Episode 37: The Feast of Saint Ignatius of Loyola

Radio Free Golgotha - Radio Free Golgotha

Merry Feast of Saint Ignatius Loyola, dear Golgothans! We hope this month of July (what, already done?) has included enjoying lovely things and people and such for you; and we invite you to bring it to a close by joining for us with a light to St Ignatius and an especially fiery episode of this ‘cast pod.

For today we mark Ignatiusmas – the holyday dedicated to that patron of librarians and founding member of the Society of Jesus – and consider his punkish youth, alombrados-esque conspiracy, and Simple Contemplation of his Spiritual Exercises.

Lighting burning coals we discuss the demon of the Grimorium Verum, Haristum, and their patronage of fumigation and fire-handling, as well as paying our respects to Exus Brasa and Brasinha of Quimbanda with their blessing of spat embers and devil-baby mysteries.

Cultivating a suitable warming burn, we sprinkle Frankincense as our dedicatory Herb; inciting celebration of the tears of the Boswellias for church-scented Solary adoration, uplifting spirits, and daimonic dispossession and reward alike; reflecting on recipes of the Three Magi, and indeed on practices of suffumigation and scenting in spiritwork more broadly.

Our Mineral of the hour is Flint, the firestone, progenitor of firearms, an ever-hungry deity-tongue telling an incredibly long history of human knapping, sparking, slicing, and scraping.

Our particular technique of Magic is, appropriately enough, Calcination: lighting up discussion of alchemical curing and charred concision for storing the weird ingredients and powders of any self-respecting witch or sorcerer, as well as further developing discussion of traditional incense blends and their animalia.

Considering both the armoured stability and potential for heavy-hearted stuckness in our geomantic Figure of the episode, Fiery Solary Fortuna Major, we read between the elemental lines of this signifier of stamina, sovereignty, and enduring success; as well as offer homage to the lessons of the morphologically similar Odu Owani Meji.

Offering some quenching tempering of all this fiery forging ahead, we dip into the history, mysteries, and meanings of the Arcana of Temperance, to speak of the virtues of moderation in all things (especially moderation itself), some Michaeline associations, spiritual mixology, and much more.

Finally (although not, in this case, chronologically) we further poke the mythically-stoked fireside of that occasionally inflammatory Dead Magician Anton Lavey and his modern Satanism; giving high-collared cape-wearing devils their due with respect for the aesthetic in ritual, the vaudeville in villainy, the mouthfeel of the Enochian language, and putting out Christmas records for Satan.

We hope you enjoy sitting by our welcoming hell-fire with us through this episode, and that it brings you as much warmth as much as it does us, as it is always a pleasure to get together and cast this hell-pod from our hell-mouths to your hell-ears. Hell yes.