Podcast episodes – The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (SHWEP)

Exploring the forgotten and rejected story of Western thought

Episodes

Jewish Apocalypse in the Seventh Century: Martha Himmelfarb on the Sefer Zerubbabel

September 27, 2025 • 47 mins

In this interview we explore a crucial document of seventh-century Judaism: the Sefer Zerubbabel, an apocalyptic ‘future history’ allegedly written in the past. The Temple will descend, the evil Armilus (son of Satan and a statue) will wreak havok, and two messiahs will arise to redeem Israel.

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Touraj Daryaee on Zoroastrianism in the Seventh Century and Beyond

September 13, 2025 • 43 mins

With the Arab conquest of Sasanian Persia, a new religion enters the west. Once the great religious Other to the Græco-Roman world, the Zoroastrians are now part of the story of western esotericism. We explore their extraordinary religion with Touraj Daryaee.

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Ahab Bdaiwi on the Rise of Shī‘ī Esotericism

July 25, 2025 • 29 mins

In Part I we looked at the political events leading up to the formation of the Shi'a. In Part II we see that it did not take long for things to get very esoteric. Come for the programmatic esoteric hermeneutics, stay for the occult sciences.

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Ahab Bdaiwi on ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib, his Family, and the Origins of Shī‘ī Islam

July 18, 2025 • 38 mins

We pick up from our last episode, where geopolitics and esotericism met in the crucible of Roman, Sassanian, and Arab political struggles. Ahab Bdaiwi threads the labyrinth of the earliest historical sources for the birth of the movement within Islām which came to be known as the Party of ‘Alī, or the Shi‘ā.

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Seventh-Century History for Students of Western Esotericism

May 13, 2025 • 55 mins

We return to the history of late antiquity in the eastern Mediterranean and central Asia. Momentous events occur, empires rise and fall, and Jews, Christians, and Muslims all suddenly develop new apocalyptic notions. Come for the dry historical exposition, stay for the esoteric divine kingship.

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Introducing the Qur’an Part III: Qur’ānic Texts vs. the Qur’ān

May 2, 2025 • 55 mins

We discuss some of the history of how the Qur'ān came to be ‘the Book’: it started in the oral milieu of the high-octane early Believers' movement, and ended up in written form as something called the ‘Uthmanic recension. Many esoteric things happen along the way.

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Introducing the Qur’ān, Part II: Ambiguity and Esoteric Themes

April 18, 2025 • 71 mins

We begin to explore the esoteric side of the Qur'ān, examining several case-studies in terms of ambiguity and esoteric themes. It turns out that every letter of the Qur'ān is an esoteric text.

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Introducing the Qur’ān, Part I: Revelation, Text, and History

March 14, 2025 • 57 mins

We cover some basic territory in introducing the Qur'ān, the holiest text of Islām. We introduce the text, discuss the traditional story of the Qur'ān's revelation, the modern text-critical enterprise of Qur'anic studies, and try to pin down the elusive character of this book-that-is-not-a-book.

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Fred Donner on the History of Early Islām

February 7, 2025 • 53 mins

We discuss what little we know and how much we don't know about the nature of the early ‘Believers' movement’, the nature and origins of the Qur'ān, the curious case of the so-called Constitution of Medinah, and what went on during the earliest decades of the Arab conquests. Fred Donner is our guide into unknown territory.

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Matthew Melvin-Koushki on Islam, ‘the West’, and Western Esotericism

January 20, 2025 • 64 mins

We welcome Matthew Melvin-Koushki back to the show to discuss how we might improve our historical picture of western esotericism by including the vast majority of the surviving historical dossier of western esotericism. There's only one problem: in order to do this, we need to embrace the Islamicate world as a major part of the west.

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Introducing Islām

January 3, 2025 • 73 mins

With Episode 200 the SHWEP has reached a milestone of sorts. We are in the seventh century, and the world-order suddenly changes irrevocably as a new political force arises from Arabia: the Believers. We discuss three main respects in which the history of Islam is the history of western esotericism.

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Paul Pasquesi on the Book of the Holy Hierotheos

December 24, 2024 • 57 mins

We discuss one of the lesser-known, but most esoterically-important, classics of Syriac spiritual literature, the Book of the Holy Hierotheos. Hierotheos was said to have been the teacher of Dionysius the Areopagite, but he wrote in Syriac, and taught a suspiciously-Evagrian practice of ascent to god.

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The Pseudo-Dionysios, the Esoteric, and (Christian) Mysticism

December 22, 2024 • 66 mins

We turn to the questions: What is ‘mystical’ in the Corpus Dionysiacum? What is esoteric? The answers we come up with involve pretty much every aspect of the western esoteric traditions, and, after all the initiatory liturgy, esoteric scriptural hermeneutics, and theandric activity are cleared away, there remains the ascent to ‘the ray of the divine shadow’.

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Naming Divine Nothingness: Introducing the Pseudo-Dionysios

December 17, 2024 • 69 mins

Into the divine darkness of a hyper-non-existent god walks the Pseudo-Dionysios. In this episode we join many esoteric currents from the antique and late-antique past into a new synthesis which will forever shape western esotericism going forward.

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One Empire, Many Names: Reading “Byzantium” with Anthony Kaldellis

October 22, 2024 • 82 mins

We are delighted to speak with Anthony Kaldellis about ‘Byzantium’, fabled empire full of Greek-speaking Romans which never fell until the fifteenth century, and which plays an outsize role in the history of western esotericism. Come for the historiographical debates about the term ‘Byzantine’, stay for the ‘Byzantine’ court astrology.

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Contested Esotericisms at the End of Antiquity: Simplicius, Philoponus, and Olympiodorus

October 16, 2024 • 60 mins

We discuss three of the most important thinkers from the final generations of philosophical teaching at Alexandria. One is an upstart Christian. Two are esoteric Platonists of the Golden Chain. One may or may not have been an alchemist.

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The Last Platonists? Philosophic Teaching, Christianity, and Polytheism in Late-Antique Alexandria

September 18, 2024 • 42 mins

We discuss how Platonist philosophical teaching played out at Alexandria before Justinian's edict of 529 and in its aftermath. Featuring cameo appearances from the fall of the western Roman empire and Horapollo's Hieroglyphika.

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All from Nothing: Sara Rappe on Damascius

September 11, 2024 • 51 mins

We discuss the great Damascius, final scholarch of the Athenian Academy, with Sara Rappe. Things become very apophatic.

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Hagia Sophia and the Problem of ‘Esoteric Architecture’

August 28, 2024 • 64 mins

We discuss Justinian's great church, Hagia Sophia, the gem of Constantinople and of Orthodox Christianity. We then look at a number of theories out there which read Hagia Sophia as encoding esoteric messages beneath her Orthodox exterior, and use this case-study as a springboard for discussing the thorny problems involved in interpreting architecture, especially esoteric architecture.

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Kevin van Bladel on the Ṣābians of Ḥarrān and the Fate of the Athenian Academy

July 30, 2024 • 54 mins

We discuss the fascinating town of Ḥarrān (in present-day Türkiye), a place known from late antiquity until at least the eleventh century for its continued tradition of astral, polytheist worship. Kevin van Bladel tells us much to enthral us about this place, but also crushes the dream of a continued tradition of Athenian Late Platonism at Ḥarrān.

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Podcast episodes – The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (SHWEP)

Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Jewish Apocalypse in the Seventh Century: Martha Himmelfarb on the Sefer Zerubbabel

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Touraj Daryaee on Zoroastrianism in the Seventh Century and Beyond

Ahab Bdaiwi on the Rise of Shī‘ī Esotericism

Ahab Bdaiwi on ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib, his Family, and the Origins of Shī‘ī Islam

Seventh-Century History for Students of Western Esotericism

Introducing the Qur’an Part III: Qur’ānic Texts vs. the Qur’ān

Introducing the Qur’ān, Part II: Ambiguity and Esoteric Themes

Introducing the Qur’ān, Part I: Revelation, Text, and History

Fred Donner on the History of Early Islām

Matthew Melvin-Koushki on Islam, ‘the West’, and Western Esotericism

Introducing Islām

Paul Pasquesi on the Book of the Holy Hierotheos

The Pseudo-Dionysios, the Esoteric, and (Christian) Mysticism

Naming Divine Nothingness: Introducing the Pseudo-Dionysios

One Empire, Many Names: Reading “Byzantium” with Anthony Kaldellis

Contested Esotericisms at the End of Antiquity: Simplicius, Philoponus, and Olympiodorus

The Last Platonists? Philosophic Teaching, Christianity, and Polytheism in Late-Antique Alexandria

All from Nothing: Sara Rappe on Damascius

Hagia Sophia and the Problem of ‘Esoteric Architecture’

Kevin van Bladel on the Ṣābians of Ḥarrān and the Fate of the Athenian Academy

Popular Podcasts

Jewish Apocalypse in the Seventh Century: Martha Himmelfarb on the Sefer Zerubbabel

Touraj Daryaee on Zoroastrianism in the Seventh Century and Beyond