• The Golden Ass: Ubiquity University Great Books 2023

    A two-part course on The Golden Ass by Apuleius (translated by E.J. Kenney).

    March 14th and April 11th, 2023

    This amusing and seemingly unassuming novel contains several significant treasures for scholars of mythology, mystery cults, analytical psychology, and Egyptology. These treasures include its embedded tale of “Eros and Psyche,” and its detailed account of initiation into the cult of Isis.

    Both are about the growth of the soul: one is about psychic transformation, the other about spiritual initiation. One claims that love tortures the psyche into growth, the other that the “Mother of the Universe” furthers psychic growth by recalling her devotees home to their divinity and immortality. Writing in the second century C.E. at a time when the Great Goddess and the pagan mysteries are beginning their descent under the crypts of the Christian Empire, Apuleius leaves behind one of the most stunning portraits of the Great Goddess found in the mythological records of antiquity.

    To watch part one on YouTube, click here.

    To watch part two on YouTube, click here.

  • Unveiling The Mythos of Iran

    A conference at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Feliz, California.

    May 21, 2023

    This conference was geared toward Iranians educated outside Iran and non-Iranian scholars of myth, religion, philosophy, and literature. We are all more or less occluded when it comes to Iran's place in the world mythological record. One main reason for the lacuna in our knowledge is that what is specifically Iranian has dissolved, or been dissolved, into "Islamic tradition." While separating out, reclaiming, and restoring Iranian mythology is implied, decolonizing was not the explicit topic of this conference. Rather, we were interested in illuminating the darkened landscape of the Iranian mythic imagination. As many Iranian women cast off their veil, I believe the task of myth scholars is to unveil the rich mythological heritage of Iran for ourselves and others.

    Ten speakers presented on a topic, a motif, a figure, a story, a text, or an idea from the field of Iranian myth that they have researched, written about or taught extensively, and approached their chosen subject with their chosen hermeneutical method. This was a beginning, an opening, an invitation to Iranian and non-Iranian scholars and students to engage with the Iranian mythic tradition, be able to see it clearly, and contextualize it accurately in the greater world mythological record.

    May 21, 2023.

    Click here to view the conference on YouTube

  • Arjang Rad's The River

    A musical—philosophical journey featuring piano, cello, and spoken word.

    June 4, 2023

    Cross Cultural Expressions presents Arjang Rad's The River, a musical and philosophical journey into the nature of suffering, of happiness, and the inseparable bond between the two. The River is the culmination of two years of intense work during the most difficult and emotionally painful period of his life: an immense ten-movement suite for piano and cello spanning nearly 40 minutes.
    Before and between movements, he weaves a narrative based on a life-changing personal philosophy that he has also coined "The River," relating the story of how he transformed these difficult years into one of the most artistically and philosophically productive periods of his life, and learned to view suffering as not just useful, but as an indispensable aspect of life upon which all meaning, growth, and happiness depend.

  • Magic and the Djinn in the Enchanted Lamp

    In narrative history, the djinn doesn’t always live in a small container; nor does he always fulfill people’s wishes. But when he does, we can be sure that the storyteller is telling us about desire—and about magic. Aladdin’s tale in A Thousand and One Nights draws from medieval Arab, Persian, and Jewish myth and mysticism to define magic and simultaneously explain how to wield it. In a sense, Aladdin is the ultimate magician.


    Director George Miller’s THREE-THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING is a film adaptation of A.S. Byatt’s 1994 novella “Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” and features a modern-day Aladdin, a modern-day djinn and, thus, a modern approach to magical power. Both the film and the novella offer a revisioning of “Aladdin and His Enchanted Lamp,” adopting its most commanding theme and centering a wish-fulfilling djinn who inhabits an enchanted container. Who is he? What is he? What is meant by this figure who makes the impossible possible, and the non-physical physical?

    November 16, 2022

    Recording available on demand through the Philosophical Research Society. Click here.

  • When God Is Really Love: Unveiling The Goddess Aphrodite

    We are too inclined to think of Aphrodite as a trinket as if she were a decorative accessory. She appears seductive, vain, unserious; and yet, we know that the ancient Greeks took beauty very seriously.

    When Pythagoras first called the universe a kosmos, he did so because he saw in it the embodiment of both order and beauty. The goddess of beauty personifies the embedded beauty of our universe and beauty’s endless dance with its order, the truth of the universe.
    She is the Lover Goddess and she tells the story of life as a love story.

    Love is no trinket either. Indeed, Aphrodite cuts a colossal figure! At once tender, terrifying and transformative, her crown is in heaven; her feet walk upon the earth; and she plummets broken-hearted into the underworld—as low down as her heavenly ascent is high. Given that her underground and heavenly aspects were taken off the table in the Classical era, we must piece her full portrait together from local cults, pre-Homeric verse, Platonic dialogue, and Pythagorean symbology.

    With the method and magic of comparative mythology, we can trace her back to her powerful Eastern roots and further back yet to the Neolithic Great Goddess. We can also trace her forward from Greece to Alexandrian and Roman initiatory rites, and to the Roman Venus whom the Renaissance would come to recognize as the source energy of all art.

    Today, Aphrodite emerges unconsciously in the images, slogans, wishes and, indeed, the fundamental energy propelling the woman-led revolution in Iran.

    Aphrodite is life-giver, energizer, transformer, healer, as well as death-wielder and initiator into the mysteries. Who among us has not been seduced, propelled, abducted, destroyed, and recreated anew by the irresistible goddess who wills wonders with her golden laughter?

    December 10, 2022

    For further information click here.

  • A Mythological Revolution: The Body & Soul of the Feminine Revolution in Iran

    Iranian revolutionaries are—fist in the air, boots on the ground, hope in the heart—screaming out for the end of one dark chapter and the start of a new bright one. By Iranian revolutionaries, I mean the ones protesting inside Iran, and emigrants like myself who live abroad. We all desire a huge sea-change politically, ecologically, and economically but also culturally, philosophically, and mythologically—we are screaming for new gods. And the new gods are beginning to show themselves in real time!

    I propose that a mythological revolution is taking place alongside the political one. But before we can perceive the mythological layer of events, it is necessary to gain a clear view of the political layer. What do we mean when we say Iran is in the midst of a revolution and that this revolution is led by women? In this talk, I briefly describe what brought Iranian women to the point of revolution in the first place, then provide a back story of this movement before turning to the colossal mythic shift taking place underneath and alongside it. When all the pieces come together, it becomes stunningly clear that the feminine divine is rising in the physical world and in real-time to disarm the conquering god who has subdued Her for far too long. Iranian revolutionaries around the world are uniting their voices to proclaim: “The Time Has Come.”

    View online talk and panel discussion here.