A widely known voice of esoteric ideas, Mitch Horowitz is a writer-in-residence at the New York Public Library, lecturer-in-residence at the University of Philosophical Research in Los Angeles, and a PEN Award-winning author. His newest book, Modern Occultism, takes a look at the history of the occult, stretching back to the earliest Western records of Egyptian esoteric practices. Horowitz explained that it was during the reign of Cleopatra, who was of Greek descent, that these traditions began to be recorded in Greek. “That’s really the period of time where we start to see at least written records being kept of some ancient traditions,” Horowitz said. Because they were in Greek, he added, that made them accessible to other Western thinkers when they began to look into ancient occult practices outside their own traditions.
Horowitz said that many of these practices, which would later be termed occult, centered around the nature based pagan religious traditions of Egypt and Persia, but also of Rome, Greece, and other European cultures. After the advent of Christianity, however, and then Islam in the Eastern world, “these things vanished for centuries and centuries,” he told George. When these traditions were rediscovered during the Renaissance, he explained, they used the Latin term “occulta” meaning “secretly” or “hidden” to describe this knowledge; ultimately giving rise to the English term “occult.” Horowitz also touched on Aleister Crowley, magical thinking, and the role of the occult in modern ufology, among other topics.
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Intuitive medium, author, and educator Geoffrey Jowett helps others on their journey of enlightenment by recognizing that each of us is an eternal and infinite part of God, and that our sole purpose in life is to perpetuate divine love. In the second half, he discussed how souls are connected over multiple lifetimes in soul families, and how karma drives those cycles of growth and rebirth. Jowett claimed that these soul families aren’t just parent/child or sibling bonds – or even necessarily romantic bonds. You could have soul mates through work, he said, who will maintain relationships as co-workers, colleagues, and creative collaborators through multiple lifetimes. He said that sometimes, sadly, these souls mature and are ready to progress at different times too. He related how one caller's daughter, who recently passed at age 37, may have been ready to go earlier at this stage but that her father may have left earlier in a previous cycle. While these losses are always sad for the survivors, Jowett claimed it isn’t as difficult for the soul who has departed, because they realize that their soul will reconnect with the souls of their loved ones, and continue to reconnect with them.
“The soul, to me, is the essence – the infinite essence – of self. Just a small piece of your soul comes, as a pioneer, to experience the physical world,” Jowett explained. “Your spirit is an aspect of soul, but it comes with a specific lesson it wants to work through.” Jowett believes that once it works through that, “it returns back to the soul and brings that wisdom.” He told one caller that one way for an individual to determine their purpose and the wisdom or skill their spirit wanted to develop while it was here was to look at their innate talents and then develop those.
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News segment guests: Lauren Weinstein, Steve Kates