This Podcast is a Ritual

From d20-powered fireballs to point-and-click quests, magic is an essential ingredient in many games, while games themselves offer some intriguing ideas about the practice of actual magic. Thankfully, Dr. Jeff Howard is a scholar of games and occulture—as well as the author of "Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives" and "Game Magic: A Designer’s Guide to Magic...

From Q to the Great Gazoo, the Wizard calls upon a variety of extra-dimensional imps and tricky ideas to illustrate this meta-archetype, laying the groundwork for even more magic to come. Featuring Batman's biggest fan, hot-rodding teenagers from Dimension X, and even more delightful (and somewhat irritating) invoked entities. So come along dum-dum and join the Patreon where you can hear this...

If you've been feeling lately like life is an unfair game, you're not alone. And game designer, author, and anti-fascist scholar Max Haiven knows why. In his latest book, The Player and the Played: From Gamed Capitalism to Twenty-First Century Fascism , Haiven uses games to explain how financialized capitalism recruits us into our own exploitation, seeing ourselves as "players,&quot...

Using chance to make choices has a long magical history, from complex divination systems to mythologies that imagine the gods gambling and throwing dice to determine human affairs. By taking a simple coin toss as our starting practice, we can learn to let go of the heavy burden of contemplation and let the fates take a more collaborative role in our decision making process. So flip a coin and lear...

In the tiny fishing village of Rif, out on the coast of the Snæfellsnes Peninsula in western Iceland, you'll find an unlikely cultural hub: The Freezer. Built in a former fish freezer, this hostel / performing arts venue is the work of Kàri Viđarsson, a local Icelander who left his village and returned having changed... only to change the cultural landscape of his community in the process. Tu...

Sometimes things suck. Sometimes we feel bad, can't get what we want, or just plain don't know what to do. And that's hard. But there's a cultural narrative that often makes it way worse, the insidious idea that "it shouldn't be like this." That somehow, feeling this way is a personal failure. That's why the Wizard is here to remind you that sometimes things...

Magic can be a lot of work. But does it have to be? What if there was a way to use magic, not to bend the world to one's will, but to transform reality into an open field of possibility? Thus, life's stage becomes a board on which we can enjoy a myriad of complex and fascinating games, all experienced through the strange and delightful mode of being known as "Play. This episode buil...

The Wizard has arrived in the Netherlands and is ready to embark on his quest to become "Amsterdam's #1 Wizard," but first, he has to figure out what the heck is going on in a strange land where everything feels odd and unfamiliar. Thankfully, these are the moments magic was made for so he's putting himself in places of possibility and letting divination lead the way to the &qu...

Aidan Wachter, author of Six Ways, Weaving Fate, and Changeling, joins the ritual for a spirited discussion with the Wizard about the lively world we live in and how magic can help us better align ourselves with the many allies, ancestors, and more mysterious entities who seem to take in interest in our particular plane of being. Tune into Aidan's magic at: https://www.aidanwachter.com/ Join...

As the moon slides in front of the sun while Icelandic clouds obscure them both, the land grows dark and the Wizard takes a moment to reflect on art, creativity, festival culture, and how to create truly radical structures in a world eager to commodify and capitalize on whatever novelty is left to discover. And with these final thoughts, the Portal closes, one ritual comes to an end, and a new adv...

Good things come to those who wait. As the Wizard wades deeper into the THIS PORTAL IS A RITUAL's many mysteries, he continues to encounter new understandings about himself, his fellow participants, the power of pranks, Iceland's unique magic, and what this experience is, was, or just might be. Learn more about The Portal at Iceland Eclipse: https://icelandeclipse.com/the-portal Join the...

THIS PORTAL IS A RITUAL descends deeper into madness as the Wizard navigates eternal day, dive bombing birds, organizational challenges, and the unavoidable messiness of interpersonal dynamics, all while doing his best to delight in the discord and play in the imperfections and obstacles that, in their own weird way, open the door to even greater opportunities. Learn more about The Portal at Icela...

Why did the Wizard go through the Portal? To get to the other side! And all jokes aside, the Wizard is currently in a literal, metaphorical, and deeply magical portal which is a multi-week artist residency for the Iceland Eclipse festival that will usher him into a new reality in Amsterdam when he emerges on the other side. But the Wizard is far from the only traveler moving through this portal, s...

America's #1 Wizard is taking the leap and embarking on a magical quest to relocate to the Netherlands and become Amsterdam's #1 Wizard. To honor this momentous occasion, we're looking back at the magic that got us here, revisiting the "What is a Quest?" episode that kicked off last year's This Podcast is a Quest mini-series. And then stay tuned for our new This Porta...

Magic has long trafficked in fantasies of power and control. This is the tantalizing idea that there are certain secrets one can master that will raise a person above their peers and allow them to command angels, devils, and assorted deities. Of course, we have also seen this cautionary tale play out across fairy tales and other works of fiction, and it rarely ends well, so here the Wizard offers...

Before the Wizard reveals his magical praxis for working with the various Powers-that-be, he felt it important to take a moment to address the elephant in the occultural room: Fantasies of control. These seductive messages touch on deeply rooted—often unconscious—anxieties and try to sell a fantasy of power, perfection, and control that promises to resolve all issues. But rather than seek a magic...

Something brought you to this moment. A long sequence of personal choices and cosmic chance collaborated to bring you to this exact moment. But why? That's a question the Wizard explores at length in this new installment of Wizardry in Theory and Practice, digging into the what's and why's of the life shaping forces we call "Power." This episode builds on the metaphysics l...

The Wizard is on the move, somewhere between Here and I-Don't-Know-Where, so it felt like the right time to take a little walkabout within the concept of "wandering," and it's conceptual sibling, "wondering," and see where we might arrive...  ...which, while wizardry is concerned with far more than mere destinations, if you wish to arrive at the actual episode, you&ap...

How do we practice becoming a Person? Doing his best to evade the usual traps of self-optimization, the Wizard offers a humble contemplative practice designed to help us see ourselves—not as perpetual projects—but as vast and complex patterns which emerge across space-and-time out of an intricate web of relationships. Thus, to aid us in our quest to discern our own Person, the Wizards lays out a m...

Before we get into the practical magical follow up to What is a Person? (theory), the Wizard wanted to acknowledge the paradoxical problem of trying to be a better person and how the Cult of Optimization seeks to prey on our collective anxieties with an endless barrage of advice, tips, and self improvement schemes, when perhaps we might have a slightly better time letting all that go to bask in ou...

If you're reading this, you're probably a person. While this word is regarded in everyday language as something simple, straightforward, and basically synonymous with "human being," the Wizard wants you to examine your assumptions and re-consider the concept of "person" as he reveals it to be something sranger, with far greater magical significance... This episode bui...

Despite our bests attempts to "calm down" or "stop panicking," anxiety rarely responds to such strategies, so here are all the Wizard's magical secrets on what actually works, gleaned from years of lived experience as an anxious person as well as countless sessions with clients helping them move past the discomfort of chronic unease that is all too common in this Age of An...

David Bajramovic, aka the Recovering Overthinker, is an existential explorer, taking the wisdom of pioneers like Carl Jung, Rollo May, James Hillman, Friedrich Nietzsche, and other deep thinkers and presenting it for a modern audience in ways that are not only accessible, but actionable, as we all face unprecedented levels of technological distraction and dopamine addiction which can make it hard...

The Wizard addresses the current AI discourse from a variety of unusual angles, digging into our lost utopian dreams, extremely valid capitalist critiques, and problematic pearl-clutching moral panic as we all confront this tidal wave of technology that, whatever you think of it, is certainly upending everything!  But of course, all of that is in the actual episode while this is but a mere amuse-b...

Performance artist, witchdoctor, and sci-fi religion world builder M. Dudeck steps into the ritual for an imaginal exploration with the Wizard, digging into what it means to envision wilder, weirder tomorrows and the magical and artistic tools we can wield to bring them into being. M. is a multidimensional multimedia artist whose work bridges graphic art and ritualistic performance to explore &quo...