Back From The Borderline

Are we thinking ourselves into a new dark age?We’ve spent the better part of seventy years trying to understand ourselves through psychology. We know about attachment styles, childhood trauma, unconscious motivations, and all the reasons we supposedly behave the way we do. We’ve diagnosed our exes, analyzed our childhoods, and built an entire industry around the promise that knowing ourselves better will help us live better lives. And yet, despite everything we’ve learned, we seem increasingly unsure about what makes life meaningful in the first place.In 1957, an American psychologist called Ira Progoff wrote an introduction to a medieval Christian mystical text called The Cloud of Unknowing. He was troubled by how readily modern psychology dismissed centuries of knowledge about the human mind simply because that knowledge came from religious traditions. Reading his observations nearly seventy years later, I was struck by how little some of our underlying assumptions have changed, even as psychology has gained so much influence over the way we understand ourselves.His writing got me thinking about the history of psychology, the decline of Christianity’s influence in the West, and something I’ve been describing as spiritual homelessness. We’ve gained considerable freedom to decide what we believe and how we want to live. But we’ve also inherited the responsibility of figuring out what any of it is for. Psychology has offered us ways to understand our suffering, while the bigger questions about meaning and how we ought to live remain unsettled.Meanwhile, self-understanding has grown into a very profitable business. There’s now a psychological explanation available for almost every uncomfortable feeling or disappointing relationship, usually followed by a book, a course, or another video promising to help us understand ourselves a little better. And the more time we spend searching for answers, the more money there is to be made from keeping us searching.This episode explores why we’re so uncomfortable with uncertainty, how psychology came to occupy such a central place in Western life, and whether our endless search for explanations is making us any wiser.There’s a certain irony in all of this. We tend to look back at the Middle Ages as a time when people understood very little about the world. Yet medieval Christian mystics were already asking questions about the limits of human knowledge that our own culture seems increasingly reluctant to face.We know a great deal about how the human mind works. We seem far less certain about what makes a life worth living. I wonder whether the next great intellectual revolution might involve revisiting some of the things we were so confident we’d outgrown.STUDY COMPANION | RECOMMENDED READINGThe Cloud of Unknowing — Anonymous, translated by Ira Progoff (1957)New Seeds of Contemplation — Thomas Merton (1962)Open Mind, Open Heart — Thomas Keating (1986)Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind — Shunryu Suzuki (1970)The Book of Not Knowing — Peter Ralston (2010)The Interior Castle — Teresa of Ávila (1577)☽EXPLORE MORE ON PATREON: Back from the Borderline is an independent podcast exploring depth psychology and mysticism. My Patreon archive contains hundreds of exclusive episodes, including extensive investigations of the subjects explored with Anne. Browse the Collections tab to explore the archive and support future conversations. Check it all out at https://www.patreon.com/c/backfromtheborderline.WANT SOMEWHERE TO TAKE WHAT THIS EPISODE BROUGHT UP FOR YOU? Try MOODS → MOODS is my reflective intelligence platform for dream work, tarot, symbolic reflection, and deeper inner inquiry. Bring it a dream, a question, something happening in your life, or an idea from the podcast you want to spend more time with. You can start free for 7 days at go.moods.world/podcast.

We’ve learned so much about healing, but have we learned how to love?After eight conversations with 95-year-old Jungian analyst and author Anne Baring, I found myself questioning some of the beliefs I’d spent years defending, including my own understanding of spiritual development.In this deeply personal epilogue, I’m reflecting on our generation’s hunger for spiritual wisdom, the temptation to romanticize forgotten traditions, and a culture increasingly fascinated with extraordinary experiences while struggling with the much quieter work of personal transformation. We’ll explore the spiritual ego, the sacred marriage, and why understanding ourselves so thoroughly can sometimes prevent us from being changed.These conversations with Anne have affected me in ways I never anticipated. Some of the most meaningful lessons came from experiences we never recorded.This episode stands on its own, but I recommend listening to the full series for a deeper understanding of the ideas explored here. LISTEN TO THE COMPLETE ANNE BARING SERIESThis is the ninth and final installment of my series with Anne Baring. Across eight conversations, we explore the history of the feminine divine, Sophia, Mary Magdalene, Christian mysticism, and the sacred marriage.If you’re new to the series, I recommend starting with Part 1: The Forgotten Feminine Face of God. EXPLORE ANNE BARING’S WORKThis series draws primarily on Anne’s book, Divine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit: The Forgotten Feminine Face of God.Listen to Anne’s complete audiobook for free on YouTube, narrated by Anne herself. Explore Anne’s books and research on her official website.FURTHER READINGFor listeners who’d like to investigate some of the ideas discussed in this epilogue:Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian HermeticismPierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of LifeRichard Rohr and Andreas Ebert, The Enneagram: A Christian PerspectiveThérèse of Lisieux, Story of a SoulJessie L. Weston, From Ritual to Romance☽EXPLORE MORE ON PATREON: Back from the Borderline is an independent podcast exploring depth psychology and mysticism. My Patreon archive contains hundreds of exclusive episodes, including extensive investigations of the subjects explored with Anne. Browse the Collections tab to explore the archive and support future conversations. Check it all out at https://www.patreon.com/c/backfromtheborderline.WANT SOMEWHERE TO TAKE WHAT THIS EPISODE BROUGHT UP FOR YOU? Try MOODS → MOODS is my reflective intelligence platform for dream work, tarot, symbolic reflection, and deeper inner inquiry. Bring it a dream, a question, something happening in your life, or an idea from the podcast you want to spend more time with. You can start free for 7 days at go.moods.world/podcast.

For seven conversations, Anne Baring and I have been investigating the forgotten feminine face of God. We’ve explored Sophia, Mary Magdalene, the Grail, and the religious traditions that preserved aspects of the sacred feminine. Now, in our eighth and final conversation, we’re asking what all of that knowledge is supposed to do to us.We start at Chartres Cathedral in France, where a medieval labyrinth invites pilgrims to walk toward its center before returning to the world. From there, Anne and I explore the neglected wisdom of the heart, the relationship between childhood wounds and religious ideas about guilt, and the sacred marriage, or hieros gamos, as a way of understanding the divisions within ourselves.After months of investigating religious history, we find ourselves confronting a much more personal question. How do we allow these teachings to change the way we live?This is Part 8 of an eight-part series. New listeners are encouraged to start with Part 1. Next week, I’ll return with a personal epilogue reflecting on how my own thinking has changed throughout these conversations.EXPLORE ANNE BARING’S WORK: This series draws on Anne Baring’s book, Divine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit: The Forgotten Feminine Face of God. You can listen to the complete audiobook for free on YouTube, narrated by Anne herself, and explore her books and research on her official website at annebaring.com. MY TWELVE PART SERIES ON CHILDHOOD EMOTIONAL NEGLECT: Click here to start episode 1. BOOKS & FURTHER READINGAnne Baring & Jules Cashford: The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an ImageBanafsheh Sayyad: Dance of Oneness: Embody Love and Luminosity to Transform Your LifePeter Kingsley: In the Dark Places of WisdomNeale Donald Walsch: Conversations with God (audiobook edition discussed in the episode)Charles Spencer: A Very Private SchoolPLACES & PRACTICESChartres Cathedral: Medieval labyrinth and rose windowsHeartMath Institute: Heart-focused contemplative practicesSufi whirling: Sacred dance tradition discussed by AnneORGANIZATIONS MENTIONED: Ubiquity University | Humanity’s Team | The Shift NetworkEXPLORE MORE ON PATREON: Back from the Borderline is an independent podcast exploring depth psychology and mysticism. My Patreon archive contains hundreds of exclusive episodes, including extensive investigations of the subjects explored with Anne. Browse the Collections tab to explore the archive and support future conversations. Check it all out at https://www.patreon.com/c/backfromtheborderline.WANT SOMEWHERE TO TAKE WHAT THIS EPISODE BROUGHT UP FOR YOU? Try MOODS → MOODS is my reflective intelligence platform for dream work, tarot, symbolic reflection, and deeper inner inquiry. Bring it a dream, a question, something happening in your life, or an idea from the podcast you want to spend more time with. You can start free for 7 days at moods.world.

In medieval southern France, a woman stood up during a religious debate and challenged the men who claimed the authority to speak for God. A Catholic cleric told her to return to her spinning, because theology was no business of hers. Her identity was Esclarmonde de Foix, and she belonged to a Christian religious culture in which women could teach, exercise spiritual authority and administer sacred rites.This is Part 7 of my series with Anne Baring, a writer and Jungian analyst who has spent decades studying Christian mysticism and the forgotten feminine dimension of divinity. If you’re new to the series, I recommend starting with Part 1, The Forgotten Feminine Face of God.☽In the last episode, Anne and I explored the Black Madonna, the Grail and the possibility that teachings associated with Miriam Magdalene survived in medieval France. Now we enter the Languedoc and the world of the Cathars, a Christian religious movement whose beliefs brought them into direct conflict with Rome.Through Esclarmonde’s life, Anne introduces us to a society where women could participate in theological debate and religious leadership, and where Christianity was understood in ways that would eventually be condemned as heresy.The Catholic Church launched a crusade against these communities in 1209. What followed remains one of the most devastating episodes in medieval European religious history. Anne believes the Cathars may have preserved teachings associated with early Gnostic Christianity and Mary Magdalene.After our conversation, I return with some personal reflections, including the extraordinary experiences that first led me toward Esclarmonde years before these interviews. I also discuss recent reading that has challenged some of my own assumptions about Catharism and made me reconsider how easily we can romanticize the religious past.☿EXPLORE ANNE BARING’S WORKThis series draws on Anne Baring’s book, Divine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit: The Forgotten Feminine Face of God. You can listen to the complete audiobook for free on YouTube, narrated by Anne herself, and explore her books and research on her official website at annebaring.com. STUDY COMPANION✦ John and Caitlín Matthews, Walkers Between the Worlds✦ Arthur Guirdham, research on Cathar reincarnation and past-life memory✦ Jehanne de Quillan, The Gospel of the Beloved Companion✦ Gilles Quispel, research on Gnosticism and the Apocryphon of John✦ Margaret Barker, research on First Temple theology and Divine Wisdom✦ Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief✦ Peter Kingsley, In the Dark Places of WisdomEARLY CHRISTIAN AND CATHAR TEXTS☿ The Apocryphon of John☿ Liber de duobus principiis (The Book of Two Principles)☿ The consolamentum, the Cathar rite of spiritual baptismRELATED LISTENING✦ This Episode Isn’t About UFOs, It’s About You (Part 1)✦ This Episode Isn’t About UFOs, It’s About You (Part 2)The first two episodes document the synchronicities and experiences that eventually led me toward Esclarmonde and Anne’s research. Buckle in, it’s a wild ride.SOURCE NOTE: This conversation moves between documented history, medieval legend and esoteric interpretation. Some of Anne’s proposed connections remain speculative. I’ve included these resources so you can investigate the evidence and reach your own conclusions.☽WANT MORE BFTB? Join the paid membership → https://www.patreon.com/backfromtheborderline. There are hundreds of private episodes going back to 2021, plus new Premium audio, House of Cards (my ongoing Rider-Waite-Smith tarot study).WANT SOMEWHERE TO TAKE WHAT THIS EPISODE BROUGHT UP FOR YOU? Try MOODS → https://www.moods.world/MOODS is my reflective intelligence platform for dream work, tarot, symbolic reflection, and deeper inner inquiry. Bring it a dream, a question, something happening in your life, or an idea from the podcast you want to spend more time with. You can start free for 7 days at moods.world.

A spiritual teacher dies, her community has to continue without her, and centuries later the written record can no longer tell us exactly how her teachings moved from one generation to the next. What, if anything, survives?This is Part 6 of my multi-part series with Anne Baring, a writer and Jungian analyst who has spent decades studying Divine Wisdom, Christian mysticism and the feminine dimension of divinity. Each conversation can stand on its own, but they build on one another. If you’re new to the series, I recommend starting with Part 1, The Forgotten Feminine Face of God.☽Last week, we focused on Miriam Magdalene and early Christian writings that present her as a woman with spiritual authority of her own. This week, Anne takes us west.In the tradition Anne works with, Miriam travels to Gaul after Yeshua’s death and spends the rest of her life teaching there. After her death, the historical record gets much harder to follow. Centuries pass before medieval France gives us another dense concentration of religious images, stories and devotional practices that Anne believes deserve serious examination.That gap sits at the center of this episode. A book can be confiscated or burned, while people can continue visiting a statue, singing to her, asking her for healing and teaching their children to make the same pilgrimage. How much religious knowledge can survive that way, even when later generations no longer fully understand what earlier generations were preserving?Anne takes us into the Black Madonna tradition, sacred caves and medieval devotion, and later into the Grail stories and the wounded king whose dying country can only recover when someone finally asks about his suffering. We also spend time with the Lady of courtly love and an old attempt to teach men trained for war another relationship with women and power.After Anne and I finished recording, I kept reading Jessie L. Weston’s From Ritual to Romance, which Anne recommends during our conversation. I discovered that I had misunderstood an important piece of the Grail material we had just discussed. I come back after the interview to tell you what I found, why it changed the way I hear the Grail story, and why I’m now wondering how often a culture keeps the image, ritual or story while slowly forgetting how earlier generations understood it.☿EXPLORE ANNE BARING’S WORKThis series draws on Anne Baring’s book, Divine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit: The Forgotten Feminine Face of God. You can listen to the complete audiobook for free on YouTube, narrated by Anne herself, and explore her books and research on her official website at annebaring.com. SUBMIT A PRAYER INTENTION AT THE GROTTO OF MARY MAGDALENEThe Dominican friars who care for the Grotto of Sainte-Baume in southern France, traditionally believed to be where Mary Magdalene spent her final years, welcome prayer intentions from people around the world. You can submit yours through their website, and it will be passed along to the friars. ** ⁠Submit your prayer intention here **STUDY COMPANION✦ Jessie L. Weston, From Ritual to Romance✦ Annine van der Meer, research on the Black Madonna and Mary Magdalene✦ Peter Kingsley, In the Dark Places of Wisdom✦ James George Frazer, The Golden BoughPEOPLE AND TRADITIONS DISCUSSED☿ Black Madonna devotion☿ Parmenides and ancient incubation rites☿ Chrétien de Troyes and the Grail romances☿ Eleanor of Aquitaine, troubadours and courtly love☿ The Knights Templar, Sufism and medieval intellectual exchange☿ The wounded king and the Waste Land☽WANT MORE BFTB? Join the paid membership → https://www.patreon.com/backfromtheborderlineWANT SOMEWHERE TO TAKE WHAT THIS EPISODE BROUGHT UP FOR YOU? Try MOODS → https://www.moods.world/ MOODS is my reflective intelligence platform for dream work, tarot, symbolic reflection, and deeper inner inquiry. You can start free for 7 days at moods.world.

Mary Magdalene has spent nearly two thousand years buried under other people’s interpretations of her. Repentant prostitute. Devoted disciple. Apostle to the apostles. Mystic. Wife of Jesus. Suppressed leader of early Christianity. This episode asks us to actually meet Miriam before deciding who she was.This is Part 5 of my multi-part series with Anne Baring, a writer and Jungian analyst who has spent decades studying the Goddess tradition, Christian mysticism, Divine Wisdom, and the feminine dimension of divinity. If you’re new to the series, I recommend starting with Part 1, The Forgotten Feminine Face of God.☽Our previous conversation explored the Essenes, the Therapeutae, and the religious culture Anne believes surrounded Yeshua. Here, we focus on Mary Magdalene as a spiritually educated woman and an initiate in her own right.We look at early Christian writings in which Mary repeatedly understands teachings that other disciples struggle to grasp, then ask the question at the center of this episode. How much spiritual authority did Mary possess?Her relationship with Yeshua is part of that investigation. We discuss The Gospel of Philip, the Greek word koinōnos, traditions concerning their possible marriage, and the consequences of understanding Mary as Yeshua’s spiritual counterpart.We also discuss The Gospel of the Beloved Companion and Annine van der Meer’s Mary Magdalene Unveiled, which examines proposed connections between the Beloved Companion material and the canonical Gospel of John. These claims are extremely controversial. Anne finds the case persuasive, and so do I. I’ve included key sources below so you can examine the material yourself.Near the end, Anne reads an initiatory teaching attributed to Miriam concerning ascension, direct spiritual knowledge, fear, and power. After the interview, I return for a longer reflection on why I think this teaching deserves serious contemplation.☿EXPLORE ANNE BARING’S WORKThis series draws on Anne Baring’s book, Divine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit: The Forgotten Feminine Face of God. You can listen to the complete audiobook for free on YouTube, narrated by Anne herself, and explore her books and research on her official website at annebaring.com. EARLY CHRISTIAN TEXTS☿ Pistis Sophia☿ The Gospel of Mary☿ The Gospel of Philip☿ The Gospel of Thomas☿ The Gospel of JohnMARY MAGDALENE RESEARCH✦ Jehanne de Quillan, The Gospel of the Beloved Companion✦ Annine van der Meer, Mary Magdalene Unveiled✦ Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels✦ Margaret Barker, First Temple theology and traditions of heavenly ascentVISIONARY SOURCE☽ Claire Heartsong, Anna, Grandmother of JesusSOURCE NOTE: Compare translations, read competing interpretations, and see where your own research takes you.New episodes of Back from the Borderline are released every Tuesday. Follow the podcast wherever you listen, and if someone comes to mind while hearing this episode, send it to them.Next in the series: The Black Madonna, the Grail and the Survival of the Feminine Tradition.☽WANT MORE BFTB? Join the paid membership → https://www.patreon.com/backfromtheborderlineThere are hundreds of private episodes going back to 2021, plus new Premium audio, House of Cards (my ongoing Rider-Waite-Smith tarot study), and an even larger Ultra Premium archive with access to Votive House, my twice-monthly live conversation series. Paid audio can also be connected directly to Spotify, so you can keep listening where you already listen.WANT SOMEWHERE TO TAKE WHAT THIS EPISODE BROUGHT UP FOR YOU? Try MOODS → https://www.moods.world/MOODS is my reflective intelligence platform for dream work, tarot, symbolic reflection, and deeper inner inquiry. Bring it a dream, a question, something happening in your life, or an idea from the podcast you want to spend more time with. You can start free for 7 days at moods.world. Paid BFTB members also get MOODS for $15/month instead of $22.

What kind of spiritual world could have formed Yeshua before Christianity existed?This is Part 4 of my multi-part series of conversations with Anne Baring, recorded across September and October 2026. While each episode can stand on its own, I recommend beginning with Part 1, The Forgotten Feminine Face of God, and following the series in order.☽Christianity often starts its story when Jesus begins preaching. In this conversation, Anne and I go further back and ask what was already there.Anne takes us into her understanding of the Essenes and Therapeutae, contemplative communities she believes preserved an older Wisdom tradition concerned with healing, direct experience of the divine and disciplined development of consciousness. They called themselves Children of the Light. Anne places Yeshua inside this religious world and describes him as an elder brother and teacher who had gone further in his spiritual development and could show others what a human being was capable of. We talk about what spiritual training was actually for. Anne describes meditation, inner vision and ascension, along with an understanding of healing based on restoring harmony within the person. The heart served as an organ of discernment, while religious knowledge was expected to alter how someone lived rather than remain an idea about God. The women around Yeshua come into focus in the second half of the conversation. Anne describes Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene as advanced initiates and teachers rather than the passive figures many of us inherited through Christian tradition. We talk about women as healers, the spiritual education of children and Anne’s beautiful description of motherhood and caregiving as forms of initiation into love and service. Some of Anne’s reconstruction draws on historical and late-antique texts, while some comes from modern channeled material, especially the work of Stuart Wilson and Joanna Prentis. I spend time in the introduction explaining these sources and why I’m willing to investigate visionary material without treating it as documentary history.The episode ends exactly where the next conversation needs to start. Anne describes Christianity as having lost the inner mystery school she believes was intended to develop alongside its public teaching. Part 5 is devoted entirely to the woman she places near the center of that missing tradition: Mary Magdalene. ☿EXPLORE ANNE BARING’S WORKThis series draws on Anne Baring’s book, Divine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit: The Forgotten Feminine Face of God. You can listen to the complete audiobook for free on YouTube, narrated by Anne herself, and explore her books and research on her official website at annebaring.com. ESSENE + WISDOM TEXTS DISCUSSEDThe Essenes: Children of the Light — Stuart Wilson and Joanna PrentisThe Power of the Magdalene — Stuart Wilson and Joanna PrentisThe Essene Gospel of PeacePistis SophiaThe Egyptian Book of the DeadAUTHORS + SCHOLARS TO FOLLOWStuart WilsonJoanna PrentisFlavius JosephusDr. Annine van der MeerMarguerite RigogliosoCarl Jung☽WANT MORE BFTB? Join the paid membership → https://www.patreon.com/backfromtheborderlineThere are hundreds of private episodes going back to 2021, plus new Premium audio, House of Cards (my ongoing Rider-Waite-Smith tarot study), and an even larger Ultra Premium archive with access to Votive House, my twice-monthly live conversation series. Paid audio can also be connected directly to Spotify, so you can keep listening where you already listen.WANT SOMEWHERE TO TAKE WHAT THIS EPISODE BROUGHT UP FOR YOU? Try MOODS → https://www.moods.world/MOODS is my reflective intelligence platform for dream work, tarot, symbolic reflection, and deeper inner inquiry. Bring it a dream, a question, something happening in your life, or an idea from the podcast you want to spend more time with. You can start free for 7 days at moods.world. Paid BFTB members also get MOODS for $15/month instead of $22.

What if early Christianity contained a path centered on direct knowledge of the divine within us, and that path was pushed outside the Church that survived?This is Part 3 of my multi-part series of conversations with Anne Baring, recorded across September and October 2026. While each episode can stand on its own, I recommend beginning with Part 1, The Forgotten Feminine Face of God, followed by Part 2 on Marija Gimbutas and the civilization of Old Europe.☽In this conversation, Anne and I enter the world of Gnostic Christianity and a Yeshua many of us were never introduced to: a teacher concerned with awakening human beings to the divine light within themselves. That understanding of Jesus sits uneasily beside the Christianity that eventually gained institutional power in Rome.We start with Parmenides, the pre-Socratic philosopher whose surviving poem describes a journey into darkness, guidance from the daughters of the Sun, and knowledge received directly from a goddess. Anne sees him as part of a more ancient visionary tradition that continued into Gnosticism, where gnosis meant direct knowledge of the divine rather than religious belief alone.From there, we get into the Gnostic Yeshua, the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts, and why a Christianity built around the divine light within the human being came into conflict with the Church that gained power in Rome. Sophia is at the center of the episode. In Pistis Sophia, Divine Wisdom descends from her celestial home, becomes lost, and has to find her way back toward the Light through thirteen metanoias, or changes in consciousness. Anne compares her story with the Christian interpretation of the Fall, especially the guilt and disobedience that became attached to Eve. Sophia gives us another way of understanding what has gone wrong. She has lost touch with where she came from and mistakes a lesser light for the true one. Her task is to wake up, learn to see differently, and remember.We also spend part of the conversation with Carl Jung. Anne trained as a Jungian analyst, and she talks about Jung’s own visionary experiences, Philemon, The Red Book, his fascination with the Gnostics, and the task he believed he had failed to complete before his death: restoring the reality of the soul to Western consciousness. Near the end, Anne reads from Trimorphic Protennoia, where the Divine Feminine speaks in the first person, and The Hymn of the Pearl, a Gnostic poem she has lived with for roughly sixty years. Both return us to the idea running through this entire conversation: that spiritual life begins in remembering what we are and where we came from.☿EXPLORE ANNE BARING’S WORKThis series draws on Anne Baring’s book, Divine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit: The Forgotten Feminine Face of God. You can listen to the complete audiobook for free on YouTube, narrated by Anne herself, and explore her books and research on her official website at annebaring.com. GNOSTIC TEXTS DISCUSSEDPistis SophiaTrimorphic ProtennoiaThe Sophia of Jesus ChristThe Hymn of the PearlThe Nag Hammadi codicesThe Gospel of ThomasThe Gospel of PhilipCARL JUNGThe Red BookSeven Sermons to the DeadAnswer to JobALSO MENTIONEDParmenidesG.R.S. MeadPeter KingsleyOrpheus and the Orphic traditionHeraclitusPythagorasPlato and AristotleZosimus of PanopolisG.I. GurdjieffFather Richard RohrMarie-Louise von FranzPhilemonTheodosius ITaxila☽CONTINUE THE WORK: Join the BFTB Patreon → https://patreon.com/backfromtheborderlineIf you want to actually work through it: Use MOODS → https://app.moods.world/ MOODS is a private place to take what’s coming up and see it clearly without performing it or involving anyone else. You can try it free for 7 days to see if it's right for you. If you join my Patreon first, you’ll also unlock discounted access. See you inside.

What if the history of Europe contains a civilization most of us were never taught about?This is Part 2 of my multi-part series of conversations with Anne Baring, recorded across September and October 2026. While each episode can stand on its own, I recommend starting with Part 1, The Forgotten Feminine Face of God, which introduces Anne and the larger history we’ll be following together.☽In this conversation, Anne takes me into the work of Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas and the world she called Old Europe, a network of Neolithic cultures across southeastern Europe that she spent decades studying through figurines, vessels, settlements, burial sites, goldwork and recurring religious imagery.Anne explains why Gimbutas believed this world was centered on the Great Goddess, how she read birds, snakes, spirals and water as part of a shared sacred language, and why she argued that these societies were matrilineal, broadly egalitarian and unusually free from organized warfare.We also talk about the later movement of steppe peoples into Europe, the fierce opposition Gimbutas faced during her career, and the later ancient DNA research Anne sees as supporting an important part of her migration theory.The conversation also becomes beautifully and unexpectedly personal. Anne speaks about growing up with a mother who received channeled writings, the out-of-body experience Anne had at thirteen, and the dream that brought Jules Cashford to her and eventually led to the ten-year writing of The Myth of the Goddess.Anne also remembers seeing the objects from The Lost World of Old Europe in person at the Ashmolean Museum, including the great painted vessels that left her speechless. We end by asking why this history still matters to her, and what she would say to Marija Gimbutas if she could sit across from her now.☿EXPLORE ANNE BARING’S WORKThis series draws on Anne Baring’s book, Divine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit: The Forgotten Feminine Face of God. You can listen to the complete audiobook for free on YouTube, narrated by Anne herself, and explore her books and research on her official website at annebaring.com. BOOKS BY MARIJA GIMBUTASThe Language of the GoddessThe Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old EuropeALSO MENTIONEDThe Myth of the Goddess by Anne Baring and Jules CashfordMessages From a Transcendent Dimension by Anne BaringJoseph CampbellThe Hermetic Order of the Golden DawnFederico FagginIain McGilchristSEE THE OBJECTSThe Lost World of Old Europe exhibition via New York University’s YouTube channel [click here to view]☽CONTINUE THE WORK: Join the BFTB Patreon → https://patreon.com/backfromtheborderlineYou’ll get:☆ Weekly bonus episodes☆ House of Cards (my tarot study group)☆ Archetypal tarot + astrology forecasts☆ Full ad-free archive access (every BFTB episode since 2021)If you want to actually work through it: Use MOODS → https://app.moods.world/ MOODS is a private place to take what’s coming up and see it clearly without performing it or involving anyone else. You can try it free for 7 days to see if it's right for you. If you join my Patreon first, you’ll also unlock discounted access. See you inside.