6.0/7.0
The dark half of the year is upon us, at least for those of us who live in the northern hemisphere and we wanted to usher it in with a review episode that embodied the mystery, magic and Gothic deliciousness of the season. We chose the 2018 BBC series Requiem which is currently streaming on Netflix because it had an abundance of these elements as well as some truly wonderful depictions of spirits both local and otherworldly. The series takes place in beautiful Wales, a land steeped in bewitching Celtic culture and lore which in our opinion is the perfect setting for this story.
For this special Samhain episode, I am joined by my former co-host Sabrina Khan for a fun exploration of some of the major paranormal themes and magical elements of Requiem! We hope you tune in and enjoy the episode as much as we had fun creating it for you. We also announce the winner of the free email tarot reading so stay tuned for that at the end of the episode! As always, we have a few extras for you in these show notes.
The Enochian magic of Dr. John Dee is alluded to throughout the series with clues to be found everywhere for those paying attention. Dee, an all around Renaissance or should we say Elizabethan-man was a brilliant and fascinating man in his own right. Several biographies have been written about his life but two that come to mind which are quite excellent are: "John Dee and the Empire of Angels: Enochian Magick and the Occult Roots of the Modern World" by Jason Louv and "The Queen's Conjuror (Science and Magic of Dr. Dee)" by Benjamin Woolley. These two books not only cover Dee's scientific achievements but his occult ones as well.
You can also find some of Dee's writings for free on-line starting with the "Monas Hieroglyphica" and other writings. Teresa Burns and J. Alan Moore published an article on the Monas Hieroglyphica in the Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition. You can also purchase Joseph Peterson's translation of "John Dee's Five Books of Mystery: Original Sourcebook of Enochian Magic" detailing Dee's system for communicating with the angels. Also, if you are ever in London, the British Library has a few of John Dee's purported ritual items including a scrying mirror.
If you are interested in Enochian magick, we recommend the following two books to begin with: "Enochian Vision Magick" by Lon Milo Duquette and "The Essential Enochian Grimoire" by Aaron Leitch. If you are new to ceremonial magic and interested in Golden Dawn-style magic, an excellent resource is Donald Michael Kraig's "Modern Magick". Aaron Leitch's "Secrets of the Magickal Grimoires: The Classical Texts of Magick Deciphered" is a great resource for Renaissance/Solomonic magick.
John Dee never referred to his angelic magic as Enochian. The system received its name later and was named after "The Book of Enoch" which is a non-canonical apocryphal work which introduced the concept of fallen angels to Christianity.
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| John Dee |
In the episode, we speak of the Welsh landscape in Requiem as being a character in the story, a land very much connected to Annwn, the fairy otherworld. W.Y. Evans-Wentz wrote a book that was published in 1911 that is an in-depth attempt to explain the phenomena of the Celtic belief in fairies. The book called "The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries" is available to read for free on Sacred Texts. "The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns & Fairies" by Robert Kirk is another great book on the same topic written by a Scottish clergyman (Kirk).
Modern Wales remains a bilingual country who thankfully has not lost it's BEAUTIFUL ancestral language. Welsh however has proven to be a difficult language to pronounce for many of us non-Welsh noobs. We just don't know what to do with all those vowels and consonants, oh my! This traveling site provides a brief but handy guide to pronouncing Welsh place names including some of those consonants and vowels if you ever find yourself happily cycling through Wales.
The original soundtrack of Requiem was written by composer Dominik Scherrer who collaborated with English singer, songwriter Natasha Khan, known professionally as Bat for Lashes, to create an ethereally atmospheric sound that supports and enhances the story brilliantly. Mr. Scherrer speaks about the soundtrack in this "Behind the Audio" piece. In our research, we also came across the late American composer Jerry Hunt whose compositions were inspired by his occult and ritualistic work including the Enochian system.
Requiem features a character named Laura, a clairaudient psychic, who receives messages from her spirit guide Bessie. This Yale News article discusses the results of a 2016 study in which psychics helped psychiatrist begin to try to understand voices of psychosis. You can find the journal article for the study here.
Well, my fellow seekers, we hope you enjoy the episode and have fun exploring some of the interesting occult references found in Requiem. On behalf of Sabrina and I, may you all have a blessed Samhain and Beltane!
The music of this episode included Forgotten Landscape, Weightlessness, and Set Adrift by Daniel Birch, White Throated Sparrow by Rebecca Foon, O Magnum Mysterium by William Byrd, My Lord Willoughby's Welcome Home by John Dowland, Haere Mai (Ambient mix) by Parvus Decree and Saturne by Pierre Fablet and Mathieu Gaborit. The music was sourced from Free Music Archive and IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library.
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