The Home Cultus with Briar
Radical Elphame
UPG is a term I find to be often misunderstood. Short for “unverified person gnosis,” this phrase is sometimes wielded as a criticism in the world of spirituality – pagan, polytheist, or otherwise. It’s the word “unverified” that stands out in this instance, that seems to be contextualizing someone's “personal gnosis” – about a spiritual path, or being, or myth – as dubious, or heterodox. When used disparagingly, UPG can feel like a corrective. In many ways it can feel like a tool within so-called “alternative spirituality” to reinforce the kind of strictures of the...
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Fröja's Apples with Sara Bonadea George
Radical Elphame
What can change a goddess into a nature spirit? What can change a nature spirit into a witch? A hasty answer might simply be "colonization." This was the evolution of Fröja in Sweden. I don’t think we can have an intellectually honest discourse about folklore without confronting the forces of colonization head-on. What has this ongoing process done to the gods, the spirits, and the myths of a people? However, stopping there might miss the point. I think we also need to ask: what is the agency of a Goddess during a religious conversion? Does she merely recede into the past, or does she...
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Animistic Astrology with Teagan West
Radical Elphame
There may be no clearer gateway drug to magic in 2026 than astrology. You don’t need psychic abilities, or a spirit court, or a wider mystical philosophy to dabble in astrology. Just a birthday. I’ve always been a proponent of practical magic – the kind that helps you get stuff – not as an end goal, but as a necessary step, for many, in re-enchanting their minds. Astrology can do something similar, though, with merely a natal chart reading. What do the planets have to do with who I am? It doesn’t really matter why astrology can tell you about yourself; the power is in simply...
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The Immense Hauntology of Things with Lee Morgan
Radical Elphame
I sometimes wonder why, of all the occult and magical currents we have on offer, Witchcraft manages to still have such a powerful pull on our contemporary culture. We find ourselves on the other side of a century of occult revivals and magical trends, and yet Witchcraft somehow stil retains a timeless appeal. More recent spiritual trends, such as the “New Age” movement, which you would expect to be a better gateway for contemporary Western people to explore spirituality, have aesthetically aged far worse than Witchcraft generally, and what once appeared modern and enlightened would now be...
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The Old Line with Aidan Wachter
Radical Elphame
When you look at the oldest and most intact spiritualities around the world, you will find that, at the center of their practice, is ancestral veneration. For many of us who were raised in less intact spiritualities and in cultures with a tendency to mold prevailing religions to the will of Empire, venerating our ancestors can feel complicated, to say the least. The same cultures that tend to mold religions to the will of Empire, also have a habit of tainting our ancestral line. It doesn’t take long tracing back the family trees of many of us to run into the stains and wounds of colonialism,...
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Raising the Dead with Corinne Boyer
Radical Elphame
Folk magic has a powerful pull. It can express complex metaphysical ideas that, for most of us practicing today, had once felt like the purview of the “New Age.” Magical ideas that once seemed fantastical, through the lens of folk magic, can suddenly feel earthy and vital. Techniques that once felt silly can begin to feel ancestral. The source texts go from channeled writings, to myths and folktales, and academic papers. There’s an artistry and intelligence grouped in with modern-day practitioners of folk magic that give the disenchanted “Western” mind permission to think...
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Hillbilly Woodwose with Nay Noordmans
Radical Elphame
They’re on bumper stickers, they’re on bags of jerky, they’re on bars of soap, and if you're not seeing an ancient alien on the History Channel, you’re almost certainly seeing someone searching for them in the woods. Big Foot, Sasquatch, Oh Mah, Sunk Ape – they go by many names, and are spotted throughout North America, and beyond. For some, they are a myth; for some, a monster; and for the rest, a mascot. The loudest amongst their fans will tell you they are a flesh and blood relic hominid, and describe their migration patterns, their use of infrasound to evade capture, and, of...
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Cursed Films with Sfinga & B. Key
Radical Elphame
What is it that draws occultists to horror films, when by in large, the history of horror cinema is essentially anti-occult propaganda? Despite what can seem like a counterintuitive interest on the part of practitioners, the fact remains that the horror genre is the last bastion of regular engagement with the spirit world left in contemporary media, and therefore a natural draw for people who see the spiritual as fundamental to everyday life. Another consideration is the cathartic embrace of the shadow on display in horror, and often staring death right in the face. Both things our culture in...
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The Black Book of Norah Fornario - an Audio Essay
Radical Elphame
I had to reschedule an interview for the first half of this month, but I didn't want to leave you hanging this week, so I recorded an essay I put out on our Substack recently for your listening pleasure. Nora Fornario has always been a deep fascination of mine, whom I find to be misunderstood and often explored in ways that ignore her most interesting aspects in favor of a more lurid true-crime bent. This essay is less focused on the infamous death of Nora Fornario, but rather a deep dive into what we can speculate about her own ideas and magical practice. The TL;DR is Witchcraft. ...
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28 Moons Later with J.M. Hamade
Radical Elphame
When we think about the Otherworld, we tend to do so from the perspective of this world. What is this hidden world that seems to operate so differently from our own? Who are the beings who dwell there, and what do they want with us? In J. M. Hamade’s fascinating book, Procession of the Night Theater, they explore the “night side” of astrology, offering a poetic vision of the Lunar Stations, not to be defined or calculated so much as dreamed with. It’s this study of the nocturnal side of things, the hidden side of things, that not only eloquently elucidates the ancient art of...
info_outlineUPG is a term I find to be often misunderstood. Short for “unverified person gnosis,” this phrase is sometimes wielded as a criticism in the world of spirituality – pagan, polytheist, or otherwise. It’s the word “unverified” that stands out in this instance, that seems to be contextualizing someone's “personal gnosis” – about a spiritual path, or being, or myth – as dubious, or heterodox. When used disparagingly, UPG can feel like a corrective. In many ways it can feel like a tool within so-called “alternative spirituality” to reinforce the kind of strictures of the culturally dominant monotheisms onto the “Old Gods” – whether they like it or not.
In the protestant form of Christianity that I grew up with, the word of God had already been written down, in the Old Testament and the New Testament, and that was the Almighties mic-drop. Any divine addendums beyond it were generally considered heresy. When the stakes of divinely inspired words can bear the punitive power conferred by the Christian Bible, it’s easy to see why the amendment process would be extremely bureaucratic. It’s this very patriarchal approach to spirituality that we find in monotheism, though, that makes alternative spirituality so appealing in the first place. What if UPG is a feature of spirituality, not a bug? What if idiosyncratic personal gnosis from a god, or spirit is a sign that you’re having an authentic interaction, as opposed to adopting a state mandated morality tale? What if the gods and their stories are alive, and not frozen in amber?
When Briar writes about the gods, they feel alive. They have new things to teach, and to convey, and the forms they can take are not limited to our preconceived notions. When we hear the word “polytheist,” I think we can sometimes think of someone with a religious practice similar in philosophy to monotheism – where the god in question is an all powerful and omnipotent authority to be obeyed – only, with a lot more gods to contend with. From this vantage, a goddess of Spring or a God of the sea, can seem like a goddess ruling over Spring, or a god ruling over the sea. In actual practice I think the relationship is a lot more fluid, and experiential. Pantheons, I think, are not actually so codified. They are beings to be co-created with, in flux and in dialogue.
Briar’s Polytheist practice takes the form of what she likes to call the “home cultus.” Where the gods are shaped by the land, and alive in the home, imparting gnosis with no verification required. Not frozen in amber, but in active participation. On today’s episode, Briar breaks down the anatomy of a home cultus, and invites you to cultivate your own.
SHOW NOTES:
Briar's Website: The Greene Chapel
Briar's Patreon: Briar of the Greene Chapel
Briar's Chap Book: The Beheading Game
The Holy Mountain Zine: @holymountaincitv