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Circle Sanctuary Network Podcasts

Nature Spirituality with Selena Fox - Lughnasadh Magic

Working with chants, invocations, symbols, meditations, customs, and rituals for personal and community transformation at Lughnasadh time.

Wed, July 27, 2022 08:00 pm [Eastern]

Moon Magic with Jeanet and David Ewing - New Moon in Leo Lughnasadh Ritual

This month we will celebrate the new moon in Leo with a ritual to connect with our creative selves. We will also take some time to celebrate the First Harvest of the season.

Thu, July 28, 2022 08:00 pm [Eastern]

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Summer Bonus: Sarah and Nippy Chat With The ‘Sickboy’ Podcast Fellas

We loved chatting with our friends Jeremie, Taylor, and Brian over at the Sickboy podcast, and these three literal princes among men were nice enough to let us borrow the episode for your summer listening pleasure. They’re a trio of Halifax-based best friends, and they started the podcast after recognizing that when faced with difficult situations, illnesses and diseases, people tighten up, they get awkward, and they simply don't know what to say. Taking the lead from Jeremie’s life-long battle with Cystic Fibrosis, the boys help people understand that sometimes the best way to deal with the darkest stuff in life is simply to laugh.

Episode available since June 18, 2022

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Rude Awakening: Sarah Landry On Nithyananda & Other Nightmares Part 2

Here’s the second part of our conversation with Sarah Landry who shares what it’s like to face down the very online army she helped create for the so-called guru Nithyananda after going wide with explosive accusations of rape, child abuse, and a whole sordid cornucopia of culty shit. (If you’re labeled as a double-agent for the Vatican by loyalists of a guy who is on the lam after being charged with rape and abduction: You’ve officially reached Remini-levels of cult busting.) In this episode, and the next—there’s just too much to cover to make it a one-parter—Sarah shares what it’s like to be on the other side of an army she helped build, and why she won’t stop working to deplatform culty characters like Nithyananda no matter how many self-proclaimed island nations they pull out of their asses.

Episode available since July 7, 2022

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Rude Awakening: Sarah Landry On Nithyananda & Other Nightmares Part 1

At just 24 years old, Sarah Landry found herself drawn to Hindu avatar Nithyananda’s teachings like a fly to honey. Moldy, toxic honey. She quickly became an apt pupil, and then his top recruiter via a steady stream of stylized YouTube videos and camera-ready social content. But after learning that the rape and child abuse allegations dogging the organization were just too credible to simply swat away, she stepped down as its propagandist-in-chief and stepped up as one of its harshest critics. The fallout since she blew the whistle on the godman’s shady ways in a series of incendiary 2019 Facebook posts and Youtube videos has been steep.

(If you’re labeled as a double-agent for the Vatican by loyalists of a guy who is on the lam after being charged with rape and abduction: You’ve officially reached Remini-levels of cult busting.) In this episode, and the next—there’s just too much to cover to make it a one-parter—Sarah shares what it’s like to be on the other side of an army she helped build, and why she won’t stop working to deplatform culty characters like Nithyananda no matter how many self-proclaimed island nations they pull out of their asses.

Episode available since July 4, 2022

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Page Turner: Spencer Schneider on Writing His Way Out of ‘School’

“We were invisible. We had to be. We took an oath of absolute secrecy. We never even told our immediate families who we were. We went about our lives in New York City. Just like you. We were your accountants, money managers, lawyers, executive recruiters, doctors. We owned your child’s private school and sold you your brownstone. But you’d never guess our secret lives, how we lived in a kind of silent terror and fervor. There were hundreds of us.”

Episode available since June 27, 2022

Esoterica

Damien Echols loses bid for DNA testing of evidence from West Memphis murder investigation. He’ll appeal.

Circuit Judge Tonya Alexander ruled today in West Memphis that Damien Echols could not obtain evidence from the West Memphis Three murder case for enhanced DNA testing.

A release from a spokesman for Echols:

After two years of lies and unnecessary delays by the state of Arkansas that prevented the West Memphis 3’s Damien Echols from conducting state-of-the- art DNA testing on the evidence in the murder of three children in 1993, a court today ruled that Echols did not have the right to test forensic evidence.

The prosecution had argued, and the judge agreed that only those who were still incarcerated could test for DNA. This conclusion is based on the flawed assumption that the only consequence that matters from a conviction is its sentence. Hundreds of wrongfully convicted have sought relief after they were paroled and were “free.”

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Tangled Up in Teal: Jon Kasbe & Bits Sola on Making ‘The Deep End’

Dear Teal Swan: You continue to be a mystery wrapped in a riddle wrapped in wrap-around Oakleys. Are you okay? For reals, we’re getting some super hinky vibes from all seven layers of your auric field. Dear Everyone Else: In case you haven’t watched all four installments of The Deep End, you might want to catch up before you listen to this ALBC conversation with the filmmaking duo behind the series. In this episode, director/cinematographer Jon Kasbe and producer/writer Bits Sola join Sarah and Nippy to share what it was like inside Teal Swan’s campy, creepy world. But don’t get your plastic Mala beads in a twist, Teal Tribe: ‘campy’ and ‘creepy’ are our words, not theirs…and those two words are about the nicest things we could think of to say. Also? Sorry, not sorry, Teal…but you just can’t deep fake this shit.

Episode available since June 20, 2022

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Trust Fall: Dr. Natalie Feinblatt on Trauma, Addiction & Cult-Informed Therapy

Finding a therapist can be mission critical when you’re recovering from a culty situation, but the process of finding a clinician with basic cult awareness can be a total cluster. In this episode, Sarah and Nippy chat with Dr. Natalie Feinblatt about why more therapists need to get cult-informed and the Venn diagram overlap between trauma and addiction. She also chats with Sarah and Nippy about tangible techniques for getting unstuck when fight/flight/freeze mode takes over.

Episode available since June 13, 2022

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Holy Hell: Will Allen on Unmasking Buddhafield (Part 1)

Sarah and Nippy watched Holy Hell closely when they were exiting NXIVM back in 2016. It hit close to home: The documentary is an intimate look at the implosion of Buddhafield, a mysterious self-help cult formed by a charismatic character with an iffy backstory. In this episode, Sarah and Nippy welcome the film’s director Will Allen to talk about what it was like to shine a light on Jaime Gomez, the so-called spiritual guru at the twisted heart of the group. Will didn’t just film it all: he lived it. After joining Buddhafield as a freshly-minted film school grad, it consumed his world for twenty odd years with life-altering consequences. He was looking for a sense of community and purpose, but after the love bombing phase it was far from the blissed-out communal dream it was cracked up to be.

Five years after the film’s release, Will chats with Sarah and Nippy about how he’s doing now; his journey from unofficial in-house cult documentarian to whistleblower; and what it takes to disrupt patterns of abuse and coercive control in new agey circles. And be warned, dear listener, that this conversation delves into the same potentially triggering content that gave rise to Holy Hell’s apt title. As told in the film via multiple victims’ accounts, Gomez used weekly hypnotherapy sessions to sexually abuse and exploit young male devotees, Will among them. Please listen safely, and seek help if you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted.

Episode available since June 6, 2022

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Bigger Than the Pope: Jennings Brown on Teal Swan & The Fellowship of Friends (Part 2)

And…we’re back for an extra helping of conversation with investigative journalist Jennings Brown. If Part One’s exploration of creepy AF Youtube spiritual guru Teal Swan didn’t freak you out enough, there’s more Teal talk for you in this episode. Be sure to watch The Deep End docuseries and binge The Gateway podcast to learn more about how each new layer of the Teal Tribe onion seems to be stankier than the last.. We recommend not listening or watching before bed, unless you really dig nightmares.

Despite what Teal may think: She isn’t the center of the universe. She’s not even the center of the cultiverse. So we also use part 2 of our chat with Jennings to ramble from the dark corners of Utah’s Swan country to sunny Yuba County, California where the organization at the center of his Revelations podcast appears to be hard at work making fine wine and disturbing cult headlines. The Fellowship of Friends has some serious issues, and we’re still unpacking it all. Doomsday and rosé anyone?

Episode available since May 30, 2022

Off the Deep End with Teal Swan — UPDATED — Ep. 4

The Deep End | Official Trailer | Freeform

The Deep End S1E1 "The Lost Toys"
True Believers S1E4 "Teal Swan and the Wellness Tribe"
The Deep End S1E2 “The Safe Space”
The Deep End S1E3 “The Carousel”
The Deep End S1E4 “The Adversary” NEW

One of the first things I learned about Teal Bosworth Scott Swan — or teal, as I now refer to her — was that she was very, very famous. So famous that I wondered how it could be that I'd never heard of her. She reveled in her "fame" in a way that I'd never seen any "spiritual teacher" do. That was way back in 2013. In the years since, she's parlayed her social media popularity into some book deals and a smattering of regional interviews, but her path to mainstream success has not been a smooth one. As discussed here, it's been a bit rocky for the self-described "celebrity" who wanted to reach people on "every single continent," and was designed pretty and white by an Arcturian panel for that very reason.

She was, in her own words, "completely duped" by Gizmodo and Jennings Brown, who created "The Gateway" podcast. An interview with OZY magazine had been "antagonistic," by daring to ask her standard journalistic questions about the criticism of her. Her foray into mainstream media was starting to look more like a collision.

And then it got worse. She was interviewed by Lebo Diseko of the BBC, whose reportage lead to some of her videos being pulled from her YouTube channel and the abrupt removal of Teal Tribe from Facebook.