The Hermetic Hour

On Thursday January 31st, 2019 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will air a discussion on the life and work of Victorian Age British artist and writer William Morris (1834-1888) on the modern Hermetic revival. Morris was a Renaissance man of many talents. An Oxford scholar who idealized and romanticized the medieval period and yearned to recreate Camelot in the modern era. He was appalled by the pollution, social misery and esthetic mediocrity caused by the industrial revolution and he believed that Karl Marx held the key to creating a utopia (although Morris admitted that he could not understand Marx) But we need to understand Morris in order to fathom the continuing fascination our cultural elite have for Marx's continually failing system. So, come with us back to the Gas-light era and we will see where a lot of today's progressive ideas got started.

On Thursday January 17th the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will review and discuss "The Cygnus Mystery" (2006)  and "The Cygnus Key" (2018) by Andrew Collins. These recent books are in the tradition of "Hamlet's Mill" (1969), "The Sirius Mystery"(1976) and Gordon White's "Star Ships" (2016) and they all fall into the category of popular celestial archaeology. Most importantly for us in the Hermetic community they all seek to validate our ancient Initiatic Code which holds that we descend from the Heavens and to the Heavens we shall return via the Milky Way as our "River of Souls." Like so many of his predecessors in this Collins locates the ancient Shamanic origins of this in old Hyperborea in North Central Asia. He presents a good case for Cygnus the Swan bringing down the souls like the stork brings babies. He suggests that the  Paleolithic genius-giant Denisovan hominids recently discovered in Siberia were the originators of of our Celestial mythology and that they carried it all the wa

On Thursday December 20th, 2018 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will present a discussion on the Hermetic origins of the Holy Grail as presented in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Medieval romance “Parzival. This is a follow-up on an earlier broadcast from three years ago in which we read Janinne Rene’s Article on Parzival from The Seventh Ray issue number 19, January 1977. In the introduction to her article I stated that: “Much of the symbolism and the allegory of Kellner’s original O.T.O. derived from Parzival.” This and other fascinating secrets embedded in Wolfram's medieval masterpiece will be the subjects of tonight’s broadcast. So, if you want to find the Grail we have the clues for you. Eschenbach’s Parzival is like Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia. It's one of those old books full of secrets and magick. And our job on the Hermetic Hour is to dig them out for you.

On Thursday December 6th, 2018, the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will review and discuss “The Spiritual Meaning of the Sixties” (2018) by Tobias Churton. This is a 653 page door-stopper of a book subtitled: “the Magic, Myths & Music of the Decade that Changed the World,” And it certainly lives up to its subtitle. Even though Churton’s previous books have been in the mystical, occult genre, this one should break into the mainstream and be read by every thoughtful reader interested in the present spiritual, philosophical and political divisions in what we call Western Civilization. Using the Music, films, television, and popular fads of the period as his mirror of reflection he leads us through the decade. The cultural impact of the Beatles, and rock music, the sexual revolution, psychedelics, the Bomb, the Vietnam War, Civil Rights, and the rise of feminism are all dealt with in turn. And the inability of established religion to cope with the spiritual challenges of the time is considered. The autho

On Thursday February 2nd, 2023 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon  will review and Discuss the controversial 2011 book Caesar's Messiah  by Joseph Atwill. The subtitle of this work is: "The Roman Conspiracy  to Invent Jesus and Atwell presents convincing evidence that the  Flavian family of Roman patricians with the help of renegade Jewish  historian Josephus, may have done exactly that.Atwill purposes that  the Gospels were written by members of the Flavian family to make the  Jesus story correspond with Titus's conquest of Judea and Jerusalem.  He presents quotes from Josephus "War of Jews" to back this up. This  will be a hard book for fundamental Christians but not for Gnostic  Christians. Atwill holds off presenting his Imperial time-line until  page 302, keeping the casual reader unaware that Christianity was  flourishing and perishing in Rome long before the Gospels were  written. So even though he may be correct about Roman influence on the  Synoptic Gospels, he is wrong in assuming

On Thursday November 15th 2018, the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will review "Son of Chicken Qabalah" and interview its distinguished author Lon Milo DuQuette. This 2018 book is a sequel to Lon's popular "Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford" (2001). Lamed Ben Clifford is Lon's fictional creation. Lon thought all of us Hermetic Qabalists needed our own Rabbi, who would not sneer at our Tarot cards and pagan correspondences on the Tree of Life. Ben Clifford's Qabalah was for all of us and it was presented in a humorous style that made the otherwise dry subject come alive. It became one of the best introductions to the subject at least from a Hermetic perspective. The fictional Ben Clifford has passed away but he has left a legacy: a three degree Qabalistic initiation system based on the Sepher Yetzirah's Cube of Space and the Golden Dawn's Hermetic Hebrew alphabet correspondences. Starting with the Three Mother Letters in the first degree (the original tetragrammaton) the candidate

On Thursday January 19th,2023 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will review and discuss the 2016 book "The Ba'al Theory of Christianity" by author Glenn Young. This book is subtitled: "Exploring the Impact of Human Sacrifice on Western Religion." This subtitle and Young's insistence on equating Carthaginian child sacrifices with Palestinian Phoenician ritual practices is our only real complaint about this otherwise well-researched  and strongly presented book. The author touches all the bases in explaining the differences between Yahwehism and the original worship of El and the Elohim. He describes Ezra's rewrite of the Bible and even mentions Joseph and Moses as the possible leaders of the Hyksos. Although he is wrong in assuming that Sidon and Tyre practiced child sacrifice in Classical times he may be correct in assuming that Carthaginian practices might have influenced the Druids and the Nordics and later the witchcraft persecutions. It is unfortunate that he fails to consider that even though the C

On Thursday January 12th, 2023 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will review "Letters on the Royal Art" by 19th century German author J. B. Kerning. Kerning was a musician, a mystic and a Freemason. The book is composed of letters describing the spiritual absorption of the symbols, words and signs used in the three degrees of Blue Lodge Masonry in the form of an internal awareness which purifies and sanctifies the whole body. This is similar to a yoga chakra system and may have had an influence on the Golden Dawn's Middle Pillar ritual. The book and other works by Kerning may have influenced Bardon's "Key to the True Qabalah." Kerning was a singer and teaches a magical Masonic Alphabet in the manner of a musical voice teacher. He is perhaps the first modern Western mystic to emphasize internalization of spiritual ritual. His concepts enabled the development of "Bringing Down The Light" in  20th century magick.

On Thursday January 5th, 2023 the Hermetic Hour with Host Poke Runyon will present a sequential Review of the original new shows presented in 2022. Regular listeners should keeo their notebooks and pencils ready to jot down the one's they missed so that they can search for them in the archives. We started off the year with"Aliester Crowley the Gourmet Chef" on January 13th. We did the first two chapters of "The Tomb of Prester John" on February 3rd and more Prester John on February 24th and March 10th. On February 27th we presented "The Fort Worth Masons interview your host Poke Runyon." On Thursday May 26th Poke and Max (Fraters Thabion and SithMeth) did a review of Lovecraft's "Charles Dexter Ward" the book and the films. Which Max turned into a video that you can watch on-line. In August we presented a reprise of our "Hermetic Yoga lecture" given at the Mount Shasta Hermetic Mysteries Conclave. This again was redone as a video which can be viewed on the Ordo Templi Astartes You Tube Channel. On August 17 w

On Thursday October 25th, 2018 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will present a discussion on the late Medieval astrologer magician Cecco d' Ascoli who was burned at the stake by the Inquisition in 1327 a.d. for publishing books connecting astrology with magick, necromancy and demonology. In several ways he presaged the sad career of Giordano Bruno who went to the stake 273 years later in 1600 for a similar offense. Cecco expounded his magick on a geocentric universe model, whereas Bruno paganized (or demonized) a later Coperican universe. Cecco d' Ascoli may be considered the father of Solomonic ceremonial mirror magick. One of his most heretical revelations was a description of summoning (evoking) the demon "Floron", in a mirror of polished steel. Floron had fallen from the Order of Cherubim and served under the Goetic king Amaymon. Such a mirror was described in Picatrix and later depictions of it reveal that it was in fact a hand mirror. After Cecco's execution magicians no longer wrot

On Thursday October 11th, 2018 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will review the classic study on Renaissance Magick by Dame Frances Yates (1899 - 1981), "Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition." (1964) This is a book that should be the cornerstone of any Hermetic student's library. Although the Italian philosopher and magician Giordano Bruno (1548 - 1600) is the main figure on which Yates centers her work, the book is in fact a broad study of Renaissance Hermetic Magick evolving from its Italian origins in the late Middle Ages and on through to Bruno's exposition of its post Copernican version. Hermetic Humanists accepted Copernicus but the Church refused to abandon the geocentric universe. Bruno, a Dominican monk was burned at the stake. Many considered him a Scientific martyr, but Yates contends that his heresies were Hermetic as well as scientific. So if you would like to explore the life and beliefs of Giordano Bruno, join us for a Hermetic Renaissance Faire.

On Thursday September 27th, 2018 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will review the new Collector's edition of Kurt Seligmann's 1948 classic "The Mirror of Magic: A History of Magic in the Western World" and discuss Seligmann's career as a surrealist painter,  a scholar of the occult and a practicing ceremonial magician. This handsome new edition, published by Inner Traditions, is a faithful reproduction of the original. Poke Runyon inherited a 1948 copy Seligmann's  book from his late Master Frederick Adams (1928 - 2008) with Fred's annotations. It was Fred's first book on Magic and he treasured it. In his Introduction Seligmann wrote: "As an artist I was concerned with the aesthetic value of Magic and its influence on man's creative imagination." Fred Adams was also a very talented artist and was inspired by The Mirror of Magic, as we hope a new generation of readers will be when they discover this beautiful new edition of Kurt Seligmann's Masterpiece.  

On December 8th 2022 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will discuss the forthcoming Second Edition of "The Book of Solomon's Magick" which we first published in 1996 following the release of our video "The Magick of Solomon" in the same year. It is fair to say that the video and the book launched a revival of  Solomonic ceremonial Magick which is still going strong in the twenty-first century. We followed up with more books and films but continued to reprint the original book for twenty-six years without updating or revision. We continued to promise a new edition but it was too easy to just insert addenda in the original which continued to sell well even though it was outdated. Now we have finally gotten the new over three hundred page hardcover 2nd Edition of Solomon's Magick ready to go to print, up-dated with new equipment designs, authentic operational log entries, exorcism accounts, essays and original art. We expect it to be available by February of 2023. Watch for it.

On Thursday August 30th, 2018 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will review and explore the almost one thousand page introspective philosophical and spiritual journal of the late California science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick. (1928-1982) This remarkable documentation of a classic mystical experience and its ramifications in and beyond the author's literary works. The exegesis is also a chronicle of a genius battling for sanity and a true religious philosophy as he lives and works through what is obviously and admittedly mental illness. Dick is best known for his darkly paranoid  science-fiction novels and stories. The novel VALIS (vast active living intelligence system) is the fictionalized version of his 1974 vision and much of the exegesis ruminates on its impact and significance. As a Roman Catholic Dick's vision is Biblical, especially Christian, but he analyzes it as Gnostic and Neo-platonic (Hermetic) and defines Christ as essentially female. He later defines himself as a neo-Marx

On Thursday August 2nd , 2018 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will present a discussion on the alleged Parallel world or trans-dimensional ariel Queendom of the Sylphs known as "Magonia" that was documented in medieval histories and has recently inspired a fantasy novel of that title "Magonia" by Maria Headley (2015) and was the main theme for UFO authority Jacques Vallee's "Passport to Magonia" (1969-93) which delt with the Magonian "close encounters" from the 9th century and other supernatural visitations recounted in European folklore as early examples of alien sightings, close encounters, and abductions, on through to the mysterious "airship" reports from the American West in the 1890s, comparing them with modern reports and investigations. Vallee contends, and as Hermetic devotees we certainly concur, that most of these events are inter-dimensional rather than extra-terrestrial; that there are parallel worlds co-existing with us as near to us as our furniture. This is also the main

On Thursday July 26th, 2018 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will discuss the Mysterious Voynich Manuscript (Beinecke MS. 408) a late medieval herbal, alchemical and astrological book written in an unknown language and illustrated with pictures of plants and astronomical arrangements that are not of this world. Authorship was originally attributed to Roger Bacon (1214 - 1292) but carbon-dating placed the MS. in the early fifteenth century. John Dee and Edward Kelley have been suggested because of their similar Enochian language creation, but there is no proof of their involvement. The mysterious MS has fascinated both scholars and amateur researchers alike with solutions announced every year since 1943 when the U.S. Government code-breakers attempted to decipher it. A new solution was announced just a week before this broadcast and has already been discredited. The main reason most experts fail seems obvious to a Hermetic scholar. The Voynich MS was not written in cipher. It was written i

On Thursday July 5th, 2018 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will be joined by author Stephen Flowers, Ph.D. to review and discuss the new revised edition of "The Fraternitas Saturni" (2018). This being the fourth version of the original copyrighted in 1990, and including previously unpublished material making this rendition sensational in occult circles. Flowers traces the FS from its beginning, with Crowley and the O.T.O. inspiring Gregor Gregorius in 1925, through its activities in the Wiemar era, its suppression by the Nazis, its revival after WW II and its eventual split into three bodies after Gregorius died in 1964. We are introduced to the "Adonism" of Franz Sattler (Dr. Musallam) a neo-pagan Venus-Adonis cult (!) that included Wilhelm Quaintscher and Franz Bardon who carried it with them into the Frateritas Saturni. We revisit the infamous FOGC black lodge from Frabato, and the Weida Conference in which Crowley attempted to take over organized occultism in Germany. Most importantly Dr.Flowers p

On Thursday June 14th, 2018 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will present a discussion on The Holy Grail and The Round Table in Magick. To begin this subject we will review the history of the Grail as presented in our poem: The Cult of The Sangreal which we published in our journal The Seventh Ray back in 1975 and which has since become the prologue to our First Degree (Pastophoris) initiation. We trace the Grail from its origin in ancient Phoenicia in the days of Melchizedek around 1500 B.C. It began with the ancient Canaanite God Baal’s yearly death at High Summer followed by his resurrection via the Chalice of heavenly nectar brought by his consort, the Goddess Astarte in the Fall. We trace this event through a series of mythical evolutions until the Grail becomes the cup of resurrection for the last of the dying gods, Jesus the Nazareen, raised by his consort Mary Magdalene. This is the secret of the Grail Tradition which was carried on through the Arthurian Romances. It is a genealogical bloodlin

On Thursday October 27th, 2022 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will replay our 2013 Halloween performance of Sherlock Holmes and the Necronomicon a Gilbert & Sullivan style comedy from the pages of a 2011 issue of the Seventh Ray. This is highlighted by the The song "There ain't no Necronomicon"which infuriates the guardians of the evil book: "the invisible cannibal faries". Of course Holmes and Watson prevail against the villain Sebastian Crotchley, Crotchly.And the Loc Ness Monster returns to the Deep. During a seance in the play a medium channels The Queen of Sheba played by Soror Urania who, will again channel Lady Baltis at Mot Mass, our Halloween ceremony this Saturday night here at Rivendell in Silverado. So if you catch up on some Halloween nostalgia tune in and let us be your trick-or-treat.

On Thursday May 24th, the Hermetic Hour with host Poke Runyon will present a review and commentary on the Hypnerotomachia of Poliphili (1499-1999) translated by Joscelyn Godwin. This is one of the most important esoteric books ever published and five hundred years after its debut in Renaissance Italy in 1499, written in stylistic Italian, it finally became available in a readable English translation by Joscelyn Godwin. The Hypnerotomachia of Poliphili, subtitled "The Strife of Life in a Dream" is a romantic fantasy novel which establishes a template for many similar works to emerge in the five centuries following its initial publication: The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz (1616) The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1785) The Wizard of Oz (1900) The Club Dumas (1996) filmed as "The Ninth Gate" (1999) and the novel "The Rule of Four" (2004). The real secrets hidden in the book are not cryptic codes but rather allegorical and thematic. Like the one tale in the Arabian Nights that reveals occult and Mag