The Numinous Podcast

TNP206 Alexa Linton on Interspecies Relating and Healing with Horses

In this episode we grapple with the questions,
Can you ever really be in a consensual relationship with a being who depends on you for food?
How do white supremacy culture and patriarchy show up in horsemanship?
What does non-coercive horsemanship look and feel like?
If you’ve read my book, The Spirited Kitchen, or you’ve been around my work for a while, you know that I come from a long line of horse people - a lineage that wends its way from southern Alberta and rodeo culture to the Scottish Highlands in the late 1800s where my wayback people bred, trained, and worked Highland ponies to labour in the coal mines and to build railroads. It’s been a long and complicated relationship between my family and horses. I am the first generation in as far back as we can remember to not have horses in my life on an everyday basis. It’s a profound source of grief for me.
What has also been a source of grief is that for many of the problems I've supported my child through, (if you don’t know, I have a 19 year old with autism, ADHD, and mental and physical health challenges), the thing that seems to work best is time outside the city with horses. 
And this is where my next guest comes in…
Alexa Linton is an osteopathic practitioner with 15 years of manual therapy and energy work under her belt. She also works with animals using kinesiology, cranial sacral therapy, and intuitive communication. She also helps humans navigate pet death. As a horse steward, trainer and healer, Alexa has seen and experienced a lot of changes in the industry over the years but there is much further to go in uncoupling from systems of dominance. Her course, The Whole Horse Apprenticeship, and her show, The Whole Horse Podcast, are places of refuge for horsey people who no longer feel comfortable with coercive horsemanship.
Check out Alexa's book:
Death Sucks: A Straight-Up Guide to Navigating Your Pet's Final Transition
Follow her on Instagram
Equine Cranial Therapy Certification
 
Referenced in this episode:
The Whole Horse Apprenticeship with Alexa and 25 guest instructors, including myself! (6 month program for horse lovers starting September 15th) 
The Whole Horse Podcast 
Taming Wild documentary created by Elsa Sinclair 
Freedom-based Training with Elsa Sinclair 
Emotional Horsemanship with Lockie Phillips 
Relationship Horsemanship with Josh Nichol 
Nahshon Cook Horsemanship 
Balance through Movement Method (Pillar one mini course) 
Horsemanship on Vancouver Island - Shannon Beahen (Humminghorse) 
 
 

TNP205 Sophie Strand on Mary Magdalene + Miracles

Sophie Strand is a poet and writer with a focus on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, andecology. If you love Mary Magdalene and fondly remember Anita Diamant's The Red Tent, you are in for a real treat! Sophie's new book, The Madonna Secret, is a passionate retelling of the story of Mary Magdalene and Jesus, rewilding the Gospels with the forgotten voices of defiant and oppressed women, the nature-based storytelling of oral communities, and the embodied eroticism of a lovable rabbi with appetites and desires, doubts and shame, and a playful sense of humor. Plus, his awesome mom – aka The Virgin Mary – is a raucous and wonderful surprise, giving big time Baubo of Greek myth vibes, (who in my mind could be played wonderfully by Shohreh Aghdashloo of The Expanse fame).
In this conversation, we talk about what it's like to write about miracles while living with an incurable disease, (Sophie lives with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder - something that many members of the Numinous Network are all too familiar). We also discuss animism, magic, patriarchy, and the realness she brings to the landscape and the characters of her novel.
Sophie's poems and essays have appeared in numerous projects and publications, including Spirituality & Health, Atmos, Braided Way and Art PAPERS. The author of The Flowering Wand, she lives in the Hudson Valleyof New York.
 
Purchase The Madonna Secret anywhere(and please do leave a review!)
 
Follow Sophie:
SophieStrand.com
Her Substack
Instagram
Facebook
 
References in this episode:
older Dev Patel
Louis Garrel 
Golshifteh Farhani (Oh now that I see who she is, I LOVED her in that dystopian show, Invasion)
young Javier Bardem
article about Bruce Chilton
Bruce Chilton wikipedia
Honi the Circle Drawer
Hanina ben Dosa
Contemporaries of Jesus who were miracle workers
Mary Renault
Mary Stewart
 
Learn more about the Numinous Network
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***
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TNP204 AstroMagic Miniseries ET Shipley on the Power of Saturn

Et Shipley is a consulting professional astrologer, creative writer, and ritual strategist. She weaves astrology with other tools to talk about collapse, social justice, relationality, death and culture. Last year, I asked Erin to be a Guest Guide in The Numinous Network offering astrology workshops to help folks manage key moments. That has morphed into a seasonal offering we call the AstroJam - people gather with Erin to jam about the cosmic weather and all things magical and ritual to do with that. When I had the idea for an AstroMagic Miniseries, I immediately thought to ask Erin who she would recommend as guests - in many ways, you can thank Erin for working her magic there to make some very special connections and episodes happen for us!  
Erin’s writing about astrology is always poetic and profound, gentle but unflinching, and always very useful. She has just the right vibe to help us really understand what it is that Saturn is trying to teach and to not be afraid of those lessons. Even if you’re still not quite ready to engage directly with Saturn after this episode, I know you’ll find it to be good preparation for the time when, eventually, Saturn calls you and you don’t have a choice anymore.
 
Referenced in this episode:
Erin's approach to astrology
Erin's Instagram: @etshipley
Book a session with Erin or get on her newsletter
Idola Stellárum talismanic adornment for devotion
Kristin Mathis' new translation of the Orphic Hymn to Kronos (Saturn)
Audio of the Orphic Hymn to Saturn
Maeg Keane's podcast interview on Blackberry on the Herbs with Rosalee Podcast
Rate this show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen - thanks in advance!

TNP203 AstroMagic Miniseries Kristin Mathis, Venus, and the Orphic Hymns

My guest today is Kristin Mathis - truly a multi-talented individual - and we are all so fortunate that she’s dedicated herself to the translation of the Orphic Hymns which overlight this conversation about Venus, Aphrodite, and AstroMagic! She’s a writer and poet, a teacher and advocate. (You really must read her fascinating bio). But what she's really doing is quietly revolutionizing the English-speaking world's relationship to the Orphic Hymns with her unique perspective as both an academic and a magical practitioner-animist.
In this episode, Kristin helps us understand Venus and Aphrodite as The All, helping us to link love and grief, love and rage, love and justice.
Referenced in this episode:
Mysteria Mundi, Kristin's Substack where you'll find:
Becoming Children of Earth and Starry Sky
Revealing the Mysteries, or, My New Translation of the Orphic Hymn to the Moon (Selene)
A New Translation of The Orphic Hymn To Kronos/Saturn
Audio Recording of the Orphic Hymn to Kronos/Saturn
Kristin's Translation of Sappho's Hymn to Aphrodite
Her Podia site with her courses
Star: An Orphic Initiation for Earth-Borne Souls with Drew Levanti
 
Check out The Numinous Network for more on Planetary Magic & Propitiation

TNP202 Maeg Keane on Connecting with Jupiter

Meag Keane is here to expand our understanding of Jupiter in this, part 5 of my 7 part miniseries on Planetary Magic and Propitiation.
Maeg is an astrologer and herbalist, connecting soil and sky. Many of her teachers are people I’ve also followed and admired, and she wrote a really excellent blog post on Jupiter and Being Too Much. (It's so good! Make sure you check out the footnotes!)
To go deeper with your AstroMagic, consider getting a plant and planet reading from Maeg - it’s a two session package with email support for a month where she guides you on a deep dive with one of the 7 traditional planets and a plant based on your specific chart and what comes out of your first session with her. So good!
Sign up for Maeg's newsletter so you're in the know about all upcoming offerings and current writing.
Website: third-sister.com
Twitter | @maegkeane
Instagram | @maeg.thirdsister
Review The Spirited Kitchen on Goodreads, Amazon or Indigo
Check out The Numinous Network - all classes on Planetary Magic & Propitiation are found in the archives of The Numinous School in the course area of the Network.

TNP201 The Magic of Mercury with Thea Anderson

In this episode, I’m speaking with Thea Anderson about Wednesday’s ruling planet, our old pal, Mercury! Thea is a writer and astrologer, as well as the Director of Production for the CHANI app. She works very closely with our previous guest, Eliza Robertson, to make sure that all of the content for the app gets out on time, at the right time. (A very Mercurial type of job, indeed!) 
You can find Thea's fiction and poetry in print and online in a variety of places, most recently you'll find a story of her in the book, Infinite Constellations: An Anthology of Identity, Culture, and Speculative Conjunctions.
We're lucky to have Thea here to decode and interpret Mercury for us and explain how we can work collaboratively with this quick, mutable, exciting planet.
References in this episode:
Harriet Tubman as a Magical, Mercurial Figure
Book a session with Thea: TheaNichelle.com
Follow her on Instagram: @theaastrology
Review The Spirited Kitchen on Goodreads, Amazon, or Indigo
Check us out in The Numinous Network

TNP200 AstroMagic Miniseries Mars Magic with Carmen Spagnola

Content Note: At the end of this episode, I mention "ritual scarification" – this material may remind people of the ritual abuse mentioned in a fairly recent television broadcast, The Vow, a show about the NXIVM cult.
I am not talking about that. I am referring to a cultural practice of scarification, quite common with peoples of darker skin, and other instances where scarification is woven into society, (for instance, some LGBTQ+ communities and other examples).
In this 200th episode of The Numinous Podcast (🎉hooray!!!🎉), I'm flying solo and sharing my experience working with the planet Mars. Known as the lesser malefic, Mars can carry some intense energy. But I really believe that there are valuable lessons to be learned from this powerhouse planet.
In this show, I will talk about what Mars can help us with, when we might use caution, appropriate offerings for propitiation, and how Mars can support us in our grief and our rage.
References in this episode:
Georgia Nicols
PlanetaryHours.net
Thérèse Cator
Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Agrippa, translated by Eric Purdue
Letterkenny
Sphere + Sundry
Holistic Tarot by Benebell Wen
The Orphic Hymns
Many Moons Lunar Planner by Sarah Faith Gottesdiener
Pagan Otherworld Tarot by Uusi Design
Woodland Wardens Oracle by Jessica Roux
The Spirited Kitchen - leave a review on Goodreads!
Check out The Numinous Network
Sign up for my newsletter 💖 instantly receive a little love in your inbox 💖 (and about once a month thereafter)
 

TNP199 AstroMagic Miniseries Bronwyn Simons on Moon Magic and Lunar Consciousness

Welcome to Part 2 of our 7 episode miniseries on Planetary Magic and Propitiation! We began on a Sunday with Eliza Robertson talking about the Sun. Here we are on a Monday and I’m speaking with Bronwyn Simons about Moon Magic and wisdom.
Bronwyn Simons is an award-winning predictive astrologer, psychic medium, dream traveller, mentor, and astrology teacher with a worldwide client base and a busy consulting practice. She is beloved by clients and students for her warm, wise, compassionate, and positive style of sharing. She was named one of 2019’s Most Promising Astrologers by the Organization for Professional Astrology, and was featured as an Inner Circle Guide on Astrology Hub in 2021.
 
Here, Bronwyn guides us through the phases of the moon and why it's a safe place to start with our planetary magic.
Check out Bronwyn's signature program, Light Of The Moon, for immediate access to recorded modules, plus a live round of four weekly calls starting on the New Moon, July 17, 2023.
Those who sign up for Bronwyn's mailing list get a beautiful moon journal for 2023 with all the lunations, journaling prompts, ideas about celebrating the new moon, and a moon calendar! Opt-in here: https://astrologygoddess.mykajabi.com/2023MoonJournal
If you share this episode on social, please tag us!
@moon.wisdom
@carmenspagnola
Join us in The Numinous Network this summer for more planetary magic!

TNP198 AstroMagic Miniseries Eliza Robertson and the Sun

Today we’re welcoming Eliza Robertson back for her third time on the show - she was here as part of Kosmic Tonic with Jasmine Richardson in 2020 when we discussed the key transits that would affect the second half of that wild year, and she was here again in 2022 talking about Writing with the Stars and Magic with the Muses. Clearly, she’s a favourite conversation partner of mine and I’m delighted that she’s the one to shepherd us through the gate as we begin a 7 part miniseries on Planetary Magic and Propitiation for the days of the week!
Since about the time Eliza first appeared on the show in 2020, I have been taking a closer look at AstroMagic and paying more attention to cultivating relationships with the planets that rule the days of the week. I find it grounding, centering, resourcing and supportive. Over the next seven episodes we'll go deeper into relationship with each planet that rules that day of the week, beginning with Sunday and moving through the week to Saturday.
 
Referenced in this episode:
I Got A Name by Eliza Robertson
Picatrix translated by Attrell and Porreca.
Three Books of Occult Philosophy by H. Agrippa (the cheaper option)
Three Books of Occult Philosophy translated by Eric Purdue (the splurge option)
Sphere + Sundry for materia magica
Join us for more AstroMagic in The Numinous Network

TNP197 Portrait Of A Marriage Part Four

The final episode featuring Ruben and me as we dissect and update my 2017 Medium article, Portrait Of A Marriage (Yes, It's Mine.)
In this episode, we're talking about fighting and conflict, with tips to navigate inevitable relationship ruptures. 
Referenced in this episode:
Rachelle Lamb has an unconventional approach to Non-Violent Communication that I find more helpful than most
bell hooks' books on love have been integral to making our marriage work, in particular The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love
YourPersonality.net
Stan Tatkin: runs a signature couple's retreat called the Wired For Love Retreat, also has a new book called, In Each Other's Care: A Guide To The Most Common Relationship Conflicts And How To Work Through Them
Clue period tracker app
Check out my course, Contact Nutrition 101
The Numinous Network
***
Have a question or comment? Looking for life advice? Need some witch wisdom? Maybe I can help – listen for my response in an upcoming episode!
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TNP196 Portrait Of A Marriage Part Three

In this third part of our Portrait Of A Marriage Miniseries, we go a little deeper into how we started healing trauma within our marriage, patriarchy and sexual trauma, epistemic privilege, and how poetry helped us reconnect in intimate but non-sexual ways.
Resources cited in this episode:
YourPersonality.net
The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity and Love, bell hooks
Tobar Phaidraic, by David Whyte (found in River Flow: New and Selected Poems)
The Queen, by Pablo Neruda (found in Love Poems, translated by Donald D.Walsh)
***
Have a question or comment? Looking for life advice? Need some witch wisdom? Maybe I can help – listen for my response in an upcoming episode!
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TNP195 Portrait of a Marriage Part Two

This is the second episode in our miniseries revisiting my 2017 article, Portrait Of A Marriage. (Yes, It's Mine.)
In this episode we talk about top-down and bottom-up processing and how communication is not the magic cipher we have been led to believe!
I share my story of how the stress of our relationship somatized into physical symptoms that required us to call 911. And we get into tender territory about what patriarchy looked like in our marriage and how it's related to Ruben's current experience with severe burnout.
The key resource we recommend to everyone trying to bring feminist cultural analysis to relationship building:
The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity and Love, bell hooks
Shauna Janz' work:
Sacred Grief with Shauna Janz
***
Have a question or comment? Looking for life advice? Need some witch wisdom? Maybe I can help – listen for my response in an upcoming episode!
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TNP194 Portrait Of A Marriage with Carmen and Ruben Part One

Welcome to a special miniseries of The Numinous Podcast: Portrait Of A Marriage where we revisit a seminal blog post I published in 2017 on resolving the traps of an Anxious and avoidant Partnership, in other words a relationship where one partner, in this case me, a cis white woman, tends to have a more avoidant attachment style, and the other partner, in this case, Ruben, a cis white man, tends to express a more anxious attachment style. We're going to read through that blog post and give you updates on all the strategies we tried to earn the more secure attachment we have now, what worked, what didn't, and bring the article up to date to let you know where we are in the marriage now. Spoiler alert: it was all very, very worth it.
 
Notes:
The original article, Portrait Of A Marriage. (Yes, It's Mine)
Carmen's CV
The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity and Love, by bell hooks
Stan Tatkin
Sue Johnson
Journey From Abandonment To Healing
YourPersonality.net
***
Have a question or comment? Looking for life advice? Need some witch wisdom? Maybe I can help – listen for my response in an upcoming episode!
Click here to leave me a voice or written message.

TNP193 How Much Is Enough In Collapse with Carmen and Ruben

Something a little bit different today – a clip featuring myself and my husband, Ruben Anderson. We're teaching a course this year called Collapse 101, hosted in The Numinous Network, and each month there's a 1 hr live session followed a week or two later by an Ask Me Anything session.
A lot of people don’t see the through-line from attachment to somatics –> trauma healing –> co-regulation –> folk magic –> ritual –> animism –> socialism –> collapse resilience, but I do.
And I bet you do, too, at least partly, when I lay it out in that sequence. And if you don’t see it, but you want to, then stick around! Everything I teach about is a collapse skill, from recipes and rituals for the wheel of the year, to dowsing with a pendulum, to attachment parenting, to Contact Nutrition and Polyvagal Theory in trauma recovery - these are 100% all collapse skills. 
Of course at the root of everything I do, I’m trying to help people live richly connected and meaningful lives, but even more fundamental to me is that I’m trying to help shape the social discourse and collective thinking around collapse. I attempt that through compassionate and holistic and accessible adult education. I’m trying to help shape social thought around how we’re going to live in these times.
This episode is a brief response to a Numinous Network member’s question about how much is enough when prepping material or financial resources as a safety net or a lifeboat for collapse. Ruben and I offer our very pragmatic answers along with some scaffolding for how you might approach this challenge in your own life – how you might shape your thinking so you can come up with what feels like enough for you.
 
If Crisis or War Comes - Swedish government Emergency Handbook
The Numinous Network
Carmen's newsletter

TNP192 Happily Needy with Mara Glatzel

This is a really lovely conversation with Mara Glatzel, author of a new book coming out Feb 28 called, Needy: How to Advocate for Your Needs and Claim Your Sovereignty, which was recently selected by Malcolm Gladwell and Adam Grant for the Next Big Idea Club’s book of the month. 
Mara says she is an intuitive coach, writer, and Needy Podcast host who helps humans stop abandoning themselves and start reclaiming their sovereignty through embracing their needs and honouring their natural energy rhythms. She’s also a queer, femme mother of two, recovering control freak.
We talk about being multi-passionate when so much prevailing marketing tells you to niche down, we jam on balancing the need to feel safe in an overculture that is just factually unsafe in so many ways and especially so for more oppressed people, and we get into how we might approach reclaiming needs like rest and saying no, depending on where we’re at in that healing journey.
Buy the book
Find Mara on Instagram
Harsh review on Goodreads!

TNP191 Entering Hekate’s Cave with Dr.Cyndi Brannen

Dr Cyndi Brannen, one of the world’s foremost Hekatean experts, is here to talk about her most recent book, Entering Hekate’s Cave, now available in stores and online. This is Cyndi’s fourth book and her third time on the Numinous Podcast. We're talking about how Hekate can guide us on the journey through darkness to wholeness, and also about Cyndi's own evolution as a scholar and author. 
Cyndi's other books on Hekate include
Keeping Her Keys: An Introduction to Hekate's Modern Witchcraft
Entering Hekate's Garden: The Magick, Medicine and Mystery of Plant Spirit Witchcraft
Make sure to get on her newsletter list to find out when the doors next open to the Covina Institute!

TNP190 Celtic Embodiment with Jen Murphy

Jen Murphy is the founder of the Celtic School of Embodiment  where she fuses the ancient wisdom of Irish Mythology with Feminine Embodiment Coaching. Jen has a degree in Medieval Irish & Celtic Studies and a masters in the Anthropology of Development. She specializes in critical pedagogy - empowering learners to critique the power structures at play in their own learning experiences. I've enjoyed taking Jen's courses, particularly the Non-Linear Movement sections, and am thrilled to have her on the show today to share how she weaves land, mythology, embodiment, and music into her coaching and healing practice.
Website
Jen on Instagram
Facebook
 
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TNP189 Recovering Towards Mothering with Taryn Strong

Taryn Strong is one of the Founders of SHE RECOVERS® Foundation as well as a Coach, Herbalist and Trauma Informed Yoga Teacher. Taryn’s courageous and passion for recovering out loud has made her an influential voice in the global recovery movement. Taryn creates and curates transformational experiences online and in person through her group and private mentorship offerings. As a certified Trauma of Money Facilitator, she currently specializes in financial empowerment and money healing. She also mentors entrepreneurs in recovery who are seeking support to take up space, find their voice and expand their business through aligned impact.
Taryn is also expecting her first child and I was curious about how she is navigating that rite of passage, not only spiritually and creatively, but also in the context of recovery.
TarynStrong.com
SheRecovers.org
Mentioned in this episode:
The Roots of Addiction in Free Market Society, by Dr.Bruce Alexander
Rat Park studies
In The Realm Of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, by Dr.Gabor Maté

TNP188 Fumbling Through...All Of It with Kael Klassen

Kael Klassen moved from the corporate world into motherhood before fumbling, fortunately quite quickly, through a series of well-meaning-but-problematic-white-lady spiritual endeavours. Since extracting herself as much as possible from that, she has grounded her work in the modality of trancework, along with writing and creating. Here we talk about missteps each of us have made on our spiritual paths as white settler folks. In this confessional episode, we cover topics like culty yoga teacher trainings, ancestral healing and appropriation, mental health on the healing journey and how it intersects with the creative process. Kael shares intimately about coping with grief and rage, and the rituals that help her to root into winter.
In this episode we mentioned the art and philosophical approach of our esteemed colleague, Rachael Rice.
You can find Kael's offerings on instagram @kael.klassen or @liminalrootsbotanica or online at www.liminalrootsbotanica.com
 

TNP187 Sinking into Sacred Truth and Giving it Voice with Velda Thomas

This episode gets us back to the roots of this podcast: the mysteries of life...
In this episode Velda Thomas, author of Blended: Perspectives On Belonging, engages questions like, What does it take to be human? How is a cultural bridge created between people? How are you transactional with yourself?
Velda Thomas was born and educated in England with biracial family ancestry sourced from Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas. She is a creative, author, healer, and artist.  Her love of plants, herbal remedies, sound practice, somatic and ritual experiences weave passion with grounded human experience. Velda has worked as a kindergarten teacher, adult educator, birth doula, and massage therapist. In this episode, we learn more about her work with voice, sound, and energy healing.
Find her book here: veldathomas.com
Follow her on Instagram: @veldathomas11
Engage on Patreon: www.patreon/veldathomas.com