UNIVERSAL HISTORY: FOLK MAGIC IN PROTESTANT AMERICA

"The Symbolic World" podcaster Jonathan Pagaeu (link) is running the podcast, "Universal History" (link) with filologist Deacon Seraphim, formerly Richard Rohlin, who is also well known from his association with Father Andrew Stephen Damick, who is running a widldly popular podcast, "The Lord of Spirits" on Ancient Faith Radio with Father Stephen De Young (link), and talks on his own YouTube channel (link). Throughout this summer we enjoyed their renditions of the Oedipus cycle (link). New episodes of "Universal History" are automatically uploaded on the playlist in the pages section of this blog (link) . But the most remarkable episodes we are also pasting here in separate posts. In this episode the history and background of American Folk Magic and Christianity: From the Reformation to Mormonism.

Oct. 2, 2025 Jonathan Pageau: American Folk Magic and Christianity: From the Reformation to Mormonism (Universal History).

A few remarks from our point of view are in order.

This episode describes how deep the Reformers went into the Platonic dualism of the physical and the spiritual world. So much so, that these realms were seen as entirely incompatible by reformist author Andreas Karlstadt (link).

Regular readers will know that what we are advocating in this blog is the synthesis of these worlds instead of the radical separation that Deacon Seraphim describes as "the de-coupling of the worlds of spirit and matter"; "the clutter and the icons are gone so now we can worship God with our minds" [shudders].

The de-coupling started with Plato of course, but it manifested itself permanently in the West after the Protestant iconoclasm. Mentally this meant, the primacy of abstract knowledge over the knowledge of reality. This fallacy has got us into the mess we find ourselves in today.

I disagree with Deacon Seraphim's contention that the Reformist ideal of radical de-coupling was never really achieved because folk lore was still observed in some places in the Appalachian Mountains.

It just took until the Enlightenment for the idea to permeate the whole of Western societies. From then on, radical de-coupling was institutionalized with the idealist philosophers and became the norm for the whole of the scientifically advanced West.

On the other hand, Deacon Seraphim's narrative of the Reformists' rejection of material remedies for demonic possession, might very well explain today's explosion of demonic activity.

As I understand it, this will be a multi part series. When part 2 drops we will turn this into a live blog until we have all parts together in one post. 

- More on Jonathan Pageau, "Symbolic World", Deacon Seraphim/Richard Rohlin, "Universal History", Protestantism, demonology -