The Alexandrian

Karagan Griffith

Steeped in the rigorous tradition of the British occult revival, The Alexandrian is a weekly discourse on the lived reality of the Western Esoteric path. Hosted by Karagan and Elie Barnes, this is an exploration of the magic circle not as a historical artifact, but as a vibrant, demanding space of transformation. Moving beyond the scholarly record, they share the visceral experience of the Priesthood—the internal alchemy of the rites, the silent gravity of service to the Old Gods, and the profound mystery of a life dedicated to the Arte Magical.

  1. 12 Aug

    Magical Connections

    In this episode, Elie and Karagan reflect on their journey through the Alexandrian tradition, discussing the importance of community, the nature of initiation, and the spontaneity of learning. They share personal experiences, including a profound moment at a magical tree in Lisbon, which symbolizes their connection to the past and future in their spiritual practices. In this conversation, Elie and Karagan explore the themes of magical activations, personal power, and the significance of shared experiences in spiritual practices. They discuss the importance of recognizing and owning one's power, the nature of power within the craft, and the role of priesthood in enhancing personal practice. The dialogue also delves into philosophical inquiries about ultimate reality and the infinite field, emphasizing the interconnectedness of all beings and the transformative potential of consciousness.

  2. 5 Aug

    The Heart as the Guide in Spiritual Seeking

    In this episode, Elie and Karagan explore the spiritual journey, the nature of religion, and the seeker’s path to witchcraft and divine connection. They discuss how intuition, heart, and personal resonance guide us to our true spiritual paths.

  3. 29 Jul

    Freedom, Power, and Beauty

    There exists, within the Alexandrian tradition, a discipline that modernity finds almost inconceivable: the deliberate cultivation of silence between those who share a craft. In this episode, Kerrigan and Ellie turn their attention to Maxine's rule of no socialising — the custom by which initiates gather, labour, and worship together, then part without further word or visit, until the circle calls them again. What might appear, at first hearing, a minor austerity reveals itself instead as something closer to a philosophy: a considered defence against the erosions of gossip, the dilution of hierarchy, and the quiet but real damage done to the bond between teacher and student when that bond is left to compete with the ceaseless murmur of modern discourse. Yet this is no mere exposition of custom. It is, rather, a searching and candid meditation on the price of belonging to something hierarchical, oath-bound, and unapologetically demanding, in an age inclined to mistake constant contact for genuine intimacy. The conversation moves between covens riven by rivalry and others content to labour in complete obscurity; between the freedom to depart and the far harder freedom to remain; between ethics, so often denied to witchcraft, and its quiet insistence upon them regardless. By its close, one begins to suspect that the silence enjoined between covens is not an absence at all, but a form of attention — and perhaps even of reverence.

  4. 23 Jul

    The Memory Palace of the Gods

    In the sixteenth century, Giordano Bruno went to the stake for an idea he refused to recant: that the mind, properly trained, could become an instrument of transformation rather than mere storage. This episode traces that idea back further still — to the philosophers' schools of antiquity, where Plato prized the art of memory and Socrates distrusted it, through the Hermetic writings of Alexandria, into the Renaissance where Bruno fused memory with magic, and onward to the Golden Dawn, who renamed the technique "path working" without altering its bones. Karagan and Elie sit with what this inheritance means inside a working coven today. They discuss how symbolic, carefully sequenced imagery — walked deliberately through the imagination — becomes a rehearsal for ritual itself, so that by the time the circle is cast, the contact has already been made in the inner temple of the mind. They speak of the "safety keys" that let covens test whether their members are moving through the same inner landscape together, of the delicate art of improvisation once the foundational stations are known (Elie's comparison to jazz musicians who have mastered their chords before they dare to depart from them), and of the danger of ritual performed without this interior labour: what they call, plainly, empty ritual. Drawing on Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki's path working tradition, the Corpus Hermeticum's account of the soul's descent and return through the seven spheres, and their own experience building and testing workings within the Alexandrian tradition, the conversation moves fluidly between history and confession, doctrine and personal gnosis. It is, in the end, an episode about the architecture of consciousness itself — how the mind that can hold a structure of images can, in time, learn to hold the gods.

  5. 14 Jul

    The Unadorned Priesthood

    Before the Book of Shadows is opened, before the circle is cast and the candle lit, there is character — and it is this, rather than any wand or working, that Elie and Karagan set out to examine. In an age that has learned to photograph its altars and caption its rites, what remains of the old, unglamorous virtues: discretion, service, the keeping of an oath simply because it was given? Drawing the conversation back through Rosicrucian creed, the wisdom of the Book of Shadows, and the quiet, unbending household of a small-town Florida judge, the two hosts trace a lineage of conduct that predates social media and may yet outlast it. They ask what a priesthood actually is, once the robes are set aside. They ask what truth requires of a person who claims to seek it. And they ask, gently but insistently, whether the modern occultist has mistaken the aesthetics of the craft for its substance. This is not an episode about spellwork. It is an episode about the soul that does the spellworking — old-fashioned, unfashionable, and, they would argue, entirely necessary.

    The Unadorned Priesthood

  6. 8 Jul

    To Keep Silent — On Sacredness, Secrecy, and the Living Magic

    There is a magic that leaves no photograph. It asks nothing of the audience. It is done in the dark hours, put away with care, and never spoken of — and it is precisely this silence that gives it wings. In this episode, Elie and Karagan descend into one of the most ancient and quietly urgent questions of the practitioner's path: what becomes of the sacred when it is spoken aloud? Drawing from the fourth precept of the Witch's Pyramid — to keep silent — they explore how silence is not merely an absence of noise, but a holy vessel, a chalice waiting to be filled with only the most consecrated of sounds. From the Iberian initiation rites that left the seeker alone on a mountain for weeks with nothing but water and the divine, to the shuttered contemplative cloisters of Catholic convents, to a grandmother's garden in Portugal and a childhood stump in the woods, they trace the same sacred instinct across time and tradition: that which is most real must be most protected. They speak, too, of the quiet crisis of contemporary witchcraft — aestheticised, hashtagged, curated — and ask, with gentle gravity, whether the very mention of magic is enough to make it evaporate. And they reflect on what it means to carry priesthood not as a role one steps into and out of, but as a permanent state of being; a vocation as ancient as the first temple, the first silence, the first hum that pierced it. Because the silence is the holy chalice. And what you pour into it — that is everything.

    To Keep Silent — On Sacredness, Secrecy, and the Living Magic

  7. 1 Jul

    A Game of Mirrors

    What is magic, truly? Not the pageantry of it, nor the costume — but the live current beneath; the thing that moves in the body before the mind has found the word for it. In this episode, we descend into the heart of the matter. We speak of theurgy and thaumaturgy, of the god-connection that must precede all working, and of the cardinal rule that has quietly governed all serious practice since the beginning: necessity. If you do not need it — truly, viscerally need it — the work will lie flat. Magic, it turns out, is not wishful thinking dressed in candlelight. It is a precision instrument that demands the full weight of a human being behind it. We speak too of the dangers of dilution — the well-meaning practitioner who drums too many drums, stirs too many currents, and arrives at the circle carrying the residue of five other altars. Of psychic vampirism. Of the madness that stalks those who push too far without the foundation to hold them. Of what it means to be clean — not merely the ritual space, but the mind, the aura, the life one builds outside the temple walls. And at the last, we arrive at consciousness itself. The hermit on the mountain, lantern raised, seeing three hundred and sixty degrees. The lemniscate folding everything back. The mirror turning endlessly inward and outward at once. It is a game of mirrors. And it always has been.

    A Game of Mirrors

  8. 24 Jun

    Guarded Mysteries

    There is an old and quiet law within the Craft — that the bond between priesthood and pupil must answer first to the Mysteries, and only after to affection. In this episode, Karagan and Elie turn their attention to the so-called "no socializing rule," tracing its wisdom through coven politics, the perilous electricity of raised power, and the very particular vanities of the ego left untended. They ask what happens when reverence curdles into familiarity, when friendship eclipses respect, and when the sacred work of polarity is mistaken for something altogether more mundane. From the cautionary candour of Israel Regardie to the seductions of the algorithmic age, this is a conversation about discretion as devotion — about choosing, always, to be a beacon rather than a flashlight. A meditation on boundaries, power, and the discipline required to keep a Mystery a Mystery.

    Guarded Mysteries
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About

Steeped in the rigorous tradition of the British occult revival, The Alexandrian is a weekly discourse on the lived reality of the Western Esoteric path. Hosted by Karagan and Elie Barnes, this is an exploration of the magic circle not as a historical artifact, but as a vibrant, demanding space of transformation. Moving beyond the scholarly record, they share the visceral experience of the Priesthood—the internal alchemy of the rites, the silent gravity of service to the Old Gods, and the profound mystery of a life dedicated to the Arte Magical.

Information

  • Creator
    Karagan Griffith
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    14
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Karagan Griffith
  • Show Website
    The Alexandrian