Damien Echols’s wrongful conviction, sentencing, and eventual release as part of the West Memphis Three case is the subject of the HBO documentary Paradise Lost and West of Memphis, a documentary produced by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh. While in prison, Damien was ordained into the Rinzai Zen Buddhist tradition. His books include the New York Times bestseller Life After Death, High Magick, and Angels and Archangels, as well as Ritual: An Essential Grimoire and Yours for Eternity (both with Lorri Davis). Today, he teaches magick and works as a visual artist.
Damien Echols is an author and artist who teaches classes on magick around the country. The story of his wrongful murder conviction was documented in the films Paradise Lost and West of Memphis. With Sounds True, Damien has published the book High Magick and the complementary audio program A Course in High Magick. In this podcast, Sounds True founder Tami Simon speaks with Damien about his forthcoming book, Angels and Archangels,which offers us a practical set of tools for working with these timeless forces for divine wisdom and healing power.
Damien Echols was wrongfully convicted of murder in the infamous “West Memphis Three” case and spent more than 18 years on death row before his exoneration and release. Now he teaches Western ceremonial magick—the same practice he credits with saving his life in prison. With Sounds True, Damien has published the book High Magick and a practice-oriented audio companion, A Course in High Magick. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Damien about magick and how it is meant to “constantly ingest more of divinity.” Damien describes two of the central practices of magick—the Middle Pillar and the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram—and details why they are so foundational to the modality. Damien explains how he first discovered magick while in solitary confinement and details the concept of “will” in relationship to the Buddhist concept of dharma. Finally, Damien and Tami talk about what it means to manifest a “light body” and the overall goal of spiritual liberation through magick. (83 minutes)
Tami’s Takeaway:
Damien Echols is a “current-bearer”—someone who is able to pass to others an experience of boundless light. When I met with Damien in November of 2018 at a launch event for his new book, High Magick, I could tell that something had recently happened to him that had dramatically increased the intensity of this current. In this conversation, he describes how the practices of magick, which he calls “a Western path of enlightenment,” brought him to an experience of ego dissolution, which he describes as “experiencing myself as a small handful of sand that someone threw into a tornado.” The takeaway: an invitation to let go of any feeling of separateness, enter the abyss, and discover the interconnected light that awaits us.
Every person on this earth is born with an entire universe of potential in them. Most people never cultivate the seeds of that potential, so the seeds go to waste and the people go through life wondering what went wrong, or blaming the world for everything that did go wrong.
Magick waters those seeds to make that potential stir, grow, and flower. It accelerates our spiritual and mental development in ways we never could have predicted. Our ability to shape our destiny and the world around us using magick is limited only by our own belief, dedication, and creativity.
The goal of my new book, High Magick, is to provide you with the opportunity to experience the magick that resides within you—within each and every one of us, without exception. These rituals and practices are merely guidelines—a place to begin.
To get you started, here’s a short video where I share a basic magick practice for more healing love.
Once you begin experiencing magick, you will never see life the same way again. You’ll grow increasingly aware of the currents of energy active all around you, and the interactions between energy and the material realm. And you’ll discover that, contrary to what you may have been told, there are no limits.
I’m not here to tell you what to believe, and I’m not here to convert anyone. That’s not my job. My job (if you could call it that) is simply to show you what has worked for me through thick and thin. In that way, I guess you could say it’s my job to help. And my hope is that you’ll find these practices as useful in your life as I have found them to be in mine.
Few luminaries in modern times have opened the doors to the spiritual dimensions of who we are, why we are here, and how we heal and evolve more profoundly than Caroline Myss. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with the longtime Sounds True author and renowned medical intuitive about her new online program, The Way of Guardians and Grace, where Caroline shares for the first time an intimate account of her relationship with unseen allies and the energetic realms they opened to her.
Listen now as the inimitable Caroline Myss tells us how these turning-point events in her life can inform your own greater path and calling. She and Tami discuss and illuminate: accessing our latent mystical intelligence; forging a partnership with the Divine; how your biography becomes your biology; life—a sacred spiritual adventure; wisdom, faith, love, and light; shifting from the love of power to the power of love; humanity’s collective shadow at this time; cultivating a high-voltage moral conscience; making grace-filled choices; what to pray for (and what not to); turning on your light in service of the world—and keeping it on; and more.
Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.
As a new generation joins the search for understanding and meaning in our ambiguous and uncertain world, there’s a growing resurgence of interest in the Shadow—Carl Jung’s famous term for the aspects of ourselves that hide in our unconscious yet often drive behaviors we’d rather not repeat. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with acclaimed Jungian therapist and author Dr. Connie Zweig about her life’s mission to help us grow in self-awareness and move toward personal and collective healing by learning how to work with the Shadow.
This aha-moment-filled conversation explores: meeting the Shadow on the spiritual path; ego formation during childhood; the concept of repression and the problem with the closet metaphor; why the Shadow hides—and when it erupts; “romancing the Shadow”; three cues to explore with respect to compulsive behaviors; “Shadow characters” and the practice of personifying aspects of the Shadow; the intergenerational aspect; engaging Shadow work at midlife; the superego; projection in relationships; sharing our secrets; money, sex, and power; shifting from a persona marriage to a Shadow marriage; the Vedanta tradition and the teaching on leshavidya, “the remains of ignorance”; the moral development missing in many spiritually advanced practitioners; illusions, idealizations, and archetypal projections; why the first reaction to meeting the Shadow is denial; Shadow projection in the politics of our times; step one: self-examination; bridging inner work and outer work wisely; how to practice “holding the tension of opposites”; cultivating nonduality in your own psychology; the “third thing” and the transcendent function; and more.
Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.
More and more people are waking up to the very real dangers that humanity is facing as a result of a declining honeybee population. Yet as we join the refrain, “Save the bees!” Michelle Cassandra Johnson and Amy Burtaine pose a profound and extraordinary question: What if it’s the bees who are trying to save us?
In this eye-opening conversation with the coauthors of the new book The Wisdom of the Hive, Tami Simon speaks with Michelle and Amy about bees as psychopomps who come to us with guidance; the spiritual lineage of bee priestesses; sustainability and respect in bee tending; hive consciousness and the concept of the superorganism; bees as an indicator species and the consequences of colony collapse for humanity; tending bees in a way that aligns with how they want to live; experiencing the power of the hum; the healing properties of the hive; how opening a jar of honey can turn into a shamanic journey; the waggle dance; the adaptability of bees and the various roles they play over their lifespan; the queen and her brilliance; becoming less fearful of bees (and what to do when one lands on you!); bees as a model of faith and trust; the question bees have for each one of us: What is the medicine I can offer?; how bees demonstrate gratitude, contentment, and equanimity; the swarm; meaning, connection, creativity, and contribution; the polarity of the dark and the light; the gift of “a box of sweetness”; why “the more you give away, the more you have.”
Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.
