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Please welcome my guest this week, a linguist with a PhD in literature, practitioner of the esoteric arts and author of no less than five books on occult topics, Patrick Dunn.
Patrick has been interested in reality’s hidden layers from a pretty young age on and received inspiration from the local Carnegie library of his small hometown which somehow ended up having a section on the occult.
Patrick went on to study witchcraft, QBLH, chaos magic, the PGM and Hellenic paganism in general and despite of a lot more experience since that first talismanic magic he still considers himself a sceptic which is probably one of the more useful traits when it comes down being an occultist.
Of course, we’ll focus on Patrick’s books, starting with his first one ‘Postmodern Magic: The Art of Magic In The Information Age’ which was published quite some time ago but still holds very valid views marking the point when Patrick started to develop his own ideas drifting away from the so-called ‘classical paths’ also building the foundations for his later work.
As Patrick’s second book, ‘Magic Power Language Symbol: A Magician’s Exploration of Linguistics’ goes into much more detail on the connection between language and ritual, the assumptions of language and concepts, pronunciation issues and possible reactions from unseen worlds, we’ll touch upon these ideas as well.
On our journey, we’ll stop at ‘The Practical Art of Divine Magic: Contemporary & Ancient Techniques of Theurgy’ which is Patrick’s third major work and we’ll discuss (one possible) definition of theurgy as well as the role of the rise of Alexandria in the relevant historical period in context with the evolution of magical/religious belief systems.
Patrick will kindly give a personal account of how book five, ‘The Orphic Hymns: A New Translation for the Occult Practitioner’ was born out of necessity and was actually followed by an unforeseen revival of interest in the Orphic Hymns in general. We’ll proceed in our conversation with a fascinating comparison between the Lenormand and the Tarot which is part of Patrick’s fourth book, ‘Cartomancy with the Lenormand and the Tarot: Create Meaning & Gain Insight from the Cards’ and again, we’ll gain a lot of information on how and why this book was born out of a certain need and shed some light on the major differences between the two reading systems.
In the end, Patrick will talk about his brand new – almost finished – project of a new book which he’d love to call ‘Magic without BS’ although the title might be a subject of concern. It will present basic exercises and deconstruct pitfalls to provide a brief guide of various magical topics without sugarcoating anything.
