back from the borderline

Jaksot

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  Gnostic Sophia and the Suppressed Christian Mysteries (Anne Baring Part 3) 15.09.2026 1t 25min

  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 BARINGOfficial website: https://www.annebaring.com/BOOKS BY ANNE BARINGDivine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit: The Forgotten Feminine Face of GodThe Myth of the Goddess with Jules CashfordThe Dream of the CosmosMessages From a Transcendent DimensionGNOSTIC TEXTS DISCUSSEDPistis SophiaTrimorphic ProtennoiaThe Sophia of Jesus ChristThe Hymn of the PearlThe Nag Hammadi codicesThe Gospel of ThomasThe Gospel of PhilipCARL JUNGThe Red BookSeven Sermons to the DeadAnswer to JobALSO MENTIONEDParmenidesG.R.S. MeadPeter KingsleyOrpheus and the Orphic traditionHeraclitusPythagorasPlato and AristotleZosimus of PanopolisG.I. GurdjieffFather Richard RohrMarie-Louise von FranzPhilemonTheodosius ITaxila☽CONTINUE THE WORK: Join the BFTB Patreon → https://patreon.com/backfromtheborderlineYou’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.
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  The Lost Civilization of the Goddess (Anne Baring Part 2) 08.09.2026 1t 5min

  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 BARINGOfficial website: https://www.annebaring.com/BOOKS BY MARIJA GIMBUTASThe Language of the GoddessThe Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old EuropeALSO MENTIONEDThe Myth of the Goddess by Anne Baring and Jules CashfordMessages From a Transcendent Dimension by Anne BaringJoseph CampbellThe Hermetic Order of the Golden DawnFederico FagginIain McGilchristSEE THE OBJECTSThe 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/backfromtheborderlineYou’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.
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  The Forgotten Feminine Face of God (Anne Baring Part 1) 01.09.2026 1t 29min

  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 WorkOfficial website: https://www.annebaring.com/Books by Anne BaringDivine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit: The Forgotten Feminine Face of GodThe Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image by Anne Baring and Jules CashfordThe Dream of the Cosmos: A Quest for the SoulBooks and Writers MentionedMarija Gimbutas: The Civilization of the GoddessMarija Gimbutas: The Language of the GoddessErich Neumann: The Great MotherRiane Eisler: The Chalice and the BladeMargaret BarkerElaine PagelsThe Gospel of the Beloved Companion, translated by Jehanne de QuillanRelated EpisodesMy episode on Gnosticism, Sophia and the Gnostic creation mythMy previous episode on Mary MagdaleneHouse 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.
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  How to Tell When a Spiritual Teacher Is Full of Shit 25.08.2026 1t 58min

  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 fuck 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.
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  Aleister Crowley’s Thelema: Sex Magick and the Problem With the Prophet 18.08.2026 1t 53min

  Aleister Crowley had a beautiful idea, and then he built a religion around himself.This episode takes Thelema seriously enough to examine what Crowley was actually teaching. True Will sits at the center of it, alongside The Book of the Law, Aiwass, the Aeon of Horus, sex magick, Babalon, and Crowley’s claim that humanity had entered a new spiritual age. He drew heavily from the Golden Dawn and Hermetic Qabalah, then remixed and recast those traditions through his own revelation and his own ideas about freedom, sexuality, and authority.I’m interested in the point where spiritual freedom starts giving one man an extraordinary amount of interpretive power. Crowley’s treatment of women, the role of the Scarlet Woman, the use of sex as magical technology, and the theology built around Babalon all deserve much more scrutiny than either Satanic Panic or Crowley worship tends to allow.True Will can absolutely be understood as disciplined vocation rather than appetite, and many modern Thelemites read Crowley critically while taking consent and individual freedom seriously. The harder work here (that I attempt to undertake in this episode) is taking a hard look at the actual religion without turning it into either “evil” or “enlightenment”.This is a study of Aleister Crowley’s Thelema from inside the Western mysteries, with plenty of sympathy for the questions Crowley was actually asking and very little patience for the places I think his answers went badly wrong.Next week, we’ll be following Crowley’s massive influence all the way into online spirituality, Existential Kink, modern shadow work, sacred sexuality, and the high-ticket coaching economy.CONTINUE THE WORK: Join the BFTB Patreon → https://patreon.com/backfromtheborderlineYou’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.
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  The Braced Body: The Spiritual Cost of Always Being in Control (Part 3) 11.08.2026 56min

  I’ve spent a lot of this series thinking about what happens when the body gets so used to effort that it forgets how to stop. By the time I got to this final episode, I found myself somewhere I didn’t expect. I was thinking about grace, and the spiritual cost of living as though everything depends on your ability to stay useful, vigilant, and in control.In Part Three of The Braced Body, we’re taking everything we’ve learned about chronic tension and nervous system bracing into much deeper spiritual territory. I’ll get into the old argument between Augustine and Pelagius about human effort and grace, why Sabbath has something to say about our inability to stop working, and how ideas like kenosis and alchemy can help us think about surrender without turning it into weakness or self-erasure.We’ll also spend some time with Meister Eckhart and the older mystical traditions that understood spiritual life as something we participate in rather than something we manufacture through enough effort.Somewhere underneath all of this is a problem I know very well in myself. You can get very good at understanding/taking care of /improving yourself, and still be living as though receiving anything you didn’t somehow earn is dangerous as hell.I wanted to know what happens when that habit reaches our spiritual lives too, and whether the body might know something about grace that the intellect has been trying to understand for centuries.CONTINUE THE WORK: Join the BFTB Patreon → https://patreon.com/backfromtheborderlineYou’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.
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  The Braced Body: Why Rest Feel Unsafe & How to Let Go (Part 2) 04.08.2026 1t 4min

  Your body can be exhausted and still refuse to rest. You lie down, your jaw stays tight, your shoulders keep working, and some part of you remains ready for the next demand.This is Part Two of a three-part series on chronic bracing. We move from why the body learned to stay tense into what it can do instead. Drawing on Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Hubert Godard, bodywork, and basic physics, I look at why yielding has such a bad reputation, how the floor and the bed support movement, and why “relax your shoulders” often changes almost nothing.We also talk about the exhale, the fear of letting another person help, and the difference between yielding and giving up your choices. You’ll hear a few small practices that can help your nervous system notice support before it adds more effort. If you haven’t heard Part One, start with The Braced Body, Why You’re Tense Even When Nothing Is Wrong. Part Three will move into grace, surrender, and what it means for spiritual trust to reach the body.CONTINUE THE WORK: Join the BFTB Patreon → https://patreon.com/backfromtheborderlineYou’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.Artwork credit: “Surrender” by Tom Sullivan (Saatchi Art China) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  The Braced Body: Why You’re Tense Even When Nothing Is Wrong (Part 1) 28.07.2026 56min

  Do you clench your jaw without noticing? Do your shoulders stay tense even when you’re finally sitting down to rest? Does your body still feel like it’s working long after the day is over?This episode started with something completely ordinary. I was making the guest bed, lay down for a minute, and noticed that even though I was trying to rest, my entire upper body was still working. My shoulders were tense. My jaw was clenched. It was such a small moment, but it sent me down a rabbit hole. I wanted to understand why so many of us keep holding ourselves together long after we no longer have to.In Part One of this series, we’ll look at why chronic jaw clenching, neck pain, shoulder tension, and the feeling of always being “on” can become so familiar that we stop noticing we’re doing them. We’ll also talk about why understanding your childhood, your attachment style, or your nervous system doesn’t automatically change these habits, even when you know exactly where they came from.Along the way, I’ll borrow ideas from Moshe Feldenkrais, Wilhelm Reich, Donald Winnicott, Wilfred Bion, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. I want to see whether their work can help explain why the body keeps preparing for demands that ended years ago, and why receiving support can feel so much harder than we expect, even if it seems really simple on the surface.By the end of this episode, I hope you’ll start catching the moment your body begins to brace. That’s where change begins. You can’t work with something you can’t see. This is Part One of the series. In the next episode, we’ll stop asking why we brace and start looking at how the body learns to trust support again.If you’re curious about trying the Feldenkrais Method yourself, FeldenkraisProject.com is a great place to start. The free lessons can help you notice how your body moves and where you may be using more effort than you need. You can check it out here: https://feldenkraisproject.com/.CONTINUE THE WORK: Join the BFTB Patreon → https://patreon.com/backfromtheborderlineYou’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.
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  What Do We Do With a Broken Spiritual Inheritance? 21.07.2026 1t 4min

  A lot of us are walking around with religious trauma and a God-shaped hole.I was raised inside a version of Christianity, and I know what it can leave in the body. Shame, fear, sexual repression, homophobia, spiritual surveillance, and the feeling that your body itself was a problem.Leaving can honestly sometimes be the only answer. For some people, atheism feels better than trying to rescue anything with Jesus attached to it. Others move toward witchcraft, occultism, or a private spiritual life built from candles, books, rituals, and scraps. At the same time, plenty of people are running back to traditional Christianity because the modern world feels hollow, lonely, and stripped of beauty.Both responses make sense. Burning the whole thing down can feel like the only honest answer when religion harmed you. Returning to the old Church can make sense when the alternative looks like “buy things, optimize yourself, and die.” At least the Church has ritual, saints, feast days, candles, moral demands, and a story larger than the self. But neither response heals the wound on its own.This episode is about the broken spiritual inheritance of the West, especially Christianity, and why we keep swinging between rejection and return. We leave the Church and lose old languages for grief, prayer, beauty, and moral life. Or we return and pretend the harm was exaggerated, as if shame, control, misogyny, homophobia, and fear of the body were just minor details. The Church absolutely preserved beauty, but it also caused immeasurable harm.I’m interested in what happens after you’ve left, told the truth, stopped pretending the harm/abuse was acceptable, and still have to decide what you’ll carry forward.This episode moves through religious trauma, Christianity, Mary Magdalene, the Grail, the Church of Rome, the broken masculine and feminine inside Western spirituality, and the problem of building a new spiritual life without pretending you made yourself from nothing.Not everything can be saved, but not everything should be burned to ash. Both things can be true.CONTINUE THE WORK: Join the BFTB Patreon → https://patreon.com/backfromtheborderlineYou’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.
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  UFOs, AI, and the Religion of the Unconscious (Live at Contact in the Desert 2026) 14.07.2026 1t 11min

  This year, I had the chance to attend Contact in the Desert, which is a conference devoted to UFOs, psi phenomena, consciousness, and anomalous experience.  While I was there, I joined a live podcast panel hosted by my friend Michael Phillip of Third Eye Drops. Also on the panel were psi researcher Adam Curry and Josh from the Polarity YouTube channel, so the conversation went exactly where you’d expect it to go, which is to say… EVERYWHERE.We dive into everything from UFOs and consciousness to the stranger and more fringe material underneath the usual disclosure conversation. Things like Carl Jung’s theory of the UFO as a mandala, CE5 (a contact practice where people use meditation and intention to invite anomalous lights or craft to appear), the unconscious mind, the body’s fear response, trauma, altered states, AI agents apparently inventing religious behavior, and one truly unforgettable story about raccoons creating a ritual around a quantum food dispenser. Yes, you read that right. :-)The central focus of the panel ultimately circles around the idea that anomalous experiences seem to depend on what an individual psyche can tolerate and what our deeper wiring permits us to perceive.I also talk about the orb sighting that completely changed my relationship to the phenomenon, and why my own work keeps returning to symbol, tarot, depth psychology, and archetypal thinking as tools for making contact with a deeper reality without losing my sh*t in this one.I think a lot of UFO and disclosure discourse tends to get stuck on “weird things in the sky,” beings, craft, government secrets, etc. And don’t get me wrong, I think those are important things to dive into. The problem is that they leave out the bigger (and weirder) problem sitting right in front of us. Which is that the human being is the one doing the perceiving.I hope you enjoy listening to this one as much as I enjoyed being a part of this panel with three awesome humans who I now consider dear friends.MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEMichael Phillip [Host of Third Eye Drops]YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thirdeyedropsJosh [Creator of Polarity]YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PolarityJosh🜁🜃🜄TAKE THIS EPISODE INTO MOODS: MOODS is a private space for dream work, tarot, self-reflection, and exploring the ideas, questions, and patterns that emerge from episodes of BFTB—or your own life. Patreon members receive 31% off MOODS access with a 7-day free trial. To activate your discount, email [email protected] with “Patreon MOODS Access” and the email associated with your Patreon account. Read more about MOODS here.MEMBER SUPPORT: Patreon comments and messages are not monitored for support. If you need help with account access, billing, subscription changes, listening setup, or a technical problem with the membership, visit bftbportal.com. The portal includes an email where you can reach me directly, though replies are reserved for genuine membership or access-related issues.🜁🜃🜄 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Mary Magdalene and the End of Spiritual Childhood 07.07.2026 51min

  This week, I was doing an I Ching reading, and one line stood out to me: “To find what you seek, leave the child and follow the adult.” This episode was inspired by that line. I use it to think through spiritual maturity, especially in a culture where adulthood often feels empty, exhausted, and totally cut off from wonder.We talk about the younger self that still wants someone to come save us, hand us answers, or make the pain finally mean something. We also look at the way strong feelings can trick us into thinking something must be true, and how spirituality can become another way to avoid ordinary honesty, responsibility, and hard choices.Then I connect that to Mary Magdalene, especially an early Christian text called the Gospel of Mary, where Mary says Jesus taught her things the other disciples didn’t hear, and the men have to decide whether they can accept that a woman may have received something they didn’t. We also talk about courtly love, the medieval idea that a knight had to learn patience and devotion through his love for the Lady, and the Cathars, a Christian group in southern France that was condemned by the Church and allowed women to carry spiritual authority.This episode is for anyone who still wants a spiritual life, but doesn’t want to use spirituality as a way to stay stuck. I’m asking what it looks like to keep our sensitivity, curiosity, and openness, while also becoming someone who can make decisions, tell the truth, care for their real life, and stop waiting for something outside of themselves to fix everything.Resources mentioned in this episode: The Gospel of the Beloved Companion, translated by Jehanne de QuillanMary Magdalene Unveiled by Annine van der MeerThe Dream of the Cosmos by Anne BaringMerchants of Light by Betty KovacsThe Cathars by Malcolm BarberLove in the Western World by Denis de RougemontThe I Ching, Hexagram 17, line 3CONTINUE THE WORK: Join the BFTB Patreon → https://patreon.com/backfromtheborderlineYou’ll get:☆ Weekly bonus episodes☆ House of Cards (my new tarot study series)☆ 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.
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  The Occult Teacher We Need Right Now: Dion Fortune, Psychic Hygiene, and the Magick of the Mind 29.06.2026 1t 36min

  Dion Fortune was one of the great occult teachers of the twentieth century, and one of my personal favorites.In this episode, I’m joined by Ike Baker for a conversation about Fortune and her legacy. We begin with Ike’s own relationship to her, including the story of visiting her grave in Glastonbury, then move into her work on magic, psychology, psychic hygiene, ritual, Qabalah, polarity, Christ, Crowley, Avalon, and the power of images to act upon the mind.Fortune understood something we desperately need right now as a collective. The unseen world has consequences, the images we feed can become forces, the mind has gates, and ritual changes the one who repeats it.Ike is teaching a full course on Dion Fortune beginning July 13th 2026, called The Magic of Dion Fortune. The course meets Mondays at 7pm Eastern via Zoom for 10 modules. All sessions will be recorded for registrant playback and will include custom syllabi, supplemental materials, and slides. The course covers Dion Fortune’s unpublished papers and rituals, along with an integrated study of her theory and practical work through 21 of her writings, including The Mystical Qabalah, Psychic Self-Defense, The Cosmic Doctrine, The Circuit of Force, Applied Magic, Sane Occultism, The Training and Work of an Initiate, her occult fiction, and her rites of Pan and Isis.To register, visit ikebaker.com, open the chat box, and tell Ike you’re from Back from the Borderline and want to register for The Magic of Dion Fortune. Use code BFTB100 for the listener discount.ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: Ike and Skyler’s Aetherica episode on Dion Fortune: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dion-fortune-theosophy-hermeneutics-qabalah-thought/id1696416784?i=1000763560692My episode: The Arrogance of Over-Empathy: https://pod.link/1576242501/episode/NmEzOTg5MmIzMGQ1ZWJmM2M5MmVjZTgxMy Patreon-exclusive conversation with Ike Baker: https://www.patreon.com/backfromtheborderline/posts/lucid-in-dream-156921083Join House of Cards, my weekly tarot study series on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/collection/2222096Use MOODS to reflect on this episode → 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.
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  The Skill AI Can Never Replace (And Why I’m Teaching Tarot) 25.06.2026 31min

  This episode is the opening lesson from my new Patreon series, House of Cards.House of Cards is an ongoing study of the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot through depth psychology, mythology, symbolism, dreams, and contemplative practice. Every week we move through the deck one card at a time, treating tarot as a language of psyche, symbol, and myth. I’m releasing this first lesson publicly because it explains the philosophy behind the series. You can continue the study from Lesson 2 onward over on Patreon.In this introductory lesson we explore:• Why symbolic literacy matters in the age of AI• Why tarot is far more than fortune telling• How sustained attention transforms the way we see• Why symbolic systems have always been central to spiritual and psychological development• How to approach this series for the deepest transformationSuggested DeckThroughout this series I’ll be using the Smith-Waite Centennial Tarot Deck (Pamela Colman Smith Centennial Edition). We’ll explore in much more granular detail why this particular deck was chosen in Lesson 2, which is available now on Patreon.Next EpisodeHouse of Cards 02: Why the Rider-Waite-Smith Deck: Join us on Patreon as we explore the origins of the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, Arthur Edward Waite, Pamela Colman Smith, Christian Hermeticism, the revolution of the illustrated pip cards, and why this deck remains the symbolic language of modern tarot over a century after its creation.Continue the StudyIf you’d like to study the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot with me, you can join House of Cards over on Patreon. We’ll move through the deck one card at a time, one week at a time, treating each image as a living lesson in psyche, symbol, and myth. Start with Lesson 2 and join us whenever you’re ready.👉 Join the study: https://www.patreon.com/collection/2222096 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  The Arrogance of Too Much Empathy 23.06.2026 1t 5min

  This might be the most personally confronting episode I’ve recorded in a long time.A few days ago, I had to send a text message I had been absolutely dreading. I spent days worrying about how this person would feel, what they would think, whether they’d be hurt, disappointed, blindsided, angry, or quietly resentful.Then the moment came when I needed to send the damn text already. So I did. And guess what? Their response completely dismantled the story I had been telling myself all week. That experience led me into a much bigger question: at what point does empathy stop being empathy and start becoming an attempt to manage someone else’s reality for them?The deeper I looked, the more I saw how often I move through life assuming responsibility for experiences that do not actually belong to me. And I doubt I’m alone in that. Maybe this is something you’re doing without realizing it, too.In this episode, we talk about over-responsibility, people-pleasing, parenting, Rudolf Steiner, Dion Fortune, Martin Buber, the Christian mysteries, and why trusting another person’s capacity might be one of the deepest forms of love there is.Along the way we explore:• Why highly sensitive people often become emotional managers• The hidden arrogance inside over-empathy• The difference between caring for someone and carrying them• Why rescuing can quietly undermine growth• What parenting teaches us about trust• The spiritual danger of trying to live other people’s lives for them• The relationship between love, faith, and control• How to stop rehearsing other people’s sufferingReflection questions from this episode (for your journal, MOODS, or simply a conversation with yourself):• What do I actually know?• What am I assuming?• What part of this belongs to me?• What would respect look like here?• Am I helping this person, or am I trying to protect myself from the discomfort of watching them have their own experience?• What resources might this person have that I cannot see?These questions ended up changing the entire direction of my thinking. If you spend some real time with them, I think they might do the same for you.CONTINUE THE WORK: Join the BFTB Patreon → https://patreon.com/backfromtheborderlineYou’ll get:☆ Weekly bonus episodes☆ Consciousness Stream☆ 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.
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  Gay Men Have Always Loved a “Difficult” Woman 16.06.2026 50min

  For much of my life, many of my closest friendships have been with gay men.Not because they were fun little accessories or stereotypical sidekicks, either. We didn’t even always have that much in common on paper. Yep, these friendships were built the old-fashioned way through grief, bad decisions, long as hell voice notes, laughter at completely inappropriate moments, and enough years of showing up for each other that eventually they became part of the fabric of my life.In this episode, you'll join me on a journey where I explore why certain women and certain gay men seem to find each other so consistently throughout time.We'll get into Jung (of course), chosen family, female villains, the AIDS crisis, and the deep bond that tends to form when two people have spent their entire lives paying close attention to the rules everybody else seems to take for granted.This is a love letter to the gay men who have shaped my life, challenged me, protected me, made me laugh until I cried, and helped me become more fully myself.Reflection Prompts for MOODS (or your journal):• Who are the people who have seen me most clearly throughout my life?• What parts of myself have other people called “too much”?• What would happen if I stopped treating those qualities as flaws?• What friendships have changed the way I see myself?CONTINUE THE WORK: Join the BFTB Patreon → https://patreon.com/backfromtheborderlineYou’ll get:☆ Weekly bonus episodes☆ Consciousness Stream☆ 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.
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  The Female Shadow 09.06.2026 1t 12min

  Female cruelty often works insidiously enough to make the person on the receiving end of it gaslight the hell out of themselves. The punishment that’s served up tends to arrive socially or emotionally, often in somewhat polite ways, which is part of what makes it so hard to call out without sounding rude, crazy, or dramatic.This episode takes a hard look at female shadow as something deeply shaped by girlhood, motherhood, power, fear, beauty, belonging, and the training many women receive in twisting themselves up into pretzels to be more “acceptable.”Listening requires you to ask what happens when women start telling the truth about the ways we protect, punish, need, compete, perform, and survive. Because a lot of what we collectively call “femininity” is terror management.Reflections for MOODS or your journal:What parts of my personality were built around maintaining belonging rather than expressing truth?Where does my care for others become self-erasure, and what am I afraid would happen if I stopped?Show me the feminine aspects of myself that I perform socially versus the ones that feel genuinely alive.🜏 CONTINUE THE WORK: If you recognize yourself in something from this episode, don’t leave it unresolved. If you want more depth and the full archive: Join the BFTB Patreon → https://patreon.com/backfromtheborderlineYou’ll get:☆ Weekly bonus episodes☆ Consciousness Stream☆ Archetypal tarot + astrology forecasts☆ Full ad-free archive accessIf 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 both MOODS and Patreon free for 7 days to see if they’re right for you.  If you join Patreon first: You’ll also unlock discounted access to MOODS. See you inside. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  The Christian Grimoire Evangelicals Forgot About (Part 1) 02.06.2026 43min

  Most people think Christian history has a simple answer to anything regarding “magic": don’t touch it, and all of it is “demonic.”The Arbatel of Magick makes that answer harder to defend. This strange little text, translated into English in 1655, sits inside a distinctly Christian worldview while talking openly about prayer, angels, spirits, hidden knowledge, and the deeply serious question of who should be trusted with power.In Part 1 of this two-part exploration, you’ll learn what the Arbatel is, why it’s such a deep cut, and why it complicates the usual evangelical panic around divination and occult material without treating magic like a toy.Part 2 will drop on June 11th on Patreon.Join at patreon.com/backfromtheborderline and search “The Christian Grimoire Evangelicals Forgot About (Part 2)” for my deeper breakdown of what the Arbatel actually teaches and how its warnings can be carried into your modern life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Why Everyone Sounds Religious About AI [Consciousness Stream for May 2026] 28.05.2026 26min

  Well folks, it’s that time again for our weekly recap of the month. On this one, we’ll dive into Richard Dawkins and his new essay on UnHerd. This is a man who spent years telling all of us that consciousness was chemistry and religion was nothing more than a very old and outdated coping mechanism to our inevitable demise into dust. Now, he’s sitting with Claude calling it “Claudia” and wondering out loud whether “the machine” might actually be conscious after all.We’ll then get into how the Vatican is currently preparing a formal AI doctrine before Silicon Valley gets to decide what a mind is entirely on its own terms. After that, you’ll learn why celebrities are suddenly talking about “soul” after years of feeding audiences recycled franchise sludge.Something in the culture seems to be… slipping. Especially around language. People keep insisting AI is merely software while continuing to speak about it like a spirit/child/god/therapist/lover/priest/threat/mirror/companion.We finish off with my favorite story of the month, where archaeologists have recently uncovered Homer wrapped around an Egyptian mummy. It’s like something is trying to remind us that myth refuses to stay buried.Modern culture was never able to rid itself of enchantment. It shoved it into technology, branding, entertainment, politics, fandoms, algorithms, and glowing little rectangles people now stare into like medieval peasants consulting an oracle.🜏 Want to hear the full episode? Join the BFTB Patreon → https://patreon.com/backfromtheborderlineYou’ll get:☆ Weekly bonus episodes☆ Consciousness Stream☆ Archetypal tarot + astrology forecasts☆ Full ad-free archive accessJoin 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 both MOODS and Patreon free for 7 days to see if they’re right for you.  If you join Patreon first: You’ll also unlock discounted access to MOODS. See you inside. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  The Body Keeps the Mileage (On Mortality & Wellness Panic) 26.05.2026 1t

  The inspiration for this episode came to me after looking at a small scar under my daughter’s eye and realizing that our bodies really do keep the f*cking score. That thought sent me down a bit of an existential rabbit hole. Back to my millennial-era belly button piercing, my breast implants, and all the various little decisions I made when my body still felt endlessly recoverable to me and when “forever” sounded dramatic and way too far away to really care about. Now I’m 36, raising a toddler, exhausted as hell, building things, trying to stay healthy without becoming a total psycho about it, and now my body feels way less like a sexy little accessory to my current “identity,” and instead the whole ass reality of it. It’s the one thing I have that has to carry everything for me. Work, grief, love, stress, aging, pleasure, fear… all of it. This is a really vulnerable one. I cried more times recording it than I’d like to admit. Some of it I edited out but most of it, I didn't.This one's about mortality, wellness panic, microplastics, biohacking, cosmetic procedures, spiritual disembodiment, motherhood, and the weird and dystopian modern feeling that everything is either going to give us cancer or something we’re supposed to somehow optimize into infinity. Somewhere between total neglect and obsession, I think there’s got to be more honest way to live inside our bodies. It's something I'm still trying to figure out. Creating this episode was part of that ongoing process.Reflective prompts from the episode: What relationship did I inherit with my body, and who taught me to see myself that way?What choices am I making today that my future self will one day have to carry?What would caring for my body look like if fear wasn’t the primary motivation?You can take these into your journal, on a walk, or into MOODS with the Oriel archetype. 🜏 CONTINUE THE WORK: If you recognize yourself in something from this episode, don’t leave it unresolved. If you want more depth and the full archive: Join the BFTB Patreon → https://patreon.com/backfromtheborderlineYou’ll get:☆ Weekly bonus episodes☆ Consciousness Stream☆ Archetypal tarot + astrology forecasts☆ Full ad-free archive accessIf 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 both MOODS and Patreon free for 7 days to see if they’re right for you.  If you join Patreon first: You’ll also unlock discounted access to MOODS. See you inside. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Why Tarot Feels So Accurate, And How to Actually Read a Card 21.05.2026 25min

  Someone tagged me this week in a Christian conversion testimony video and accused me of leading people into demonic tarot witchcraft, which honestly made me laugh. So naturally, I made an episode.I felt like it was important to explore why tarot feels so disturbingly accurate sometimes even when you don’t fully “believe” in it.I’ll introduce you to Pamela Colman Smith, the artist behind the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, and why her illustrated minor arcana changed tarot forever. We discuss tarot as theater, the body language inside various cards, and perhaps most importantly, why simply memorizing meanings is usually the worst possible way to learn.By the end of this episode, you’ll learn how to actually read the tarot intuitively.You can listen to the full episode at patreon.com/backfromtheborderline. You can also join the Patreon for free if you want the weekly Wednesday newsletter and previews of the paid episodes before deciding.MOODS is live at moods.world, and you can use The Animatrix inside MOODS to work through your daily tarot pull in the same way I teach here. Patreon members also get discounted access to MOODS. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.