#110 Witchcraft with Susan Demeter

Susan Demeter’s book Cosmic Witch: Magic, Witchcraft, and the Supernatural

To listen click HERE.

On September 15, 2020 Fahrusha welcomed Susan Demeter back to “Shattered Reality Podcast” for an interesting conversation. Her new book is Cosmic Witch: Magic, Witchcraft, and the Supernatural.

At the beginning of the show Fahrusha talked a little bit about the relationship of animism to witchcraft. Many people around the world are still maligned and persecuted for practicing what is perceived as witchcraft. Susan is very brave to wear the appellation “witch” proudly. Because the word “witch” means different things to different people, Fahrusha broke it down to its most basic tenet, a tenet that runs through almost all of the various varieties of witchcraft. That tenet is animism, the attribution of consciousness to plants, inanimate objects, celestial objects and natural phenomena.

Susan began by speaking about her awesome experiences with UFOs and that dovetailed nicely into the practice of witchcraft. Her book is filled with her personal experiences which are extremely relatable.

She espouses strong powerful womanhood, empowering others, and a sex positive point of view as well. We spoke a bit of a mutual friend, Stephanie Quick, a practitioner of red magic, sometimes called sex magic. Fahrusha spoke about the vilification and denigration of Mary Magdalene by the patriarchal Roman Catholic Church.

There is an Italian language version of the book called La Strega. Both versions of the book are published by Due Torre in Italy.

Fahrusha apologizes for the quality of her audio. Being out of Bill’s excellent audio studio due to the lockdown has been difficult, but she feels it is necessary to persevere in the face of adversity.

Fahrusha invites listeners to submit their anomalous stories for inclusion in “the Listeners’ Corner”.

#107 Alex Tsakiris and Evil

To listen click HERE

On July 8, 2020 Fahrusha and Alex Tsakiris recorded their podcasts simultaneously which is a first for “Shattered Reality Podcast”. Alex’s “Skeptiko” is featured in video on YouTube, where he showed a picture of Fahrusha on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, much to her surprise.

Blake Shelton, Fahrusha and Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show in 2018

Then primarily they went on to discuss the thesis of Alex’s new book Why Evil Matters: How Science Religion & Spirituality Have Failed Us. Fahrusha pressed the point that to truly understand evil, one must look beyond humans to other sentient beings including especially mammals, but really much farther to beings such as trees and astronomical bodies like Our Sun. Consciousness pervades the Universe. The Universe is Consciousness.

Alex, while more human oriented, explained a good deal of his position, using as an example ritual sexual abuse of children. No sane person would not see that as evil. They also talked about religion and how differently people interpret religious scripture such as the Bible. Fahrusha felt that to get the most accurate view it would be instructive to study it in the ancient Aramaic form. She also pointed out that Satan as it is now defined, did not make an appearance as the ultimate evil in the early versions of the Old Testament and the duality with the Supreme Being is a more modern concept.

Alex Tsakiris’s new book Why Evil Matters: How Science Religion & Spirituality Have Failed Us

Alex has a brilliant way of encouraging people to expound on their ideas. They talked about the need or lack thereof for religion in general. While some people like Fahrusha and Alex spend lots of time focusing on extended consciousness, others are focused on careers like baseball and dentistry. Fahrusha felt that some people looked to others to provide good spiritual guidance, many religious leaders may have not provided the best possible stewardship. Much as one would not want to entrust their teeth to a less than superlative dentist perhaps some of these folks are not being well served in the spiritual area.

They also discussed some of the guests they both interviewed.

Please feel free to post polite comments on this page. We want to hear from you.

 

#93 Hudson Valley Anomalies with WHAM

This is Dr. C. S. Matthews, a.k.a. Wahabah Hadia Al Muid, a.k.a. Professor WHAM author of the book Mysterious Beauty: Living With the Paranormal in The Hudson Valley.

To listen click HERE.

On October 1, 2019, Fahrusha was pleased to speak with Dr. C. S. Matthews about her exciting new book Mysterious Beauty: Living With the Paranormal in The Hudson Valley. She is the sometimes co-host of the podcast “The Church of Mabus” and teaches at a college in the Hudson Valley.

Our fascinating discussion covered a lot of ground, from the geology of the region to Native American beliefs and history through the Dutch and British settlers to the present time. In reading the book, Fahrusha was horrified to discover that she was born on or near the site of a massacre of Native Americans by some renegade Dutch in what is now Jersey City!

What is very wonderful about this book is that it gives people living in the Hudson Valley from Manhattan to above Albany (and those curious and intrepid travellers from points unknown) a tool to begin their quest for the anomalous right here in our backyard. Everything from ancient earthworks, to present day cryptids and UFOs can be found in the glorious Hudson Valley, along with the world’s best apples.

This episode is a natural follow on to our last episode with Susan Demeter St. Clair in which we touched upon some of the same subjects involving the Great Lakes region of Canada and N.Y. State.

“Shattered Reality Podcast” wishes to acknowledge sometimes contributor Stephanie Quick for introducing us to Professor WHAM.

We appreciate hearing about our listeners’ anomalous accounts. If you wish to be included in the “Listeners’ Corner” either as an on-air guest or would like to have your written account read, please contact fahrusha@fahrusha.com.

 

#92 Susan Demeter St.Clair and the Folklore of the Strange

Susan Demeter St.Clair, author of Making Mountains out of Mashed Potatoes: UFOs as a ParaPsychological Event, a chapter of the book UFOs: Framing the Debate

 

Click HERE to listen.

On September 17, 2019 Susan Demeter St.Clair joined Fahrusha on “Shattered Reality Podcast” to speak about UFOs and the folklore of the strange. Susan is a native of Ontario, Canada who is currently residing in Northern Italy. She is a researcher on the UFO phenomena and on European and Native American paranormal folklore especially the Italian Benandanti. The Benandanti were from the Friuli region of Italy of north eastern Italy, although it is thought that the tradition was probably very widespread in slightly varying forms in much of agrarian, Pre-Christian Europe. Meaning literally “the good walkers”, members participated in out of body travels on a number of Thursdays to war against evil forces that might destroy crops. They were also healers. They were viciously persecuted as heretics by the Roman Inquisition.

Varying possible explanations for UFOs and for the famous Philip Experiment (Canada) were discussed. Our interview with Dr. Jim McClenon also mentions the Philip Experiment in the context of the SORRAT Group. Susan was kind enough to share with us her personal UFO experiences that changed the course of her life.

Towards the end of the episode, Fahrusha read an amazing account from a longtime listener who had a life changing UFO experience in western New York State. The listener requested to remain anonymous, something that we at “Shattered Reality Podcast will always respect. If you, dear listener, have a paranormal experience, be it a UFO, a near death experience, an out of body experience, a cryptid encounter or other high strange unexplainable phenomenon, we want to hear from you!

Please contact Fahrusha at fahrusha@fahrusha.com if you would like to share a high strange experience with us.

#65 Laird Scranton: Ancient Cosmologies

Author Laird Scranton

Click HERE to listen.

Fahrusha was pleased to welcome Laird Scranton to “Shattered Reality Podcast” to discuss an overview of his work in eight books listed below. He is an independent software designer who became interested in Dogon mythology and symbolism in the early 1990s through the works of Jerome Clark and Robert Temple. He has studied ancient myth, language, and cosmology since 1997 and has been a lecturer at Colgate University. He also appears in the late John Anthony West’s Magical Egypt DVD series.

He has written the following books:

The Science of the Dogon: Decoding the African Mystery Tradition;

Sacred Symbols of the Dogon: The Key to Advanced Science in the Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs; 

Seeking the Primordial: Exploring Root Concepts of Cosmological Creation;

The Cosmological Origins of Myth and Symbol: From the Dogon and Ancient Egypt to India, Tibet, and China;

Point of Origin: Gobekli Tepe and the Spiritual Matrix for the World’s Cosmologies;

The Velikovsky Heresies: Worlds in Collision and Ancient Catastrophes Revisited;

The Mystery of Skara Brae: Neolithic Scotland and the Origins of Ancient Egypt;

Decoding Maori Cosmology: The Ancient Origins of New Zealand’s Indigenous Culture.

Laird Scranton has been a contributor to several other books.

Cosmology as defined by Miriam Webster dictionary: 1 a: a branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of the universe, b: a theory or doctrine describing the natural order of the universe. 2: a branch of astronomy that deals with the origin, structure, and space-time relationships of the universe; also : a theory dealing with these.

On this episode we will look at development of our cultural cosmologies from the end of the Ice Age 12000 plus years ago to today, with nearly religious fixation on UFOs by some, and the worldwide cultural mythos of aliens from space via films to an idea of ‘others” as ‘interdimensional ‘ beings. Our guest’s work is rich and complex. He uses the languages and symbols of preliterate cultures and early literate cultures to decode what the ancients thought and finds coherence between cultures geographically dispersed. For instance, the word “etymology” itself has Greek roots: “etymos,” which means, “true sense,” and “logia,” which means, “study of.” Besides helping one to understand the origin of a word, knowing its roots can help one understand other words with similar roots, and can lead the astute to discover amazing mysteries through time.