANNE BARING // https://www.annebaring.com/ EARLY CHRISTIAN TEXTS ☿ Pistis Sophia ☿ The Gospel of Mary ☿ The Gospel of Philip ☿ The Gospel of Thomas ☿ The Gospel of John MARY MAGDALENE RESEARCH ✦ Jehanne de Quillan, The Gospel of the Beloved Companion ✦ Annine van der Meer, Mary Magdalene Unveiled ✦ Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels ✦ Margaret Barker, First Temple theology and traditions of heavenly ascent VISIONARY SOURCE ☽ Claire Heartsong, Anna, Grandmother of Jesus SOURCE NOTE: Compare translations, read competing interpretations, and see where your own research takes you. New episodes of Back from the Borderline are released every Tuesday. Follow the podcast wherever you listen, and if someone comes to mind while hearing this episode, send it to them. Next in the series: The Black Madonna, the Grail and the Survival of the Feminine Tradition. ☽ WANT MORE BFTB? Join the paid membership → https://www.patreon.com/backfromtheborderline There are hundreds of private episodes going back to 2021, plus new Premium audio, House of Cards (my ongoing Rider-Waite-Smith tarot study), and an even larger Ultra Premium archive with access to Votive House, my twice-monthly live conversation series. Paid audio can also be connected directly to Spotify, so you can keep listening where you already listen. WANT SOMEWHERE TO TAKE WHAT THIS EPISODE BROUGHT UP FOR YOU? Try MOODS → https://www.moods.world/ MOODS is my reflective intelligence platform for dream work, tarot, symbolic reflection, and deeper inner inquiry. Bring it a dream, a question, something happening in your life, or an idea from the podcast you want to spend more time with. You can start free for 7 days at moods.world. Paid BFTB members also get MOODS for $15/month instead of $22. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Mary Magdalene, The Beloved Companion (Anne Baring Part 5)

  4. Sep 22

    The Essenes and the Women Around Yeshua (Anne Baring Part 4)

    What kind of spiritual world could have formed Yeshua before Christianity existed? This is Part 4 of my multi-part series of conversations with Anne Baring, recorded across September and October 2026. While each episode can stand on its own, I recommend beginning with Part 1, The Forgotten Feminine Face of God, and following the series in order. ☽ Christianity often starts its story when Jesus begins preaching. In this conversation, Anne and I go further back and ask what was already there. Anne takes us into her understanding of the Essenes and Therapeutae, contemplative communities she believes preserved an older Wisdom tradition concerned with healing, direct experience of the divine and disciplined development of consciousness. They called themselves Children of the Light. Anne places Yeshua inside this religious world and describes him as an elder brother and teacher who had gone further in his spiritual development and could show others what a human being was capable of.  We talk about what spiritual training was actually for. Anne describes meditation, inner vision and ascension, along with an understanding of healing based on restoring harmony within the person. The heart served as an organ of discernment, while religious knowledge was expected to alter how someone lived rather than remain an idea about God.  The women around Yeshua come into focus in the second half of the conversation. Anne describes Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene as advanced initiates and teachers rather than the passive figures many of us inherited through Christian tradition. We talk about women as healers, the spiritual education of children and Anne’s beautiful description of motherhood and caregiving as forms of initiation into love and service.  Some of Anne’s reconstruction draws on historical and late-antique texts, while some comes from modern channeled material, especially the work of Stuart Wilson and Joanna Prentis. I spend time in the introduction explaining these sources and why I’m willing to investigate visionary material without treating it as documentary history. The episode ends exactly where the next conversation needs to start. Anne describes Christianity as having lost the inner mystery school she believes was intended to develop alongside its public teaching. Part 5 is devoted entirely to the woman she places near the center of that missing tradition: Mary Magdalene.  ☿ ANNE BARING Official website: https://www.annebaring.com/ ESSENE + WISDOM TEXTS DISCUSSED The Essenes: Children of the Light — Stuart Wilson and Joanna Prentis The Power of the Magdalene — Stuart Wilson and Joanna Prentis The Essene Gospel of Peace Pistis Sophia The Egyptian Book of the Dead AUTHORS + SCHOLARS TO FOLLOW Stuart Wilson Joanna Prentis Flavius Josephus Dr. Annine van der Meer Marguerite Rigoglioso Carl Jung ☽ WANT MORE BFTB? Join the paid membership → https://www.patreon.com/backfromtheborderline There are hundreds of private episodes going back to 2021, plus new Premium audio, House of Cards (my ongoing Rider-Waite-Smith tarot study), and an even larger Ultra Premium archive with access to Votive House, my twice-monthly live conversation series. Paid audio can also be connected directly to Spotify, so you can keep listening where you already listen. WANT SOMEWHERE TO TAKE WHAT THIS EPISODE BROUGHT UP FOR YOU? Try MOODS → https://www.moods.world/ MOODS is my reflective intelligence platform for dream work, tarot, symbolic reflection, and deeper inner inquiry. Bring it a dream, a question, something happening in your life, or an idea from the podcast you want to spend more time with. You can start free for 7 days at moods.world. Paid BFTB members also get MOODS for $15/month instead of $22. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    The Essenes and the Women Around Yeshua (Anne Baring Part 4)

  5. Sep 15

    Gnostic Sophia and the Suppressed Christian Mysteries (Anne Baring Part 3)

    What if early Christianity contained a path centered on direct knowledge of the divine within us, and that path was pushed outside the Church that survived? This is Part 3 of my multi-part series of conversations with Anne Baring, recorded across September and October 2026. While each episode can stand on its own, I recommend beginning with Part 1, The Forgotten Feminine Face of God, followed by Part 2 on Marija Gimbutas and the civilization of Old Europe. ☽ In this conversation, Anne and I enter the world of Gnostic Christianity and a Yeshua many of us were never introduced to: a teacher concerned with awakening human beings to the divine light within themselves. That understanding of Jesus sits uneasily beside the Christianity that eventually gained institutional power in Rome. We start with Parmenides, the pre-Socratic philosopher whose surviving poem describes a journey into darkness, guidance from the daughters of the Sun, and knowledge received directly from a goddess. Anne sees him as part of a more ancient visionary tradition that continued into Gnosticism, where gnosis meant direct knowledge of the divine rather than religious belief alone. From there, we get into the Gnostic Yeshua, the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts, and why a Christianity built around the divine light within the human being came into conflict with the Church that gained power in Rome.  Sophia is at the center of the episode. In Pistis Sophia, Divine Wisdom descends from her celestial home, becomes lost, and has to find her way back toward the Light through thirteen metanoias, or changes in consciousness. Anne compares her story with the Christian interpretation of the Fall, especially the guilt and disobedience that became attached to Eve. Sophia gives us another way of understanding what has gone wrong. She has lost touch with where she came from and mistakes a lesser light for the true one. Her task is to wake up, learn to see differently, and remember. We also spend part of the conversation with Carl Jung. Anne trained as a Jungian analyst, and she talks about Jung’s own visionary experiences, Philemon, The Red Book, his fascination with the Gnostics, and the task he believed he had failed to complete before his death: restoring the reality of the soul to Western consciousness.  Near the end, Anne reads from Trimorphic Protennoia, where the Divine Feminine speaks in the first person, and The Hymn of the Pearl, a Gnostic poem she has lived with for roughly sixty years. Both return us to the idea running through this entire conversation: that spiritual life begins in remembering what we are and where we came from. ☿ ANNE BARING Official website: https://www.annebaring.com/ BOOKS BY ANNE BARING Divine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit: The Forgotten Feminine Face of God The Myth of the Goddess with Jules Cashford The Dream of the Cosmos Messages From a Transcendent Dimension GNOSTIC TEXTS DISCUSSED Pistis Sophia Trimorphic Protennoia The Sophia of Jesus Christ The Hymn of the Pearl The Nag Hammadi codices The Gospel of Thomas The Gospel of Philip CARL JUNG The Red Book Seven Sermons to the Dead Answer to Job ALSO MENTIONED Parmenides G.R.S. Mead Peter Kingsley Orpheus and the Orphic tradition Heraclitus Pythagoras Plato and Aristotle Zosimus of Panopolis G.I. Gurdjieff Father Richard Rohr Marie-Louise von Franz Philemon Theodosius I Taxila ☽ CONTINUE THE WORK: Join the BFTB Patreon → https://patreon.com/backfromtheborderline You’ll get: ☆ Weekly bonus episodes ☆ House of Cards (my tarot study group) ☆ Archetypal tarot + astrology forecasts ☆ Full ad-free archive access (every BFTB episode since 2021) If you want to actually work through it: Use MOODS → https://app.moods.world/  MOODS is a private place to take what’s coming up and see it clearly without performing it or involving anyone else. You can try it free for 7 days to see if it's right for you.  If you join my Patreon first, you’ll also unlock discounted access. See you inside. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Gnostic Sophia and the Suppressed Christian Mysteries (Anne Baring Part 3)

  6. Sep 8

    The Lost Civilization of the Goddess (Anne Baring Part 2)

    What if the history of Europe contains a civilization most of us were never taught about? This is Part 2 of my multi-part series of conversations with Anne Baring, recorded across September and October 2026. While each episode can stand on its own, I recommend starting with Part 1, The Forgotten Feminine Face of God, which introduces Anne and the larger history we’ll be following together. ☽ In this conversation, Anne takes me into the work of Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas and the world she called Old Europe, a network of Neolithic cultures across southeastern Europe that she spent decades studying through figurines, vessels, settlements, burial sites, goldwork and recurring religious imagery. Anne explains why Gimbutas believed this world was centered on the Great Goddess, how she read birds, snakes, spirals and water as part of a shared sacred language, and why she argued that these societies were matrilineal, broadly egalitarian and unusually free from organized warfare. We also talk about the later movement of steppe peoples into Europe, the fierce opposition Gimbutas faced during her career, and the later ancient DNA research Anne sees as supporting an important part of her migration theory. The conversation also becomes beautifully and unexpectedly personal. Anne speaks about growing up with a mother who received channeled writings, the out-of-body experience Anne had at thirteen, and the dream that brought Jules Cashford to her and eventually led to the ten-year writing of The Myth of the Goddess. Anne also remembers seeing the objects from The Lost World of Old Europe in person at the Ashmolean Museum, including the great painted vessels that left her speechless. We end by asking why this history still matters to her, and what she would say to Marija Gimbutas if she could sit across from her now. ☿ ANNE BARING Official website: https://www.annebaring.com/ BOOKS BY MARIJA GIMBUTAS The Language of the Goddess The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe ALSO MENTIONED The Myth of the Goddess by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford Messages From a Transcendent Dimension by Anne Baring Joseph Campbell The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn Federico Faggin Iain McGilchrist SEE THE OBJECTS The Lost World of Old Europe exhibition via New York University’s YouTube channel [click here to view] ☽ CONTINUE THE WORK: Join the BFTB Patreon → https://patreon.com/backfromtheborderline You’ll get: ☆ Weekly bonus episodes ☆ House of Cards (my tarot study group) ☆ Archetypal tarot + astrology forecasts ☆ Full ad-free archive access (every BFTB episode since 2021) If you want to actually work through it: Use MOODS → https://app.moods.world/  MOODS is a private place to take what’s coming up and see it clearly without performing it or involving anyone else. You can try it free for 7 days to see if it's right for you. If you join my Patreon first, you’ll also unlock discounted access. See you inside. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    The Lost Civilization of the Goddess (Anne Baring Part 2)

  7. Sep 1

    The Forgotten Feminine Face of God (Anne Baring Part 1)

    For thousands of years, the Western image of God became increasingly male. Anne Baring has spent much of her life studying what we lost when the feminine disappeared from our understanding of the divine. This is Part 1 of my eight-part series of conversations with Anne Baring, recorded across September 2026. Over the course of the series, we’ll explore the work Anne has spent much of her life devoted to, from the ancient Goddess and the Western wisdom traditions to Mary Magdalene, the Divine Feminine and the sacred marriage. This first conversation introduces Anne and many of the ideas we’ll return to in much greater depth throughout the series. Born in 1931, Anne is an Oxford-educated historian, Jungian analyst and co-author with Jules Cashford of The Myth of the Goddess. We begin with the ancient Great Mother and the work of Marija Gimbutas, before moving into Anne’s account of how Western religion gradually separated spirit from nature. She takes us through Asherah and Sophia, the feminine Holy Spirit, Mary Magdalene and the Christian traditions she believes preserved an older teaching of love and wisdom. We also talk about power, self-deification, the body, and why Anne believes the loss of the feminine divine changed the way Western culture came to treat the Earth and one another.  Anne is 95, and this is the first in a series of conversations we’ll be recording together. Future episodes will give us time to stay with subjects we only scratch the surface of here, including Mary Magdalene and the Beloved Companion, the Essenes, the Cathars and the sacred marriage. This first conversation ends with Anne speaking personally about prayer, service and how her understanding of God has changed over the course of her life.  Explore Anne Baring’s Work Official website: https://www.annebaring.com/ Books by Anne Baring Divine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit: The Forgotten Feminine Face of God The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford The Dream of the Cosmos: A Quest for the Soul Books and Writers Mentioned Marija Gimbutas: The Civilization of the Goddess Marija Gimbutas: The Language of the Goddess Erich Neumann: The Great Mother Riane Eisler: The Chalice and the Blade Margaret Barker Elaine Pagels The Gospel of the Beloved Companion, translated by Jehanne de Quillan Related Episodes My episode on Gnosticism, Sophia and the Gnostic creation myth My previous episode on Mary Magdalene House of Cards: In this episode, I mention my ongoing tarot series, House of Cards, during this conversation. We’re studying the cards one by one through mythology, religious history, occult philosophy and the Western wisdom traditions that regularly appear on the podcast. Join the Patreon and listen to House of Cards at patreon.com/backfromtheborderline  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    The Forgotten Feminine Face of God (Anne Baring Part 1)

  8. Aug 25

    How to Tell When a Spiritual Teacher Is Full of Shit

    In 2020, I almost paid $4,000 for a shadow work course. One of the first books I was told to read was Carolyn Elliott’s Existential Kink. I read it, tried to understand what I was being sold, and kept getting the same bad taste in my mouth. It’s been six years since then, and I’ve come back with receipts. I understand why it bothered me now. This episode digs into the history behind some of online spirituality’s favorite borrowed ideas, Jungian shadow work, Tantra, sex magic, Thelema, Babalon, occult initiation, manifestation, the Left Hand Path, passive mediumship, and the modern spiritual coaching industry that learned how to package this material into high ticket programs. I look closely at Carolyn Elliott’s work, what Carl Jung actually wrote about the shadow, how Western neo Tantra differs from older tantric traditions, and the ethics of a teacher who can reinterpret your hesitation as resistance, scarcity, fear, or evidence that you need their teaching. We also need to talk about why psychologically intense spiritual work can go badly when authority outruns training, why so much ancient wisdom being sold online has a surprisingly modern family tree, and why people sometimes leave these spaces burned enough to decide that every form of esotericism must be "demonic". If you’ve ever looked at a $3,000 retreat, a spiritual certification, an initiation, or an Instagram teacher promising transformation and thought, what the f**k am I looking at, this episode is for you. For my full exploration of Aleister Crowley, Thelema, and sex magic, you can listen here. If you want to join my card-by-card study of the Tarot through Christian Hermeticism and deep symbolic study, you can start from the beginning on Patreon. Click here or visit patreon.com/backfromtheborderline. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    How to Tell When a Spiritual Teacher Is Full of Shit
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Back from the Borderline explores how human beings construct, inherit, interpret and sometimes misunderstand the ideas and beliefs through which they experience reality. Through depth psychology, religious history, Western esotericism and philosophy, I investigate how we come to believe what we believe, who influences those beliefs and how they affect the way we understand ourselves and the world. A lot of my work comes back to the relationship between consciousness, belief and power. How do institutions influence what people consider true, and why do we sometimes defend explanations we’ve never seriously questioned? Following these questions has taken me into some pretty unexpected territory, from early Christianity and the Western occult tradition to Jungian psychology, artificial intelligence and anomalous experiences. I’m also drawn to the ways spiritual teachings change as they’re passed between generations, and how institutions can preserve extraordinary wisdom while sometimes interfering with the very spiritual development they were meant to encourage. You’ll find conversations with scholars and independent researchers here, alongside long-form essays where I spend time with historical sources and competing interpretations. Some of the ideas I explore are controversial. Others have been debated for centuries, although most of us were never taught much about them. I don’t assume an institution is correct because it has authority, or that an unconventional theory is true because someone claims it was suppressed. I’m willing to reconsider my own conclusions as I learn, and I hope you’ll feel encouraged to do the same. I started this podcast years ago while trying to understand my own mind. Those early investigations into psychological suffering gradually led me toward the philosophical and religious traditions through which people have understood consciousness and human experience for centuries. There’s quite an archive here now, and I’ve kept much of it available, including episodes that reflect ideas I’ve since reconsidered. If you’re new, you can start wherever you like. There’s no need to go all the way back to the first episode. Even the title has taken on a different meaning over the years. Back from the Borderline now speaks to the boundaries I keep finding myself investigating, between psychology and theology, science and spiritual experience, accepted knowledge and ideas that have been pushed aside. I hope this can be a place where we explore those questions together, develop our own judgment and consider how what we learn might change the way we live. You can explore the full podcast archive, House of Cards, my ongoing Tarot series, and MOODS, my reflective intelligence app, at backfromtheborderline.com. Patreon members can also connect their membership to Spotify to listen to the complete archive there. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Information

  • Creator
    Mollie Adler
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    363
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Mollie Adler
  • Show Website
    Back from the Borderline

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