The Emerald

Odcinki

• Space Hex! (The Curse of Restlessness, Revisited) 12.06.2026 1godz

  “We don’t go to other planets because our planet is dying. Our planet dies, specifically because we perpetually want to go somewhere else.” Fresh off of the Initial Public Offering of Space X, the largest IPO in human history, it's worth revisiting the deeper implications of humanity's incessant drive... beyond. Today on the podcast, we look at humanity’s increasing obsession with transcending planet Earth, in the context of the mythologies of human restlessness. How human beings, whether thr...
• Seven 08.06.2026 43min

  Seven years ago last Tuesday, The Emerald podcast was born. This episode reflects on the journey of the podcast so far and gives hints of what's to come, all through the prism of the number 7, which is — to say the least — a mythically important number. The myths often iterate in cycles and families of seven—seven swans, seven dwarves, seven ravens, and seven gates of the underworld. In many traditions, seven represents the completion of a cycle and the beginning of a new one. In Ay...
• Enter the Dragon, Part 2: On Order and Chaos 01.05.2026 2godz 12min

  The dragon, or serpent, in myth and story, is the coiling, spiraling power of nature itself. And so, how cultures have treated the dragon depends a lot on how they view nature and how they view the world. Some have celebrated and honored the serpent power, some have sought to harness or direct it, others to contain or tame it, while some have labeled it as chaos and sought to subdue and slay it. The history of the Western world's relationship with dragons and serpents is fraught, and Western ...
• Enter The Dragon, Terrifying and Beautiful (Part 1) 17.02.2026 1godz 59min

  Dragon lore is everywhere in global mythology — no matter what continent you live on, the land you inhabit holds dragon story, and quite possibly was shaped by dragons, or has sleeping dragons in it. Such dragons have captured human imagination across hundreds of cultures and thousands of years. But the dragon is much more than a category of fantastical beast. In many traditions the world-dragon, or world-serpent, is creator, land-shaper, present in the water cycle and in weather ...
• Carry That Weight: On Mythic Burdens and Cosmic Supports 12.11.2025 2godz 16min

  There is a weight to modern existence — perhaps you've felt it. In a world in which social and environmental crises only seem to be deepening and our familial, communal and spiritual support systems are steadily crumbling, individuals are buckling under the weight. This weight is not simply metaphorical. When the web of relationships that traditionally hold human culture together is fractured, then sociocultural, ecological, and even cosmic burdens are funneled to individuals to carry. We oft...
• I Think I Hear the Coming of a Planetary Roar (with Louder Music) 07.09.2025 2godz 6min

  In times of rising frustration over the state of nations, times of personal, ecological, societal, and planetary impasse, when cycles of senseless suffering seemingly repeat themselves over and over, and all the global upheaval still isn't bringing about change... in times when stuck energies need to move and forces that have been restrained for generations long to break free, the myths offer visions of roarers, bellowers, trumpeters, and conch-blasters. These movers and shakers do more than ...
• I Think I Hear the Coming of a Planetary Roar 30.08.2025 2godz 6min

  In times of rising frustration over the state of nations, times of personal, ecological, societal, and planetary impasse, when cycles of senseless suffering seemingly repeat themselves over and over, and all the global upheaval still isn't bringing about change... in times when stuck energies need to move and forces that have been restrained for generations long to break free, the myths offer visions of roarers, bellowers, trumpeters, and conch-blasters. These movers and shakers do more than ...
• On Powers, Great and Small 16.06.2025 2godz 6min

  POWER is on the mind these days, as the world grapples with shifting global power dynamics, old powers crumbling, new ones rising, and archaic power paradigms resurfacing… Yes, issues of power run rampant and discussions on power are front and center. But like everything else in modern discourse, the discussion on power has been decontextualized. Power is seen as an abstract bodiless force that governs from above, or an arbitrary human construct that is either relentlessly pursued or seen as ...
• Trickster Jumps Sides (Re-Issued for Tricky Times) 01.04.2025 1godz 14min

  Tricksters and culture disruptors populate global mythology. From Loki to Coyote to Èṣù and Hermes, they bend rules, cross boundaries, commit deliberate and unintentional offenses and generally mess with established orders. Yet they are often seen as indispensable to these orders — they are renewers and cultural innovators and often pave the way for great change. So in many cultures, Tricksters, despite their shenanigans, are seen as sacred. In modern society, we have no such ritualization of...
• On Singing to the Beloved in Times of Crisis 27.02.2025 2godz 7min

  We live in times of individual, sociocultural and planetary crisis, exacerbated by rising divisions between people. How have humans historically navigated such times of crisis? Yes, we've organized, taken action, and responded as we've been called to respond. But we have also deepened our connection to the greater cosmos, through songs and poems and rituals of devotion, through crying out to a beloved universe whose workings remain a mystery but to whom we feel intimately and inextricably con...
• For the Divine Mother of the Universe (Remixed and Reissued) 31.12.2024 1godz 38min

  There’s a lot of cultural clutter these days around 'The Goddess.' She appears everywhere, her many names are invoked free of context in a hundred thousand ways. She’s what? An empowerment tool. An archetype. A self-help course. A political symbol. Something that is invoked to bring more creative energy or material abundance into our lives. Something that, in an individualistic modern world, always seems to have a whole lot to do with us. Yet the goddess, traditionally, is much more tha...
• This Episode is FIRE 03.11.2024 1godz 50min

  In the deepest, oldest caverns of human memory, a fire burns... and that fire has been with human beings since the very beginning. Scientists now say that the human relationship with fire goes back over 1.5 million years. And so — fire has played a profound role in shaping human bodies and human consciousness in ways we're often unaware of. For fire... changed everything. It took us out of the immediacy of the animal experience and gave us a focal point, a place to gather and tell stories, to...
• (Why Mindfulness Isn't Enough) 30.09.2024 1godz 35min

  In recent years, the practice of 'mindfulness' has become ubiquitous. Mindfulness has outgrown its traditional Buddhist roots and now permeates modern wellness and optimization culture, finding its way into corporate boardrooms, therapist's toolkits, and an ever-increasing number of calmness apps. Yet modern iterations of mindfulness practice often live removed from their original context. The forest ecology from which mindfulness grew was animate and alive, and what we call mindfulness...
• Guardians and Protectors! 02.09.2024 2godz 31min

  Practices of guardianship — invoking guardian deities, enlisting spirit help, clearing spaces of questionable energies, and establishing boundaries around ritual, communal, and personal space — are common to animate traditions across the world. In many traditions, guardianship is absolutely central as we navigate a world of forces, not all of which are traditionally seen as beneficial. So traditional practitioners — even as they commune with the natural world — also draw clear boundaries, sen...
• Let Us Sing of the Syncretic Gods of Outcasts and Wanderers 24.05.2024 2godz 11min

  The story of human ritual and cultural tradition is one of depth and deep connection to land, to place, and to processes and protocols that remain steady across generations. But it's also a story of constant mutation, assimilation, and re-expression. There is a fluidity to culture and tradition that is not always acknowledged in modern discourse. Religious scholars will tell us that all traditions are — to one degree or another — syncretic, and when we lift the lid off of traditions and look ...
• On Clouds and Cosmic Law 09.04.2024 1godz 58min

  In the modern world, words like 'law' and 'order' carry with them a good deal of sociocultural baggage, and are often associated with restriction, burden, and arbitrarily imposed rules. Yet historically, tradition after tradition sees an innate, artful order to the natural world and views the Law of the Land as something vibrant and alive, present in the breath and in the waters and in the endless cycling of the clouds. In this living vision of Law, nature unfolds along particular patterns an...
• Oh Justice 03.03.2024 3godz 18min

  In times of global upheaval, ecological destruction, and societal inequity, justice can seem very far away. Justice in the modern world is often viewed as a contract, an agreement forged between human beings rather than something inherent to the natural world. And yet, for many cultures and traditions, justice is seen as a living presence, as the actual dynamic flow of cause and effect that serves to keep a larger natural balance. Tradition after tradition speaks of the larger law of the cosm...
• For the Intuitives (Part 2) 31.12.2023 1godz 58min

  Across the globe, the arrival of 'civilization' brought with it the persecution of the seer, the shaman, and the visionary. Why? Perhaps it is because civilization, with its narratives of individual agency and control, its relentless emphasis on forward progress, its commitment to the removal of mystery from daily life, and its encouragement of numbness over feeling, is fundamentally at odds with the seer's sensitivities and alignment to larger forces beyond human control. So modernity ...
• For the Intuitives (Part 1) 21.11.2023 1godz 37min

  Across cultures and traditions, there have always been those that speak with the dead, hear voices, enter states of oracular trance, and receive visions of what is to come. Such sensitivity, traditionally, is common. It's common to have premonitions that come to pass, to have dream experiences that translate into day-to-day life, and to be in continual felt dialogue with ancestors, with the dead, and with a larger world of animate forces. For most of human history, the people that received su...
• All of My Lessons Come in the Form of a Sound ( w/ Trevor Hall) 21.10.2023 1godz 43min

  There is... a sound. Many, through the ages, have heard it. It echoes in the world all around us, it reverberates in songs of joy and lament, it vibrates in the names of the gods and goddesses themselves. Across the world, tradition after tradition describes a sound that is the source of all sound, a sound that can be heard if we practice attuning ourselves to it. So the Indian yogi follows the sound OM to its source, the Brazilian Umbanda practitioner rides a thread of vibration to the great...