This new translation and reading was a labor of love! You can find the full text here.

Io, Vestalia! In honor of the Roman festival dedicated to Vesta (June 7-15), I sat down with evolutionary astrologer Ari Moshe Wolfe to chat about some of the broad themes and archetypes related to Vesta in both mythology and astrology.

Where did the idea of the four elements come from? How did it develop? And who was talking about fire, earth, water, and air in antiquity? In this series, we'll take a look at the four elements across intellectual disciplines in ancient Greece, Rome, and their neighbors.

In part 3, the philosophical conception of the elements is applied in various mystical and esoteric traditions during the Hellenistic period and beyond. Literary witches, ritual manuals, Hermetic treatises, and the budding field of Hellenistic astrology all get in on the elemental action. This is the final episode in this series (for now!)

Where did the idea of the four elements come from? How did it develop? And who was talking about fire, earth, water, and air in antiquity? In this series, we'll take a look at the four elements across intellectual disciplines in ancient Greece, Rome, and their neighbors.

In part 2, we look at the elements in Athens as it navigates the Persian Wars and produces the most influential philosopher from Greek antiquity, Plato. We explore Plato and his successor Aristotle's views on elemental geometry, the role of fire, earth, water, and air in cosmic motion, and Aristotle's addition of a fifth element, aether (aither).

Where did the idea of the four elements come from? How did it develop? And who was talking about fire, earth, water, and air in antiquity? In this series, we'll take a look at the four elements across intellectual disciplines in ancient Greece, Rome, and their neighbors.

In part 1, we trace the origins of fire, earth, water, and air in religion, philosophy, and medicine. I talk about the Ionian quest for the arche, the primordial substance of the universe, the influence of Zoroastrian religion, and how the Hippocratic theory of humoralism mapped onto the four-element system proposed by Empedocles.

The Lupercalia festival was something of a mystery, even to the Romans whose writing we have. In this video I start to piece together some of the information about the rites and the deities involved.

The Sibyls delivered prophecies from the gods and resided in temples around the ancient Mediterranean. Like other prophets in antiquity, the Sibyls enjoyed a special, if frightening, relationship with the gods, especially Apollo. In this video (a request!) we’ll talk about these prophetesses and the work they did.

Funerary archaeology provides some of the richest material from antiquity, and a good portion of what we know about ancient peoples comes from funerary contexts. In this video (a request!) I walk through what I think are some of the more thought-provoking and useful kinds of material remains to come from Etruria, Rome, and Roman Egypt.

Io, Saturnalia! In this video, I share some additional thoughts about the December festival dedicated to the Roman god Saturn, and about his mythology (both Greek and Roman). Happy holidays, everyone!

Hades is the "most hated" of all the gods, according to Greek sources. But who is this god? What did he represent, and what was his cult activity like? In this video, we take a deep dive into Hades' name, mythology, worship, and representation in medieval and modern times. Thanks for watching!

The heroes of Greek and Roman myth battled men and gods, swelling seas and swirling storms, rushing into danger prepared to die for the cause. But a select few met Death before their time, venturing deep down into the realm of Hades, where the souls of the dead spend their eternity.

In this two-part discussion, I take you on a journey down to the Greco-Roman underworld and - with any luck - back again. We’ll follow several heroes and figures from mythology as they take on the challenge and face Death itself.

In this second installment (of two), our heroes go down and through the underworld, encountering ghosts, monsters, and gods. They must get what they came for and get the {hell} out of there.

Happy Friday the 13th! In honor of this most spooky day, here is a deep dive (and yet somehow, very superficial introduction) to the historical numerological systems in the ancient Mediterranean. We'll go through, especially, the Hebrew gematria and Greek isopsephy systems and discuss how numbers played a role in philosophy, spirituality, and mysticism. This was a fun one for me to put together, I hope y'all enjoy!

The heroes of Greek and Roman myth battled men and gods, swelling seas and swirling storms, rushing into danger prepared to die for the cause. But a select few met Death before their time, venturing deep down into the realm of Hades, where the souls of the dead spend their eternity.

In this two-part discussion, I take you on a journey down to the Greco-Roman underworld and - with any luck - back again. We’ll follow several heroes and figures from mythology as they take on the challenge and face Death itself.

In this first installment, we prepare for our downward journey, meeting guides who will help us along the way and acquiring the skills and tools we need to make it back alive.

This is the third and final video in my series on Roman weddings. In this last installment, I chat about some of the ways that I adapted Roman customs to fit my own wedding, which was this past summer. You can really tell how exhausted I am in this one, so, apologies if it's kind of rambling.

I also failed to mention that marriages (not relationships, a separate topic) were pretty much exclusively between a man and a woman. One of the main goals of marriage was procreation, so that type of union was almost entirely limited to heterosexual couples.

This is the second video in my series on Roman marriages. In this installment, I walk through the sequence of events in a Roman wedding, using Catullus' poem 61 as a guide. As with my treatment of brides in the last video, the evidence I'm drawing from is scarce, diverse, and sometimes mythological. There's very little - outside of Catullus' poem - that gives a complete overview of how a wedding would have gone. As always, I'm speaking in generalities and largely speaking about the upper class. In reality, like today, weddings would have depended very much on the status, financial means, and personalities of the two families and the couple themselves.

I also failed to mention that marriages (not relationships, a separate topic) were pretty much exclusively between a man and a woman. One of the main goals of marriage was procreation, so that type of union was almost entirely limited to heterosexual couples.

This is the first in my series on Roman wedding customs. As always, I'm speaking in generalities and largely speaking about the upper class. In reality, like today, weddings would have depended very much on the status, financial means, and personalities of the two families and the couple themselves.

I also failed to mention that marriages (not relationships, a separate topic) were pretty much exclusively between a man and a woman. One of the main goals of marriage was procreation, so that type of union was almost entirely limited to heterosexual couples.

In light of the Vulcanalia/Volcanalia festival, which just passed on August 23rd, I wanted to take a closer look at the god Vulcan and his Greek counterpart Hephaestus. In the video, we get into what the essence of this god truly is and discuss some major themes in his worship and mythology. I hope you enjoy! Thanks for watching!

Epicurus is one of the more misunderstood Greek philosophers. His ideas about physics, metaphysics, ethics, and theology were radically different than most of his predecessors and peers, and many viewed him as a crackpot. In this video, I dive into some of Epicurus' philosophy and how it was received in his day and later.

This video is an adaptation of the first few lectures I used to give when I taught Roman history. I've chosen a few of my favorite examples to illustrate what I think is important about ancient Rome, things that the Romans themselves chose to highlight. It's not an exhaustive list, but I'm hoping it lays the ✨foundation✨ for anyone who wants to dig further.

Thessaly had a reputation in antiquity for producing magical practitioners. This was the land where witches lived, traveled, and worked their magic using the rich variety of local flora. "The Thessalian women" became synonymous with "witches," in part due to ancient Greece's most famous witch, who stopped in the region on her travels. In this video, we'll take a tour of this magic land and explore the religious and magical activities of its inhabitants.

The Lemuria festival may be one of the better known Roman holidays, despite a total lack of evidence in primary sources. This festival was all about getting rid of bad vibes from your house, and took place in mid-May. In this video, I chat about the history and ritual traditions of this festival, and offer some advice for modernizing the holiday in your own practice.

Selene is the personified moon in Greek antiquity, and yet she is much less represented in myth and ancient art than you might expect. This video covers what we know about this elusive celestial deity.

The Ides of March is almost here! March 15th is one of the most famous days in Roman history - the day that Julius Caesar was killed by a conspiracy of senators, including some of Caesar's trusted friends and advisors. The story grew into legend over the decades and centuries, and supernatural reports are included in many versions. The most famous retelling may be Shakespeare's tragedy, where omens leading up to Caesar's death play a central role in the first three acts.

Today we're looking at the various reports of the murder that ended Rome's Republic and the omens that forewarned Caesar's demise, and using them as a case study for Roman omens more generally. I'm planning to do a more philological, nitty-gritty video about omens and prodigies sometime soon - this will just be an introduction.

Did Apuleius bewitch his wife in order to steal her money? Today, we're discussing the trial where Apuleius was brought up on witchcraft charges, which took place in Rome's frontier province of Africa in the reign of Antoninus Pius. How did the law - and magic - play out in the lives of citizens who lived far from the City? Where was the line between magic, religion, science, and philosophy? And who drew that line?

The Metamorphoses, or Golden Ass, is Apuleius' most famous work. Remembered for its peculiar story and bawdy humor, the ancient world's only surviving intact novel takes place in "witch country," where the protagonist finds himself at the center of a magical mixup. In this video, I break down the magical references and plot lines in the work and compare them to what we know about magical practice in antiquity.

Apuleius' intellectual pursuits ranged from natural sciences to ethics, metaphysics to magic. He wrote philosophical treatises, a number of defense speeches, and ancient Rome's only fully intact novel to survive. His life and bibliography are far too much for one video, so I'll be covering him in three installments. Feel free to subscribe to the channel to catch Parts 2 and 3. Thanks for watching!

Sometimes called "ancient voodoo dolls," kolossoi were a part of the magical arsenal of practitioners in the ancient Mediterranean. In this video I give an introduction to these images, how they were made, and some of the contexts in which they were used by Greek and Roman magicians.

I’ve talked about domestic worship before on this channel, but today I wanted to cover some of the other household gods that the Romans venerated in their own homes. The Lares, Penates, and Genii of the household constituted the familial guardians and protectors, and their worship was an integral part of personal religion.

2023 is almost here, and I thought this was the perfect time to talk about the Roman god of January, Janus. This god has a unique form and function in Roman religion, without a Greek equivalent. I also touch on when the Romans celebrated their new year and some of their new year customs. Thanks for watching!

Io, Saturnalia! Rome’s most famous holiday begins tomorrow (Dec. 17), so I wanted to say a bit about it and offer some ideas if you want to celebrate.

Taglocks are one of the most common forms of magical tool in modern witchcraft, but did you know that they were used in antiquity as well? In this video, I take a look at some examples of taglock use from the ancient Mediterranean found in the PGM, in archaeology, and in fiction works.

Happy Halloween! I wanted to try something different for this video - what do you think? In this episode, I walk through the story of Medea, narrating a composite of the major sources who report on her life. Not only is Medea the most famous of ancient Greece's witches, her story is also one of the most complex, heartbreaking, and frightening.

Spooky season continues! Last time I talked about ancestor veneration, and this week I’m telling some of my favorite stories about haunted houses and spiritual encounters. Thanks for watching!

Spooky season continues! While ancestor veneration isn’t necessarily spooky, and the spirits who are given offerings are usually benevolent, this season marks the time when the veil between worlds is thinnest. In this video, I discuss how the ancient Romans thought about death, the funerary practices they engaged in, their conception of the afterlife, and the veneration of their ancestors during the month of February.

It’s spooky season!!!! In honor of the most wonderful time of the year, I’ll be looking at some of the more fun and festive supernatural elements of life in the ancient Mediterranean. For this video, I chat about werewolf stories from ancient Greece and Rome and get a sense of what people thought about this peculiar phenomenon.

In this video, I chat about the mythology of Persephone and the various ancient tellings of her descent to the underworld. I discuss her development and worship as a deity, some of the main themes and my takeaways from her tale, and how she is interpreted by modern pagans and magical practitioners.

Persephone is one of my favorite mythological figures. Her story is rich and each of the many versions includes details that substantively change our interpretations of it.

Mercury has officially gone retrograde! In this video, I chat about the mythology of the god Mercury and his Greek counterpart Hermes, and try my hand at some astrology. I’m still very much a beginning astrologer, so please bear with me.

Okay, friends. This isn’t my favorite topic. But love and sex was in antiquity, and remains today, one of the most common applications for magic, ritual, spell work, and so on. The “love” spells of ancient curse tablets are full of psychological (and often) physical torments wrought on victims by equally afflicted parties, all seeking to win the war of romance. In this video I try to set the scene for love spells in antiquity by discussing who might engage in this type of activity and why. I also try to deal with the somewhat shocking nature of these spells by framing them against the modern debate about the ethics of love spells among today’s magical practitioners.

Probably the most popular form of magic in ancient Greece and Rome, curse tablets harnessed the magic power of words and used sympathetic magic to bring woe to enemies.

Was Germanicus killed by a curse? And if he was, who did it? In this week's video I discuss the mysterious circumstances around the death of Germanicus, the military general who was third in line to be emperor of Rome.

In this video, I talk about the practice of herbalism in the ancient Mediterranean - who practiced it, what it looked like, and the attitudes and applications of herbal magic in Greece and Rome.

Here is Part 2 of my discussion of the Vestal Virgins, the priestesses of Vesta in Ancient Rome. In this video, we chat about what life was like for the Vestales before, during, and after their service.

In this video, I start to get into some of the conceptual themes around Vesta and the Vestals, the priestesses in charge of her official state worship. This will be part one of two videos on the Vestals.

I'm undertaking some big projects around the house in order to spruce up our space and make it more intentional. Come along with me as I talk through my ideas and get started on the porch!

In this video, I discuss the hearth and hearth-fires in ancient Greco-Roman religion. Learn a bit about what fire meant to the ancient Greeks and Romans, deities associated with fire and the hearth, and rituals and practices surrounding the hearth.