Episode 4 - Mark Stavish- Preserving Esoteric Tradition

Dear Listeners, welcome to Season 1 Episode 4 of Panosophers’ Podcast.  May we express our gratitude for your ongoing support and attention to this venture.   
This week, we have the company of Mark Stavish. Mark is the founder and director of The Institute for Hermetic Studies (IHS).  Mark holds degrees in Theology, Communications and Counseling.  He is a prolific author of depth titles on Mystery subjects, centered on Western Kabbalistic knowledge.  Mark is a longtime friend of our sibling podcast, Thoth-Hermes, and a trove of additional prior conversations may be found there. 

The overarching theme of the next two hours centers on: “what can you handle?”  It is plainspoken and direct, while brotherly and benevolent.   We encourage you to listen with ears open to hear. 

Mark and Rudolf dive in with the starting context for the IHS: 1990s, East-Coast America.  A time of in-person groups, Gnosis Magazine, and the grit of self-publishing material perhaps too deep for the balance sheets of popular booksellers.  Mark shares stark realities of rejection and adaptation for the sake of creating inheritance to future Seekers- rather than status or income streams.  

With his characteristic energy, Mark challenges listeners throughout the dialogue.  He names the essential need for Initiates to handle stark reality, including worldviews not their own, beyond personal identity and ideology.  In doing so, he identifies the need to produce a life-giving vision of the future, least populations be drawn into that which appears to be but is not.  As Mark states, this has little to do with who one wants to see elected US President in “the next election”. 

It is this call to Depth that sees Mark and Rudolf explore essential questions:

What is ‘tradition’ and why is it a responsibility?
What is ‘initiation’ and the mindset of a true Initiate?
How does ‘virtue’ relate to potency?

Mark issues the Saturnian challenge to grow past “Tik-Tok clutter” and “podcasting, publishing, and product” marketplace of Occultism.  He names the Aquarian postwar Esoteric awakening as a response to mass trauma, “most vibrant when truly counter-cultural” and small-group relational.  Along the way, even the esoteric Christ is alluded to warmly. 

Turning to ethics around public divination of societal energies, Rudolf and Mark note the need for maturity in any Initiate claiming to do this.  The qualifications include a true education in all of politics, history and economics- imbuing a nuance which returns to Tradition.  

May this bring a cornucopia of fruit for all of us.