The Gospel of Direct Experience

Feminist theologian and best-selling author Meggan Watterson joins us for a crackling conversation about the Gospel of Mary, the "apocryphal" Christian text that gives voice to Mary Magdalene's spiritual authority and visionary insight.

In this episode, Meggan shares the moment she first encountered Mary's words, "I will teach you about what is hidden from you," and the profound experience of direct contact that convinced her this overlooked gospel has the power to speak to us and transform how we understand Christianity, theology, and our own selves and souls.

Together we explore why texts like the Gospel of Mary were suppressed, why embodied and experiential forms of theology are still dismissed as "not real," and what it means to reclaim the wisdom that has long been hidden at the heart of the Christian tradition.

This is the first half of a two-part conversation. In Part 2, we turn to the story of Thecla in the Acts of Paul and Thecla, another suppressed Christian text that reveals perhaps an even more radical of spiritual authority and liberation.

Visit Meggan's Website

Mary Magdalene Revealed: The First Apostle, Her Feminist Gospel & the Christianity We Haven't Tried Yet

The Girl Who Baptized Herself: How a Lost Scripture About a Saint Named Thecla Reveals the Power of Knowing Our Worth



Episode Highlights
[00:51] Introducing Meggan Watterson
Introducing Meggan Watterson—Harvard-trained feminist theologian and bestselling author of Mary Magdalene Revealed and The Girl Who Baptized Herself.


[04:57] Real Theology?
Meggan reflects on the backlash she receives for writing theology through personal experience and embodiment. We lavish her with praise and gratitude while sharing some similar experiences and perspectives.


[16:25] The Gospel of Mary
What is the Gospel of Mary? Meggan explains how this lost Christian text survived centuries of suppression and why its message—centered on interior spiritual knowledge and Mary Magdalene's authority—presents a radically different vision of what it means to follow Christ. Meggan recounts her powerful encounter with Mary's words, "I will teach you about what is hidden from you."


[30:47] Why Mary Was Silenced
We explore why voices like Mary Magdalene's were erased from the Christian canon and what it means for modern seekers that these texts are resurfacing now.



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On the anniversary of a friend's death, a simple ritual—a candle, a glass of tequila, a cigarette, and Pink Floyd's One of My Turns—becomes something neither of us can easily explain. In this episode, we're sharing direct experiences of communicating with loved ones who have died.

We can't prove anything, but we will discuss what it means when the contact feels real—when grief opens up into presence, when imagination is more than fantasy, when the boundary between the visible and invisible thins.

Why have we in the modern West severed ourselves from our dead? What happens to a people who forget their ancestors? And what changes when we begin to treat the dearly departed not as our history, but as ongoing relationships? Whether these encounters with the dead arise from spirit, psyche, or some deeper structure of reality, they challenge our assumption that the dead are simply gone.

What about you? Have you ever felt the presence of your dead? How do you remember them?

Episode Highlights
[00:50] "James": An Anniversary and an Unexpected Encounter
On the anniversary of a his friend "James'" death, Michael builds an altar and makes an offering. Pink Floyd's One of My Turns begins to play. "James" shows up.


[09:46] Samhain: A Culture Severed from Its Dead
Halloween's forgotten origins—a thin time for communion with ancestors. Why have we in the modern West erased our relationship with the dead? And what might we be afraid to hear if they answered back?


[17:34] "Goodbye, Jeffrey"
Jeff recounts racing to Rhode Island to be with his dying mother—and the hypnagogic moment, hours later, when her voice spoke clearly in his mind—an experience that forever altered his understanding of death.


[25:10] Skepticism and the Power of Imagination
Was it "just imagination"? The hosts wrestle with materialism, the limits of skepticism, the metaphysics of consciousness, and whether imagination itself might not be a dismissal, but a doorway.


[35:35] Offerings to the Dead: Ritual, Presence, and Practice
Michael begins making offerings to departed friends. Sometimes lightning strikes. Sometimes there is only the subtle sense of being watched. What does it mean to cultivate an ongoing relationship with the dead?



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In this episode of The Gospel of Direct Experience, we're joined by Matt Cardin, acclaimed writer of cosmic horror and author of the new book Writing at the Wellspring: Tapping the Source of Your Inner Genius. What unfolds isn't just a discussion of creativity; it's also an initiation into darkness—darkness as terror and generative source and spiritual/cultural necessity.

Matt reframes the "demon muse" or "genius" not as a benevolent guide from beyond but as an abducting, inner organizing force that destabilizes our egoic certainty and is the true wellspring of art, vocation, and transformation. Our conversation ranges from the chapel perilous and cosmic horror, to non-dual philosophy and role-playing games to Frankenstein and the collapse of modern culture.

Get ready to descend into the living dark—not to transcend it, but to be transformed by it.

Visit Matt's excellent Substack newsletter The Living Dark.

Episode Highlights
[00:00:51] Intro to Matt Cardin
Matt Cardin is an author known for delving into the realms of horror and the metaphysical. His widely acclaimed books, including To Rouse Leviathan and What the Daemon Said, explore the convergence of horror, religion, and creativity.


[00:03:29] Horror as Spiritual Initiation
Matt reflects on discovering Lovecraft, Ligotti, and the weird fiction tradition, describing the uncanny experience of encountering work that feels less like influence than recognition.


[00:15:33] Lovecraft as Spirit Guide
Matt describes discovering H.P. Lovecraft not simply as a writer, but as a formative guide into cosmic horror and spiritual disorientation.


[00:25:07] Satanic Panic
Matt recalls two episodes from childhood that alerted him that his interest in darkness and creativity would not be readily accepted in his cradle religious tradition.


[00:30:46] The Living Dark & the Allotted Function
We unpack the idea of living into the dark as both a creative and existential condition—life lived without a map or final certainty. From there we discuss discovering one's allotted function—Is it cosmic slavery or existential freedom?


[00:42:44] The Demon Muse
Matt explores the demon or daemon/daimon muse as a way of naming the unconscious, involuntary source of creativity that moves through us rather than obeying us. We discuss personifying this force—not as superstition, but as a practical way of collaborating with the deep patterns that shape us as individuals and creative beings.


[00:50:55] Frankenstein & Collapse
Matt reframes Frankenstein as a parable of the daemonic unconscious gone unacknowledged, returning as both personal and cultural catastrophe. Then we turn toward possibility: a new monastic path for those who want to live meaningfully at "the end of the world." What seeds should we plant for the other side of apocalypse?


[01:51:23] Becoming the Living Book
Jeff reflects on Matt's story "Notes of a Mad Copyist," where a new inner revelation is experienced as a horror. What if collapse isn't the end but a transformation where the false things fall away?



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What if the rosary is not a relic of patriarchal religion, but an ancient spiritual technology—older than Christianity itself—designed to open a living relationship with the Sacred Mother?

In this episode we're joined by Clark Strand and Perdita Finn, founders of The Way of the Rose and co-authors of the book by the same name, for a deeply embodied conversation about the rosary as a portal: tactile, erotic, ecological, and alive.

Drawing on paleolithic bead traditions, Marian devotion, mystery cults, Buddhism, and direct visionary experience, Clark and Perdita reframe the rosary as a practice rooted not in any particular dogma, but in the body—touch, rhythm, breath, grief, birth, death, and rebirth. We explore the rosary's hidden history, its connection to the Great Mother across cultures, and its power to open liminal spaces where the living and the dead, the personal and the cosmic, meet.

The conversation then moves through themes of devotion without orthodoxy, apocalypse without judgment, reincarnation, climate grief, and the Sacred Feminine as a force that shows up—not as metaphor, but as a very real spiritual presence. By the end, we've gone from womb to tomb and back again.

Episode Highlights
[00:01:26] Introducing Clark, Perdita, and The Way of the Rose
Perdida Finn and Clark Strand are the founders of the Way of the Rose Fellowship and the co-authors of the book of the same name. Their work not only shares some of their own profound experiences of the Sacred Mother, it reframes where the rosary came from, what it really is, and where it might be taking us.


[00:02:46] The Land We Are Called To
An organic, story-rich opening unfolds around sacred land, old-growth forests, ancestral memory, and the way places call us into transformation. The Sacred Mother as land and body.


[00:9:30] The Body Knows the Prayer
Perdita and Clark introduce the rosary not as doctrine, but as an embodied practice rooted in touch, rhythm, and nervous-system memory. Drawing on ancient bead traditions and the physiology of consolation, they reframe the rosary as a tactile return to the Mother—older than Christianity itself.


[00:18:03] Ancient Origins of the Rosary
The conversation traces the rosary back through Paleolithic goddess figurines, Mediterranean mystery cults, and pre-literate devotional practices. Clark and Perdita reveal how Marian devotion absorbed and preserved far older traditions of the Great Mother, birth, death, and rebirth—often in tension with official church theology.


[00:26:11] Opening the Portal
Great discussion here about the rosary being a portal and a summoning practice. Clark and Perdita explore how repetitive prayer, gesture, and intention open liminal space—connecting practitioners with the living, the dead, and the Sacred Feminine across cultures (an invitation to people of any and all or no religious or spiritual background to join in the prayer).


[00:43:41] When She Shows Up (and Speaks)
Clark and Perdita share their own direct encounters with the Sacred Mother, including visionary experiences and received messages that shaped their work and writing. This section makes clear that the rosary is not symbolic—it is relational, communicative, and alive.


[00:51:19] A Different Kind of Apocalypse
We close by reimagining apocalypse through the rosary's mysteries—not as punishment or final judgment, but as cyclical renewal, divine union, and rebirth.



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We finally discuss the new documentary The Age of Disclosure and what it suggests about UFOs, government secrecy, and the possibility of non-human intelligence.

Already convinced of the reality of UFOs, your hosts explore the deeper challenges of disclosure itself: psychological operations, selective truth-telling, and the difficulty of knowing what to trust when intelligence agencies are shaping the narrative. We discuss why so many credible insiders are speaking publicly now—and their suggestion that there's more—much more—they can't say.

Drawing on UFO research, the work of Jacques Vallée, and the history of religious and paranormal encounter, we imagine the UFO phenomenon within a broader landscape of "high strangeness" that resists simple explanation and unsettles our assumptions about reality.

Our conversation meanders (as it so often does) toward ontological shock—the disorientation that arises when our frameworks for understanding the world begin to break down—and the question of whether humanity is truly prepared for what disclosure may reveal to us about reality and our place within it.

The Age of Disclosure Trailer

Watch the Age of Disclosure on Prime Video

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