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Back from the Borderline explores how human beings construct, inherit, interpret and sometimes misunderstand the ideas and beliefs through which they experience reality. Through depth psychology, religious history, Western esotericism and philosophy, I investigate how we come to believe what we believe, who influences those beliefs and how they affect the way we understand ourselves and the world.
A lot of my work comes back to the relationship between consciousness, belief and power.
How do institutions influence what people consider true, and why do we sometimes defend explanations we’ve never seriously questioned? Following these questions has taken me into some pretty unexpected territory, from early Christianity and the Western occult tradition to Jungian psychology, artificial intelligence and anomalous experiences. I’m also drawn to the ways spiritual teachings change as they’re passed between generations, and how institutions can preserve extraordinary wisdom while sometimes interfering with the very spiritual development they were meant to encourage.
You’ll find conversations with scholars and independent researchers here, alongside long-form essays where I spend time with historical sources and competing interpretations. Some of the ideas I explore are controversial. Others have been debated for centuries, although most of us were never taught much about them. I don’t assume an institution is correct because it has authority, or that an unconventional theory is true because someone claims it was suppressed. I’m willing to reconsider my own conclusions as I learn, and I hope you’ll feel encouraged to do the same.
I started this podcast years ago while trying to understand my own mind. Those early investigations into psychological suffering gradually led me toward the philosophical and religious traditions through which people have understood consciousness and human experience for centuries. There’s quite an archive here now, and I’ve kept much of it available, including episodes that reflect ideas I’ve since reconsidered.
If you’re new, you can start wherever you like. There’s no need to go all the way back to the first episode.
Even the title has taken on a different meaning over the years. Back from the Borderline now speaks to the boundaries I keep finding myself investigating, between psychology and theology, science and spiritual experience, accepted knowledge and ideas that have been pushed aside. I hope this can be a place where we explore those questions together, develop our own judgment and consider how what we learn might change the way we live.
You can explore the full podcast archive, House of Cards, my ongoing Tarot series, and MOODS, my reflective intelligence app, at backfromtheborderline.com. Patreon members can also connect their membership to Spotify to listen to the complete archive there.
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You’ve Studied the Mysteries. But Have They Changed You? (Anne Baring, Part 9: Epilogue)
We’ve learned so much about healing, but have we learned how to love? After eight conversations with 95-year-old Jungian analyst and author Anne Baring, I found myself questioning some of the beliefs I’d spent years defending, including my
The Way of the Rose: Healing the Heart & the Sacred Marriage (Anne Baring, Part 8)
For seven conversations, Anne Baring and I have been investigating the forgotten feminine face of God. We’ve explored Sophia, Mary Magdalene, the Grail, and the religious traditions that preserved aspects of the sacred feminine. Now, in our
The Cathars, the Inquisition and the Women Who Defied Rome (Anne Baring Part 7)
In medieval southern France, a woman stood up during a religious debate and challenged the men who claimed the authority to speak for God. A Catholic cleric told her to return to her spinning, because theology was no business of hers. Her i
The Black Madonna, the Grail and the Survival of the Feminine Tradition (Anne Baring Part 6)
A spiritual teacher dies, her community has to continue without her, and centuries later the written record can no longer tell us exactly how her teachings moved from one generation to the next. What, if anything, survives? This is Part 6 o
Mary Magdalene, The Beloved Companion (Anne Baring Part 5)
Mary Magdalene has spent nearly two thousand years buried under other people’s interpretations of her. Repentant prostitute. Devoted disciple. Apostle to the apostles. Mystic. Wife of Jesus. Suppressed leader of early Christianity. This epi
The Essenes and the Women Around Yeshua (Anne Baring Part 4)
What kind of spiritual world could have formed Yeshua before Christianity existed? This is Part 4 of my multi-part series of conversations with Anne Baring, recorded across September and October 2026. While each episode can stand on its own
Gnostic Sophia and the Suppressed Christian Mysteries (Anne Baring Part 3)
What if early Christianity contained a path centered on direct knowledge of the divine within us, and that path was pushed outside the Church that survived? This is Part 3 of my multi-part series of conversations with Anne Baring, recorded
The Lost Civilization of the Goddess (Anne Baring Part 2)
What if the history of Europe contains a civilization most of us were never taught about? This is Part 2 of my multi-part series of conversations with Anne Baring, recorded across September and October 2026. While each episode can stand on
The Forgotten Feminine Face of God (Anne Baring Part 1)
For thousands of years, the Western image of God became increasingly male. Anne Baring has spent much of her life studying what we lost when the feminine disappeared from our understanding of the divine. This is Part 1 of my eight-part seri
How to Tell When a Spiritual Teacher Is Full of Shit
In 2020, I almost paid $4,000 for a shadow work course. One of the first books I was told to read was Carolyn Elliott’s Existential Kink. I read it, tried to understand what I was being sold, and kept getting the same bad taste in my mouth.
Aleister Crowley’s Thelema: Sex Magick and the Problem With the Prophet
Aleister Crowley had a beautiful idea, and then he built a religion around himself. This episode takes Thelema seriously enough to examine what Crowley was actually teaching. True Will sits at the center of it, alongside The Book of the Law
The Braced Body: The Spiritual Cost of Always Being in Control (Part 3)
I’ve spent a lot of this series thinking about what happens when the body gets so used to effort that it forgets how to stop. By the time I got to this final episode, I found myself somewhere I didn’t expect. I was thinking about grace, and
The Braced Body: Why Rest Feel Unsafe & How to Let Go (Part 2)
Your body can be exhausted and still refuse to rest. You lie down, your jaw stays tight, your shoulders keep working, and some part of you remains ready for the next demand. This is Part Two of a three-part series on chronic bracing. We mov
The Braced Body: Why You’re Tense Even When Nothing Is Wrong (Part 1)
Do you clench your jaw without noticing? Do your shoulders stay tense even when you’re finally sitting down to rest? Does your body still feel like it’s working long after the day is over? This episode started with something completely ordi
What Do We Do With a Broken Spiritual Inheritance?
A lot of us are walking around with religious trauma and a God-shaped hole. I was raised inside a version of Christianity, and I know what it can leave in the body. Shame, fear, sexual repression, homophobia, spiritual surveillance, and the
UFOs, AI, and the Religion of the Unconscious (Live at Contact in the Desert 2026)
This year, I had the chance to attend Contact in the Desert (https://contactinthedesert.com/), which is a conference devoted to UFOs, psi phenomena, consciousness, and anomalous experience. While I was there, I joined a live podcast panel h
Mary Magdalene and the End of Spiritual Childhood
This week, I was doing an I Ching reading, and one line stood out to me: “To find what you seek, leave the child and follow the adult.” This episode was inspired by that line. I use it to think through spiritual maturity, especially in a cu
The Occult Teacher We Need Right Now: Dion Fortune, Psychic Hygiene, and the Magick of the Mind
Dion Fortune was one of the great occult teachers of the twentieth century, and one of my personal favorites. In this episode, I’m joined by Ike Baker (https://ikebaker.com/) for a conversation about Fortune and her legacy. We begin with Ik
The Skill AI Can Never Replace (And Why I’m Teaching Tarot)
This episode is the opening lesson from my new Patreon series, House of Cards. House of Cards is an ongoing study of the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot through depth psychology, mythology, symbolism, dreams, and contemplative practice. Every week
The Arrogance of Too Much Empathy
This might be the most personally confronting episode I’ve recorded in a long time. A few days ago, I had to send a text message I had been absolutely dreading. I spent days worrying about how this person would feel, what they would think,
Gay Men Have Always Loved a “Difficult” Woman
For much of my life, many of my closest friendships have been with gay men. Not because they were fun little accessories or stereotypical sidekicks, either. We didn’t even always have that much in common on paper. Yep, these friendships wer
The Female Shadow
Female cruelty often works insidiously enough to make the person on the receiving end of it gaslight the hell out of themselves. The punishment that’s served up tends to arrive socially or emotionally, often in somewhat polite ways, which i
The Christian Grimoire Evangelicals Forgot About (Part 1)
Most people think Christian history has a simple answer to anything regarding “magic": don’t touch it, and all of it is “demonic.” The Arbatel of Magick makes that answer harder to defend. This strange little text, translated into English i
Why Everyone Sounds Religious About AI [Consciousness Stream for May 2026]
Well folks, it’s that time again for our weekly recap of the month. On this one, we’ll dive into Richard Dawkins and his new essay on UnHerd (https://unherd.com/2026/05/is-ai-the-next-phase-of-evolution/?edition=us). This is a man who spent
The Body Keeps the Mileage (On Mortality & Wellness Panic)
The inspiration for this episode came to me after looking at a small scar under my daughter’s eye and realizing that our bodies really do keep the f*cking score. That thought sent me down a bit of an existential rabbit hole. Back to my mill
Why Tarot Feels So Accurate, And How to Actually Read a Card
Someone tagged me this week in a Christian conversion testimony video and accused me of leading people into demonic tarot witchcraft, which honestly made me laugh. So naturally, I made an episode. I felt like it was important to explore why
The Intelligence of Madness, Part Two: How We Come Back
This is part two of a two-part series on madness and the performance of sanity. Most people are mainly just acting “normal” all day. We put on our work voices while we’re screaming with existential misery inside. We all know what it feels l
Why “Disclosure” is a Distraction and How to Stay Sane as Reality Crumbles
On May 8, 2026, the government released 162 files under what’ it’s calling the PURSUE initiative (the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters). While the mainstream media is obsessing over infrared videos and propulsi
The Intelligence of Madness, Part One: Who Gets Called Insane?
Part One of a two-part series on madness, psychosis, and the thin line between breakdown and revelation. Sanity has always come with rules. Speak “correctly.” Show up to work and produce. If you hear a voice, see something other people don’
Why Your Mind Feels Broken in the Age of Babel
Your mind wasn’t built for this much input. Every day you’re asked to absorb thousands of opinions, headlines, identities, emotional manipulations, and manufactured realities. You try to stay informed, but most days it just leaves you fragm
