Glitch Bottle Podcast

#152 - Conjuring Astaroth, The Latin Mass & Popes with Fr. Robert Nixon

How was the Traditional Latin Mass a focal point of a grimoire (attributed to a Pope) to summon the demon Astaroth? Why did another Pope from the 1200s write a fascinating collection of ‘home remedies’ and secret cures for a wide variety of physical ailments? Fr. Robert Nixon, OSB, is a monk of the Abbey of the Most Holy Trinity, New Norcia in Western Australia. He returns on the podcast to discuss his latest Latin esoteric translations from Hadean Press, shares his musical compositions, answers your Glitch Bottle Patreon listener questions and more!

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✅►’Grimoire of Pope Pius V’: https://www.hadeanpress.com/shop-guides/p/grimoire-pius-v
✅►’The Secret Pharmacopeia of Pope John XXI’ - https://www.hadeanpress.com/shop-guides/p/secret-pharmacopeia
🎵►Listen to Fr Robert’s Etude melancolique’ - https://open.spotify.com/album/7tPEwF9pCeB2fivE8TSJNE
✅►Support Fr Robert’s Monastery - https://www.newnorcia.com.au/
✅►Monastery Gift Shop! - https://shop.newnorcia.com.au/
✅►The Theatre of Cruelty, through Sensus Fidelium Press - https://sensusfideliumpress.com/products/the-theatre-of-cruelty

✦🔮🔥Become a Glitch Bottle supporter with perks - https://www.patreon.com/glitchbottle

🎵 Music by the artist Crowander (track name: “Tornado”)-https://soundcloud.com/crowander
- https://www.crowander.com/

Duration:: 1h 18m
Broadcast on:: 04 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Salutations listeners and welcome back to the glitch bottle podcast where we uncork the uncommon in magic, mysticism, and the generally misunderstood. I'm your host Alexander F and today we are so excited to welcome back to the podcast Benedictine Monk, Priest, and Latin translator Father Robert Nixon. I know listeners, you might be asking yourself if you're familiar with Father Robert's works. How was the traditional Latin Mass in the Roman Catholic tradition, a focal point of a grimoire hundreds of years old and attributed to a Pope's authorship to summon the demon Astroth? How did a priest, tying knots in his stole, help serve as a way to bind these spirits during Mass? Why did another pope from the 1200s write a fascinating collection of home remedies and secret cures for a wide variety of physical and emotional ailments? Well, Father Robert Nixon is the perfect person to ask. Father Robert, for the listeners who are hearing Father Robert for the first time, is a monk of the abbey of the most holy trinity in New Northia, in Western Australia, and there he serves as director of the Institute for Benedictine Studies. Father Robert is a retreat master and a liturgist, and his interest includes medieval Latin literature, especially the lives of the saints. Father Robert is no stranger to the podcast. Previously, he generously stopped by talking about his excellent translations of divination by thunder with the venerable bead and also wizard popes of the 11th century. So definitely check that out. And today, Father Robert is returning to the podcast to share about two of his newest translations from Haiti and press, the grimoire of Pius V, the conjuration of Astroth, and the secret pharmacopia of Pope John the 21st, as well as a brief after show for podcast supporters and patrons about Tritemius. So we hope also, in addition to all of this, find out a little bit more about what Father Robert is up to, his latest musical compositions, which are absolutely just lovely. So make sure to check out the links below for those. And with all of that being said, Father Robert Nixon, thank you so much for taking the time and stopping back on the Glitch Bottle podcast today. Actually, so much, Alex, it's such a wonderful opportunity for me to have this opportunity to reach out to all of your listeners. So thank you. Father Robert, the honor is absolutely mine. I am such a big fan of your work, and I cannot wait to dive into it. And I figure, Father Robert, this might be a good opening question because as we record this, it is Monday morning in Australia, and you are generously, very generously, taking a break from your monastic duties right now to chat with us. And I'm curious, can you share with the listeners, what do your average mornings look like? Can you give us a sampling of the duties? Yeah. Absolutely. So as Benedictine monks, there is not a great deal of variety from one day to the next. We more or less do the same thing seven days a week, 365 days a year. So each morning I have my alarm clock set for 4.15, and I get up at that time, and have a cup of coffee, and I have to say that this is getting up very early in the morning is one of the more difficult aspects of being a monk. Often for the first five minutes of the day, I regret my choice to become a monk at that time, but it soon passes. And then I spend, that is a great time I find for doing some Latin translation work because it kind of gets the brain stimulated at the start of the day, and also it's a very quiet and peaceful time. And I can do that while I'm having a cup of coffee. So it's a wonderful thing to do. We then start our first prayer, which is the office of Matins or vigils, and that is at 5 a.m. each morning. That is probably our longest prayer of the day. It goes for about 45 minutes, consists of the recitation of various Psalms, as well as readings from Scripture and from the saints of the church. And so for example, today we celebrated the Feast of Saint Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. We then have our second prayer is at 630, which is called the Office of Lords or Morning Prayer. And then we have a short break and we celebrate then Holy Mass at 730 in the morning. Now until the end of Mass, we keep strict silence in the monastery. So after night prayer each day, until after the end of Mass, we have what is known as the Magna Cylencia, the great silence. And during that time we keep communication to an absolute minimum. But I think this is actually a very good idea, not only in monastic life, but for people in general, to have a certain boundaries of the day when their communication with the outside world ceases and then starts again. And you know, until the end of that great silence, I don't check emails, don't do anything like that at all. If I am celebrating Mass on that day, I might spend some time thinking about the homily. And but otherwise it's an opportunity for prayer and meditation and reading. Following that, we would normally go about whatever our daily work might be. And we, all of the monks are assigned different duties within the monastery, towards running the community and also running our guest house, our hospitality ministry and so forth. On Monday morning, what I would typically be doing would be planning the music for the next Sunday Mass. One of my roles here is Director of Liturgy. And in that role, we're very blessed up here. We actually have wonderful singers coming up for our Sunday Mass each week. And we have good congregations coming along for that. So the music is a big point here. We have, we're very blessed to have a wonderful pipe organ as well, a remarkable instrument, one of the largest pipe organs in Australia, in fact, at this monastery. And so I work on organizing that music, I try to get it done within the space of the Monday morning, you know, and to get it in advance, so I can send it to the singers who will need to prepare it. But then we have midday prayer. We then have lunch together. We have our meals together, evening meal and midday meal. We follow a monastic tradition. We eat in silence. One of the monks serves the food and another monk reads while the food is being consumed. We have a roster for doing that. So we all take turns and that serving of our brethren is an important part of our community. So we all do it. We all serve and we are in turn served by others. The reading during the meals, I think, is a great thing because it gives us the opportunity of encountering something which perhaps we wouldn't normally read of our own accord and makes full use of that time. And you know, I'm also of the opinion that having to make small talk during meals in a community could be a source of pressure or not so much a source of pressure, but a bit of a drain as well. Don't have to do that each day, you know. One of the things about monastic life is not that much happens from one day to the next. So we don't necessarily have too many new topics of conversation from day to day. We then have a period of siesta. We could catch up on sleep or continue with whatever work we might be doing, whatever we might be engaged on. For me, that's a great opportunity for working on translations because it's something which I can do quietly while the other monks are resting without any trouble at all. We then have afternoon prayer, continue with whatever work we need to do. And we have a short period of time to ourself from about 4.30 until 6.30 in the afternoon. And during this time, you know, we can do whatever, go for a walk, do some exercise, whatever we might like to do, you know, and we are very blessed at this monastery. We actually have a monastery gym, which I like to use. And this might seem strange, but in this monastery was founded by Spanish monks. And in the early 20th century, they apparently had a bit of a gym craze thing in Europe in Spain. So it's like an antique gym. Anyway, we then have evening prayer or vespers. And we have our meal together and followed by a night prayer at 815, which terminates by about 845. And then the sensible thing is to try to go to bed as promptly as possible, being conscious of the fact that we're going to wake up very early the next morning. Wow, Father, that's amazing. And I being a former news reporter, I have at least five or six questions kicking around. How do you take your coffee? What kind of food do you serve to the monks? People have heard you on piano. Do you also use one of the largest organs in Australia when you play? You know, I beat all of these different things. It just sounds like you are fully engaged, even though not much might change from day to day, your prayers and the divine office and the routine is actually really important, it sounds like. Yes, it is. So we try to get the very maximum out of life that's possible. Well, we do this in hopefully a regulated and realistic way so that it is sustainable, so there's no burnout. And it seems to work fairly well. And I think a testimony to the fact that it works well is that there have been Benedict and Monasteries following more or less this same timetable for 1500 years. And we are still going strongly. Absolutely. And this father might be a nice transition to your constant perpetual ongoing translation work, which is wonderful, is that in New Norseia? In your monastery, you have, oh, I'm going to forget this father. How many books, tens of thousands of volumes? Is that right? Better there? Yes, we have over 80,000 volumes here in our library, dating from the 1500s. So we add, and then huge collections of Latin and Greek texts from early editions, most of them 19th century, 18th century editions. Wow, that's absolutely incredible. And you have consistently used your masterful Latin, mastery of the Latin language and going into these old tones and old manuscripts. And I think this is a best time as any father to ask you speaking of all of this. One of your latest tones, one of your latest translations presented by Hadian Press is known as the grimoire of Pius V, a conjuration of Astroth. Can you, before we get into the specifics of what's, what the contents are in that, how did you first come across this grimoire of Pope Pius V? This is actually a very interesting story. So I was doing some research on the writings of Saint Gertrude, who is a German Benedictine mystic. And so I was, you know, using Google books, I make a good use of Google books, which in fact is a wonderful resource for Latin texts because they're fully scanned and the fully available public domain. So I searched for Le Bellis Sante Gertrudeenis, the little book of Saint Gertrude. And you know, this was a basically book of hers, but I happen to come across this very strange volume containing a short number of prayers which were attributed to Saint Gertrude. And the, the title of this volume in German, I won't try to pronounce the whole German names, it's quite lengthy. But basically what it means is handwritten treasures from monastery libraries comprising 40 major works on magic, hidden powers, revelations and the most secret sciences. So I came across this book and it was like a collection of short works copied from the libraries of monasteries and convents in Germany. And you know, it was, some of them were in Latin, some of them were in German. And it was a very strange book because I noticed that it had the publication date given a 1734. Then I, when I started to read it, I noticed that some of the preface were dated 1809 and so forth. And so I became curious. I looked up the publisher and the publisher was identified as a certain Peter Hemmer. Now apparently this name Peter Hemmer was used as, was basically a, a non-existent publication for a firm. So when people wanted to publish a work or a collection of works, but the publisher didn't want to get into trouble for publishing it, they would put it under the name published by Peter Hemmer and then perhaps put a year which was fictitious. So they could say, well, this was published a hundred years ago. So I had a close look at this work and, you know, I became convinced that the works contained in it were genuine copies, that they weren't just forgeries. The reason I knew that or could deduce that was because there were things which were seemed to be misreadings of manuscripts of poor legibility. Now if it was being, you know, made up by someone, that wouldn't happen. There wouldn't be the mistakes, there wouldn't be the inconsistencies. And one of the works I came across was this conjuration of Aesteroth attributed to Pope Pius V. Now I, I realized that it obviously wasn't by Pope Pius V himself. That would be somewhat absurd. However, from the type of language, from the format, I could see that it was from a genuine manuscript and almost certainly dating from the 16th century. So you know, I thought this is actually very interesting because it is pointing to the, you know, you're aware that in Germany, after the Lutheran Revolution, Catholicism in a lot of places became an underground type of thing. And for that reason, there was an element of suspicion that, you know, are the rights of the Catholic Church actually magical practices. And that was the position taken by a lot of the Lutheran. And so, you know, this kind of seemed to be a natural extension of that type of thinking that this practice of the mass had been forced to become underground. And as a consequence of that, had taken on this type of occult flavor. So the attribution to Pope Pius V was probably a way of the author protecting himself because if he was found to have it in his possession, he could say, look, this is by Pope Pius V. And in Luther in Germany, Pope Pius V was regarded as an arch villain. He was regarded as, you know, something of a, you know, a wicked demonic sorcerer, which of course he wasn't, but for their perspective, they saw the Catholic Church in that light. That is fascinating. And can you speak to as well, Father, speaking of Pius V, his important historical role, not only following the Protestant Revolution, but also his role, what was his role in kind of codifying the traditional Latin mass? Can you share about that? So he was an extremely important figure in the history of the Catholic Church. He was actually Pope only for a relatively short time from 1566 to 1572. Before that, he was a Dominican, so the order of preachers, the same order as Saint Albert the Great, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and so forth. And one of the roles which the Dominicans had was running the Inquisition. And so Pius V before he was Pope worked for the Inquisition and in fact became the grand inquisitor. So he would have had an intimate familiarity with elusive spiritual practices all throughout Europe. He would be dealing with these things on a daily basis in his role as brand inquisitor. And the Inquisition at this time wasn't only investigating heresies, but was also a few of the saints were investigated by the Inquisition, people like Saint John of the Cross and so forth. And they were seeing if the mysticism that they were using was in fact acceptable, was in harmony with the Catholic faith, and in some cases it was, in some cases it wasn't. But certainly the invocation of angels was something which the Church was dealing with because it had become a very popular practice at that time, which we will be countering in the writings of Tritemius. But he was chosen as the Pope and he didn't last very long as the Pope. It was said of him that he was trying to turn all of Rome into a great monastery. He was a somewhat austere person so he didn't approve of gambling, usury, fornication and so forth. So whether or not he died a natural death is not completely known for sure. What we do know is that there was an attempt to poison him. So his enemies, these are enemies within the Church. They knew that every day he would kiss a crucifix as an act of devotion. So what they did was they put poison on the crucifix, on the part where they knew he kissed it, and so tried to kill him. But they didn't succeed. At least not in that instance, but like a lot of popes he died pretty quickly. So whether that was natural or brought on, no one can really be sure. But one of the things he did do was he implemented the reform suggested by the Council of Trent. Now the Council of Trent was something the Church had in response to both the rise of Protestantism and also the recognition that, yeah, the Protestants did kind of have a point that there was a lot of corruption in the Church. And this was to increase the level of discipline, I suppose. One of the things he did was he introduced a missile, which is known often as the Tridentine missile, but this was the Latin missile, it kind of harmonized the traditions which were already in existence and continued to be used for the next 400 years as the standard missile of the Church. In fact, continues to be used today in traditional Latin masses, which are a very popular thing throughout the world. And it is this traditional Latin Mass that has everything from the Introit, to the Collech, to the Secret, to the Sanctus, the Canon of the Mass, the consecration, the Consecretory prayers, which in Vatican II many of those prayers were removed or truncated, but the full blossoming of the traditional Latin Mass. This very Mass is what is used as a focal point for this conjuration of Astoroth, is that right? It is, absolutely. And this conjuration of the Spirit, Astoroth, actually begins before the Mass starts and then is interspersed at different points throughout the Mass. And I believe the reason for this is that this wicked Spirit doesn't want the Mass to go ahead, so that as the Mass is progressing and getting closer and closer to the point of consecration, the Spirit is more inclined to appear and to do the bidding of the person summoning it, rather than having this consecration, which is, you know, the act of sanctification of the world take place. So I believe that is why it is framed in this way. I never thought of that before, Father Robert, because many previous guests who talk about the grim wars in the Western European tradition talk about magical procedures, about building magical tension and using a Spiritist loci, if you will, a triangle, obsidian sphere, crystal sphere, in order to facilitate or encourage a spirit to manifest. But what you're saying is this might be the traditional Latin Mass is the ultimate thing to get a Spirit's attention because the Spirit does not want this Mass to go forward because it's so holy, you know, it's such a good thing. Exactly, exactly. So I believe that is how this is worked out. And as the Mass progresses, the conjurations to the Spirit become progressively more and more severe until they reach the point where there are curses and then binding. Now, as I'd say in my introduction, I certainly recommend that no one actually do this. But you know, the last thing you want to be doing is to be summoning an evil Spirit and then trying to compel it to do something against its will. And then on top of that, mixing it with the Mass. So this is really it would be to put this into practice would be something of a extremely dangerous thing to do. Absolutely. And something you point out in the treatise itself in your introductory paragraph is that as you said, it might be very easy for someone to look at this and dismiss it as mere anti-Catholic propaganda and the person wasn't a Catholic at all and they're using the Catholic, the traditional Latin Mass to kind of disparage, you know, Catholics and Catholicism. But you bring up a fascinating point, Father, when you say that, quote, it is clear that this is the work of a genuine student of the occult and almost certainly, you say, a Roman Catholic priest, most likely dating from the 17th century. What can you tell us about this? Exactly. So, you know, to put this in context, there is a fairly well-known work called the Lebellis Verum Jesuitarium or the true book of the Jesuits and this basically has far-fetched conjurations of spirits asking for different sums of money and so forth and it's attributed to the Jesuits who were, you know, regarded again as arch-villains by the Protestants. And that work was reasonably widely circulated but this work is extremely detailed. It shows like a really precise knowledge of the texts it's quoting. It doesn't quote them in a way that makes them seem absurd, which it very easily could do if that was the intention of the person concerned. The other thing is the fact that this text wasn't circulated, so it was included in the publication I mentioned before, but apparently from only one manuscript source. Now, if you're going to write a piece of anti-Catholic propaganda, it doesn't make much sense just to write it and then hide it in a library. So I believe it is the work of a person educated in the Catholic Liturgy and Theology. Possibly, now this is something which happened, a lot of the Catholic clergy and Catholic religious, after the Lutheran Revolution, basically were compelled, or in some cases chose, to join the Lutherans. However, they still would have been ordained as Catholic priests. They still would have considered these rights to be perfectly valid and so I think that that is probably the key to this, that there was a sense of the mass having become underground. You know, the use of these Latin rituals, yeah, it went on, but it was no longer listed. And because of the fact that it was forced to become underground, it then was more readily mixed with these occult things. If people had a sense that saying a Latin mass was a forbidden thing to do, then it was only a small step to say, well, if it's forbidden to say that, you know, and it's forbidden to invoke these angels/devils, then you know, you can see how the blurring takes place there. And so I think that that is the likely origin of this work. And as you say, this is very likely a Roman Catholic priest. As you say, maybe somebody who maybe joined Lutheranism later on, maybe not, but you do mention, can you elaborate on this father in your introduction that there are certain parts of this ritual that do not require holy orders or the ability to affect exopraeoperato sacraments. But there are other things that do in the latter half of the mass require holy orders. Can you break that down for us? Yeah, so the very first part of it basically takes place before the intuit of the mass, which is before anything takes place, really. Then there are other conjurations which take place. And until you actually get to the Roman canon or the Eucharistic prayer of the mass, there is not a sacramental action until that point, which means it would be possible for a non-urdained person to do it without any question of validity arising. So this could be an important thing because in Germany, some of the priests, some of the Lutheran ministers, I should say, were actually ordained as Catholic priests, but others were not. So yeah. That is fascinating. And to your very point before the intro of the mass, which we will discuss what the intro it actually is and what goes on there, but you mentioned father, the ritual begins with such a fat effect. Yeah, please go ahead. Yeah, there are a number of interesting things which are to take place before the the conjuration actually begins. And one of the things is that the book itself, a number of masses should be said over the book. In other words, over the physical copy of the manuscript, which the person has made, four masses, one to the father, to the son, to the Holy Spirit, and then to all the saints. And then the book itself, it says, is actually to be baptized and given a Hebrew name. Now I've never actually read anything like that before. It's not to say that it maybe hadn't taken place before, but I guess the idea of it is to expel any effects of sin or evil, which might be within the physical copy of the book. So a way of kind of safeguarding. So before the practice gets under way, it's all being dedicated to God as much as possible. And I think that the author of it put that in as a way of safeguarding the person who was about to embark on this. That is very fascinating, especially since many grimoires incorporate holy names of God or the operator wearing a phylactery with divine nomina magica on them. And so this seems like the book itself is taking on along with the holy character of the priest of the operator, a very protective element, which is just fascinating. Father two, before the intro of the mass, as you mentioned, the operator recites conjurations of Astroth trying to conjure Astroth. For those listeners, though, who might not be too familiar, you just touched on this. But what is the intro of the traditional Latin mass? What is going on there? So what it is is it consists of an antiphon and a psalm, which are either sung or spoken as the priest is actually entering the church or the chapel as he's approaching the altar. So what takes place before the intro is basically before the mass even begins. So it would typically be in the sacristy at this point, not out in the church or the chapel proper. Excellent. Thank you. And for the listeners who are watching, I'm holding up my 1962 copy of the daily missile, the pre-Vatican II, but these introits, depending on the day and the feast of this particular saint or a votive mass, these introits always change, Father, right? Like the psalm, the antiphon, it's always changing. Yeah. They do. So it's not a fixed psalm. There is different ones for different feasts of saints and also for different seasons of the year. Yeah. Okay. Excellent. So this kind of kicks off the ritual and then as you say, one of the next steps during this is after the santos that there are curses that are said, if the spirit is not appearing, can you share with the listeners? And I remember, I remember growing up as a Roman Catholic too about the santos. Yes. What is that? So the santos is, so as the mass takes place after the priest has entered, there is a kind of greeting, a act of contrition, the collet, which is the prayer of the day for the saint or for the particular mass, then there are readings, then there proceeds to the liturgy of the Eucharist, which begins with what used to be called the secret prayer, now we call the prayer before communion. The reason secret is because it was said silently in the past. So as was, in fact, a lot of the mass. It was said because it was addressed to God, not addressed to the people. And this also explains why in the traditional Latin mass, for these parts, the priest is facing away from the people because the idea is he's not preaching to the people, but rather he's leading the people in prayer. So then follows the preface, and then after this is a chant, which is known as the santos and the santos is its Latin name. In English, santos means holy, of course. So in English, it means holy, holy, holy Lord God, Saboah, heaven and earth are full of your glory, Hosanna and excellsis. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna and excellsis. And so what happens with this is that when we get to the stage of the santos, the practitioner begins to curse the spirit. Now previously he had been invoking the spirit, summoning the spirit to come and do his bidding, but now he starts to curse it. And you know, I've read quite a few books of exorcisms dating from this same period. And one of the practices they involved was if an evil spirit refused to comply with the directions of the exorcist, the exorcist would then pronounce a number of curses against it. You know, and to give you an example of some of these curses, I, an unworthy priest, bind curse and condemn you, evil and pertination spirit, Astroth, through the 24 seniors round the divine majesty of Christ, who will with Christ judge you wicked spirits so that you shall feel the greatest wrath of God. Then goes on, I urge and condemn you, evil and pertination spirit, Astroth, in and through the virtue of all the names of God into the Lake of Fire and Brimstone, eternally, until the terrible day of judgment. And it goes on like this because whole series of curses, then it actually says that these curses are to be repeated three times unless the spirit appears. And then if the spirit doesn't appear to continue with the rest of the mass. So this is like upping the ante against the spirit. You know, it is pretty drastic at this point in time. You know, one of the things I was thinking when the author put this together would be that the average priest or average person wouldn't be inclined to go beyond that point of cursing, you know, because we've gone into the realm of very strong coercion against the spirit and, you know, to go further would be playing with fire, although frankly, to go even to that point would be playing with fire, I shouldn't say. Yes, most most definitely. And I think this actually touches on, as you said, the power of holy orders and the ability for a priest to have not only natural law, but divine positive law and the ability to adjourn spirits in an exorcistic procedure. And then of course, we see this this other element of the mass. And this, this father leads to a listener question we have for you from Xavier, who is saying father after the elevation of the body and blood of Christ, that kind of next step of the mass, the trans substantiated bread and wine. The priest binds a spirit by binding or tying knots in his stole and manible. I'm wondering if Father Robert has ever tied knots in his stole or if not tying is done in any traditional Catholic context that has nothing to do with magic. So Father, I'll turn it over to you. No, I had never tied knots in a stall, at least not intentionally, unless, you know, maybe I get it a bit tangled, putting it on or taking it off. No, but seriously, I have encountered this procedure in some of the books on exorcism, some of the manuals of exorcism taking to this time. And there's a famous manual of exorcism called the Fuger satana or putting the flight of Satan. And one of the procedures it recommends is to take a stall and place it around the neck of the person who is possessed and then to tie three knots in the stall as a way of binding the spirit, binding the evil spirit to obedience. And that is virtually exactly what happens here, that the knots are tied in the stall as a means of binding the spirit. And I'm pretty, you know, this work on exorcism, the Fuger satana, was in very wide circulation. Even though it was a Catholic work, it was used in Protestant Germany and in Protestant England. So when people needed to do one of these exorcisms or deal with a bad spirit, they would often revert to the Catholic rights because there was still a belief in their efficacy. So now its appearance in this Fuger satana suggests that it was something which people already did, that it was an established practice or custom. But certainly it is not a part of any of the current rituals of the church. Very good. Yes. And Father, in addition to this ritual as well, I believe at the end of this ritual too, the priest, the operator is to conclude with the Mass itself, for example, reading the first chapter of the Gospel of John. And can you just share how the ritual ends as well? Yes. So what happens is after the spirit has appeared, at whatever point he does appear, whether that's right at the beginning or the suntus or after the consecration, the Mass then proceeds, look, well, there is the dismissal of the spirit. And if the spirit doesn't go away after the dismissal, then the curses are to be repeated. Basically until the spirit does go away. You know, I think this kind of highlights the dangerous nature of these type of procedures. People summon a spirit and then what if the spirit stays, no one is going to want Astoroth, one of the princes of hell as their companion, are they? So you've got to get rid of this, David, then after that the Mass continues. Maybe the Mass continuing was also another way of encouraging the demon to go. The Mass continues and then it concludes with giving thanks. So it is, I will share with you what it says there. Then this is the prayer at the end, "To the honourable mighty God and our Lord Jesus Christ, may the sign of the cross be on my forehead, may the words of Christ be in my mouth, may the weapons of Christ be in my heart." Every this sign, liberators from our foes, oh God, oh power of God the Father, strengthen us, oh wisdom of God the Son, instruct us, oh love of the Holy Spirit, illuminate us. May God be blessed and blessed be the hour in which our Lord Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. So at the end it brings it back firmly to dedication to God, to this devotion to God. And this is something we, as you would know, we frequently find in the magical texts of the late Middle Ages and early modern period. And these were included as a way of the practitioner showing that he was still faithful, still a loyal servant of God. And I think this was so important. Both from the point of view of the person's safety in doing these things, because as you say, as I said, you know, you don't want to become too much associated with these dark powers, which ultimately only wish to harm human beings. Even if they might, from time to time, seem to grant a request to someone, in the end it's not for their good. So to bookend the whole practice with these firm statements of faith, I believe this was the intention of the author in this case. Yes, that's such a wonderful connection, Father, between the esoteric tradition and, of course, the traditional Roman Catholic tradition as well. And something, Father, that you say, of course, you've said it before, and many listeners are familiar. Obviously, this ritual is, of course, not recommended at all. And you are presenting this for those who are interested in not only the historical tributaries, but esoteric lore and arcane rituals. So Father, to that very point, can you share your thoughts about this ritual as a whole? What does a Catholic-influenced grimoire like this say to you about the relationship between priests and magicians in the Middle Ages? And as many scholars have noted, sometimes, of course, this is very much condemned, but sometimes they were the exact same person in the Middle Ages. What is the say to you? So in some ways, it is not surprising that they were the same people because if you think about the role of priests historically and in all cultures, their principal role is to perform rights and ceremonies on behalf of the people. And rights and ceremonies, which are religious, well, all rights and ceremonies are religious in their origin. I mean, they're calling upon supernatural forces, therefore, are religious. And the fact is that during the Middle Ages, it was the priests who were literate, who were able to investigate these things, who were able to read, who were able to go through these motions. So it's not completely surprising. Now, this particular work, you know, when the Lutherans seized power, they started to say that the Catholic practices of invoking the saints and the angels were, in fact, magical or superstitious or even demonic. And this is something which, you know, we still sometimes the Catholics encounter. People say, "Well, you know, praying to St. Anthony, saying the rosary, these things seem a bit superstitious or, you know, sometimes even the idea that the Eucharist, that Christ can be truly present to us in this sacramental form." Some people would say, "Yeah, that's superstitious." Of course, it isn't, but the point is, I think, that when these things were identified as being superstitious and they were driven underground, then they quickly became a lie with things which were actually illicit practices. Because people no longer knew what was completely illicit and what wasn't. I mean, if it became illegal to say the rosary, for example, which it virtually did in Germany, you could stay the rosary, you had to say it in secret, you know? So it then became like a little, you know, an occult type of thing. It was something hidden away. People still did it, but it was, you know, frowned upon, was not approved of. So I believe that this work reflects the consequence of driving Catholic faith underground, of making it prohibited. And interestingly, it's in the Protestant countries where Catholicism was suppressed, that there was actually a dramatic rise in the practice of witchcraft. So we needed to think only about Germany after the time of Luther and also England during the puritanical times and the puritanical parts of North America. And that was because people still had the faith that they had as Catholics, but it was warped. It became distorted and underground. And so very quickly took on this distorted form. And I think that's something we need to be aware of, that these kind of invocations of evil spirits is a distortion of what might have originally been, you know, a good and holy practice. Now this one is particular a case for that because if you're able to say a mass and you're able to invoke the aid of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary, why would you invoke Asteroth? Why would you ask someone who is less powerful and also who is basically your enemy to help you when you can easily go for help to God himself, whose promise does that whatever we ask for in the name of Jesus, he will grant us. So why deal with the dark side when you can just as easily deal with the light side, with the side of goodness? But I think because under the oppressive Puritan system, it all became the dark side. And so, you know, people really got confused. They felt they were doing something wrong by calling upon the saints and angels. And so from that, to call upon the bad angels was, you know, didn't seem like such a big step. That is fascinating, Father. I never thought about it that way until you shared that really the the Reformation, but then the counter Reformation, the Council of Trent, the Jesuits, the spiritual exercises, all of these things, it sounds like you're saying it really heightened the tensions and the suspicions that newly minted Protestant areas and countries had against Catholicism, which of course, as soon as you ban something, it much like prohibition here in the 20th century in the United States, all of a sudden it becomes the very hidden superstitious thing that people just want that are just existing on the margins of society. Would that be somewhat fair? Yes, I believe that would be a very fair way of putting it, you know, and we have very strong evidence that Catholic spiritual beliefs and practices persisted strongly in these Protestant countries that they persisted, but they became underground. Well, Father, that is fascinating context listeners. Check out below to a link for Haiti and press so that you can get your own copy of Father's work because it is wonderful. It's elucidating. It's also historical. And I think you really enjoy learning about this allegedly attributed, of course, to highest the 5th. But Father, shifting gears to an actual pope who actually wrote something as well, another tone from Haiti and press that you, because you apparently don't sleep. I don't, I don't know if I believe this thing about coffee in the morning. Maybe you just don't sleep because you're translating so much. But the second one is the secret pharmacopia of Pope John the 21st. And can you tell us a little bit about who was Pope John? What is this whole work about, Father? Yeah. So Pope John the 21st, and I should mention there's a bit of confusion about the numbering of the Pope John's. There's been so many different Pope John's that no one is really sure who's the 20th or 21st or 20. But anyway, he was one of the outstanding physicists, physicians and logicians of his time. His name, before he became Pope, was Pedro Yuliaio, also known as Petros Ispanus or Peter of Spain. He was born in Portugal and he became a great physician. And he served as Professor of Medicine at the University of Padua and then served as personal physician to Pope Gregory the 10. And it was while he was serving as a physician to Pope Gregory the 10th that he put together this work, originally called a Thethaurus paparra or the treasury of the poor. He dedicated it to Pope Gregory the 10th. And then after this, he himself went on and became Pope. He was only Pope for a very short time for about eight months. I mentioned before that Pope's during the middle ages had a habit of not lasting for very long. Here's a good example of that. And he wrote this book. What it is, is a collection of home remedies and the idea, it's a treasury for the poor because a lot of people couldn't afford physicians, they couldn't afford to buy medicines from apothecaries and so forth. So most of these are things you can put together yourself to treat a whole range of ailments. And one of the fascinating things about this is read it when a modern person reads it. A lot of these actually sound more like the kind of movie images of witches' brooms, you know, with Eye of Nute and Tale of Salamandra and so forth mixed in. So this is, in my opinion, I've read quite a lot of those books from the middle ages. This is actually probably the one that is most extreme in that regard in having a lot of things and sometimes foolish ingredients. The ingredients it cites includes things like bats, blood, cannabis, opium, human milk. So there's a whole range of weird things that are involved in these medicines. Yes, and as you've shared the medicines, these home remedies are used to treat a variety of things. Do I have this right where it is? I mean, just reading through it, baldness, insomnia, headache, pimples, gallstones, redness of the throat, nausea, coughs, toothache, sore eyes, earache, impotence, and so many others. So it sounds like this really covers a constellation of ailments. It does. And it also includes some things which are not strictly medicinal. So for example, ways of guarding your house against witchcraft, so includes ways of turning red wine into white wine and white wine into red wine, which is a handy tip. What you need to do is take the ashes of a burnt red cow and put it into white wine and we'll turn into red wine. Take the ashes of a burnt white cow and put it into red wine. I don't know if that works. I'm not about to try it myself, but yeah. Right. Absolutely. And one of the things that you touched on is the Holy Father himself, correct me if I'm wrong, Father, is when he's listing these various remedies, he will occasionally say, I know this works by experience, or I have tried this, or I have seen the effects of this. Right. Yeah. He does. You know, he mentions his own experience when he's talking about cures for baldness, for example, and cures for headaches, which interestingly enough is basically just chewing gum. Yes, yes, indeed. And of course, there might be a few of these home remedies that we could certainly ask if you'd like to reside or read one of those for us. But let me ask you this before we get there, Father, which is as you intimated, some popes did not last very long. And as you said, after Pope John the 21st died, less than a year after being elected to the papacy, there were these rumors that quickly spread that he was some kind of secret practitioner of necromancy and the dark arts. Can you share about these accusations that sprung up? Sure. Sure. Absolutely, Alex. And I should mention about his death. So he had a private laboratory, and what happened is the ceiling of this private laboratory fell down and crushed him to death. And as this was happening, a certain friar had a vision of this black demon appearing and assaulting the papal residents. And so he went there and found that the Pope had in fact been killed. Whether or not this was an accident, again, this is very hard to say. But he quickly did get this reputation as having been a magician. But this is not so surprising because in the Middle Ages, I talked before about the rise of magic as basically a distortion of the Catholic faith when it was suppressed. But in the Middle Ages themselves, it was typically what we would now call science that was seen as magic by the common people. And so if you were in a laboratory experimenting with various chemicals, and they were reading books in Latin, Greek, Arabic, to the average person, they would think what's going on here. And if they saw an amazing result coming about, and the result might just be the ability of someone to cure a disease or to make a clock which works or something like that, or the average person, they would basically see that as magic. And I think that is the explanation of how this person, there's no evidence that he was involved in anything which was unorthodox in any way. But he was experimenting with these unusual ingredients and sometimes unusual procedures. And so to accuse that person, and a good case would be, a comfortable case would be Sylvester II, who is the best-known pope who was accused of being a wizard. And in reality, he had studied with the Arabs, he had learnt algebra and advanced mathematics. And people saw that as being basically magical. And that view actually persisted for quite a long time until we realized that the physical world is complex, and we make a distinction between magic and science. But for people who don't have access to the science, things can just appear as magic. If you took someone from 1,000 years ago and you showed them what we're doing now, I'm communicating to you on the other side of the world via an image, they would say, how is that any different from looking into a crystal ball? 100% that makes total sense. And given that context, Father, which is wonderful, and I hope you the listeners appreciate that as much as I do, it's just such a wonderful way to think about how someone in that time period would apprehend esoteric arts, procedures, obscure manuscripts, and everything else. Father, in addition to that, I very much enjoyed being a huge Shakespeare fan, that you opened this with double, double, toil, and trouble, and the three witches from Macbeth, of course. But in that same vein, are there any remedies that are contained in this booklet that you'd like to share with listeners? Absolutely. So I will share with you now the one for some of the treatments for incipient baldness, you know, and if you notice that the hair on your head is beginning to fall out to recede or grow thin, then grind up the droppings of a dove to form a fine dust or power. Dissolve this dust into water and use it to wash your scalp, and further hair lost shall thereby be prevented. Another reliable way of promoting abundant hair growth is to anoint the scalp with the blood of a tortoise. Alternatively, burn the skin taken from the head of a fox, together with its jaws, then take the ash from this and sprinkle it on the area where you wish hair to grow. But before doing so, it is necessary, firstly, to anoint the area with that oil, in which a decapitated green lizard has been cooked throughout the whole duration of the previous day. We have one here for preventing hair growth. To ensure unwanted hairs never grow, pluck them out, then anoint the area with a bat blood or with the blood of a small frog. Adheres a tip, if you scatter the ashes of burn swamspones upon the head of any person, they will very soon go bull. I do not know how they came up with this and how they tried it, but it was what they believed at the time. He has also some interesting ways for keeping witches out of your house. He says, "If you take some St. John's wort and suspend it in your house, it shall put to flight all spells and demons therefrom. If a married couple, each carry magnets on a person, it will alleviate any discord between them." The practice of carrying with oneself the heart of a vulture puts to flight all demons, both from one's property and beat. So we have some here, very strange things, the very last one. There is something which I definitely don't recommend, but he says, "Take a living poo poo bird and cut it open. Then swallow its heart while it is still beating, and then you will gain knowledge of all secrets and of any future schemes in the minds of other persons." I don't know how he came up with that. I don't know if he tried it himself, but it was something which would be not for the squeamish, I think. Yes, sir. Obviously, you just mentioned this. I will say it, both Father Robert and I do not try any of this at home, everyone. This is simply for getting an insight into these home remedies. Yes. The ones that involve just herbs and plants and things, maybe try those. Chances are they actually do work, the ones involving herbs, because people use them as cures for a range of things. Obviously, they had some positive effect, as we know today with herbs that they were often taken and seem to have very positive effects for some things. Absolutely. Excellent points. Father, I definitely would like to discuss with you next about your music and your musical endeavors too, but as we wrap up your two tones, your two treatises that you were sharing with us in translations, is there anything else that you would like listeners to know about these translations? I'll just say for me, I am so thankful for you because I see your translations as these wonderful beams of light that illuminate a specific time in history where you can see how antif or someone in the countryside might have a home remedy. I mean, how do you see these translations as you go through this? Yes. I find what I find remarkable is there's a particular type of books. People are aware of them. They're aware of their existence, but they never actually read them. Translations aren't available. We often read in the life of Peter of Spain, "Oh, yes," and he wrote a collection of home remedies, but as to what they are, and this is where I see my role as a translator of actually getting the substance of it across. I think this really adds color to our perspective of history. We can tend to get narrowed down with a contemporary perspective, in terms of strong distinctions between science and religion, between magic and science, between magic and spirituality and so forth. But these distinctions, in most cases, are only of comparatively recent origin. To see the world in a broader way, which I think is a great thing we can learn from the Middle Ages when they didn't have this type of hermeneutic of skepticism, where they saw the world as being all sacred, all filled with spiritual forces, and these spiritual forces to be basically the same as physical forces. I think this is a wonderful thing, which delving into some of the more obscure literature of the Middle Ages has to offer us. Absolutely. Wizard popes of the 11th century, divination by thunder with the venerable bead, and of course these two, and so many more. Listeners, please check out the podcast and video descriptions below to pick up your own copy, because it's a wonderful way to support Father's excellent research, as well as looking at future projects. Father, too, in addition to all of this, something that, and I, to this day, enjoy reading comments online with our first podcast interview, people say, they've commented, "Wow, Father's music is musical ability. The way he plays the piano and has this soulful, powerful, almost an incantatory process when it comes to setting words and poetry, like Byron, to your pieces. We will link to your album and everything else below, but can you just share with us a little bit about your current musical interests and your current musical pieces, projects, anything that you can share would be great?" Yeah, so composing music is part of my role here as Director of Liturgy, so I'm composing music for liturgical use virtually on a weekly basis, but I also love composing instrumental music, primarily for the piano, which is my main instrument, although I also play pipe organ, and recently took up playing electric guitar again, which is something I hadn't done for almost a quarter of a century. The piece which I would like to share with you today is from my album through Moon Coil Media, and it's called A Jude Melancholic, so it is a piece which is expressing a mood of melancholy which is then transformed or sublimated into a sense of transcendental hope, so I hope you enjoy this one. [Music], and I will see you in the next one. [Music], and I will see you in the next one. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Thank you for sharing this piece of music. Listeners, please check out below. Father, this just jumped into my head regarding the themes of melancholy, and especially Catholicism. One of the things I think are, and as someone who was born and raised Catholic, maybe our Protestant brothers and sisters might not resonate with as much, but when it comes to voluntary, expiratory suffering and offering up, especially in the mass, but in day to day, offering up your own individual suffering, your subjective suffering to the objective reality of the cross. I know that this has been a staple of Catholic monasticism for hundreds of years, but can you just talk about, especially now that we've just heard your piece about melancholy? Can you talk about why is it such a powerful thing in Catholicism to unite your suffering, even in little ways and big ways, with that of the objective suffering of Christ? Absolutely. So, you know, this is a very good point. And I think the fact that we've lost this from culture is the reason why there's so much depression and despair today. So, to recognize that suffering is an inevitable component of every human life, no matter who we are and what our circumstances are, there will be some suffering which we encounter in our life. And for a person who doesn't take a spiritual perspective, this is purely meaningless. It's something to be eliminated, but if we can accept it as part of this spiritual reality of a Christian perspective, the sufferings of Christ which are redemptive, but if you don't want to take a Christian perspective, as part of the cosmic reality of suffering, which is one of the things which can't be denied. I mean, every religious tradition from Christianity to Buddhism to Hinduism recognizes that suffering is an inherent part of our human life. But by uniting it to this kind of cosmic or universal suffering, we, in fact, make meaning of it and we can make it a source of strength and inspiration. And I believe, Alex, if you were to look at the great works of art and literature and music in the world, you would find that the majority of them are born from suffering rather than from triumph or elation or so forth. And the trick to not letting it become a negative force, something which depresses us, is to unite it, to thereby make it heroic. And this might seem like an impossible thing to do, but the smallest form of suffering, I don't know, whether it's a headache or having to do something which you would rather not do, or to attend an event which you would rather not attend, or to be patient with a person who tests your patients, to unite this conceptually and spiritually with this heroic, cosmic suffering, to see it as part of the process, of transformation and of transcendental unity. So it's part of the great process of growth. I think this is a wonderful thing. And one of the great things which Catholicism has to offer the world today. That is so powerful, listeners. Whether you're Catholic or not, I hope you appreciate that. Because what great wisdom from Father Robert here about how to literally transmute our own subjective individual suffering to the objective heroism. When you said that, I almost got a flash of J.R.R. Tolkien, right? The great Catholic author and Lord of the Rings, even, uniting it to that. So that is so wonderful, Father. Thank you so much. Father, in addition to everything you have going on and the constellation of projects, I know, and I'm sure the listeners do, you're always working on something. Can you give us maybe some hints or some teasing about what are some of the projects that you're working on right now? Yeah. Yeah. So I could tell you one which has just recently come out. And this is a work called The Theater of Cruelty. And what it is, is it's a translation of a book written shortly after the Protestant Revolution, and it has descriptions of the torches, the horrors that were inflicted upon Catholics during this era. And it was a widely circulated book at the time, but an underground book because of the fact that in the Protestant countries it was, of course, would have been illegal. You would have got yourself executed for it. But it tells details of torture, which have largely been written out of history. So I think that is well worth looking at. So through Census for Daily Impress, I'll send you a link to that one. And apart from that, I'm working on some new musical works at the moment, and I hope to have those floating around soon. So I probably will put them firstly on my own YouTube channel. And you know, from there two days, what will come off it? Oh, excellent. And Census for Daily Im is wonderful. And we will certainly link listeners, check that out below for all of the latest links. Father, as well, I know we have a brief after show for podcast supporters, but as we wrap up the main part of the podcast, in addition to listeners supporting you via Haiti and press and, of course, all of your works that you've authored, are there any other ways that listeners can support the monastery, support you and anything else really you'd like to let listeners know about? Absolutely. So our monastery here in Western Australia, I know some of your listeners are actually here in Western Australia, because I've had a few visit the monastery and tell me that they heard me on your program, what last we spoke. But for those who are further abroad, we have a website, youdoercia.com.au, and we have there a gift shop. We have our own monastery wine, monastery olive oil, whole range of products available, which is fantastic if you can support, and we have here a guest house as well put on retreats and courses, so any of your listeners are very welcome any time they might be in this part of the world. Oh my goodness, absolutely. Listeners, check out the links below that is so wonderful. Father, I know we have a brief after show, but I cannot thank you enough. Benedictine Monk, Priest, Latin Translator, Master Latin Translator, Father Robert Nixon. Thank you so much, Father Robert, just for taking some time and sharing about your latest projects and translations today. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Alex. Thank you for this wonderful opportunity. [music] You