5 Great YouTube Channels to Learn About Western Magic

Magic is prevalent in all societies, and has endured for thousands of years.

However, it has unfortunately been a far more contentious subject in the West than in other parts of the world.

For hundreds of years, practicing magic — or simply being accused of practicing magic — meant risking your life in a very real way. For example, common ways to execute a condemned witch during the witch hunts in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America included drowning, hanging or burning. Scholars, philosophers and interested in occult or magical subjects in during the Renaissance chose their words very carefully or hid their research, lest the meet the same fate as poor Giordano Bruno.

Later, magic became a less dangerous subject to pursue societally speaking, but it was considered silly superstition by the majority; in other words, nothing an intelligent or “rational” person would ever take seriously.

Photo by Gabriel Kraus on Unsplash

Although this is definitely changing — in fact, practicing magic has even become trendy #witchesofinstagram — a lot of magical practitioners are still mostly in the closet outside of certain circles, myself included.

Who needs those judgey eyes? Besides, it’s not really anyone’s business. After all, they call it arcane knowledge for a reason.

But if you are interested in magic, whether out of curiosity, from a historical perspective or as a newbie or seasoned practitioner, there is some good news:

Thanks to our dear friend, the Internet, there are lots of fantastic places to learn more about (Western) magic from both scholars and practitioners — as well as endless scores of lousy places, which is what inspired to write this post.

Here are some of my favorite YouTube channels to learn about magic, both from a scholarly and practitioner’s standpoint.

Esoterica

Committed to exploring “the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion,” Esoterica is a channel that specializes in presenting academic scholarship on topics such as alchemy, magic, Kabbalah, mysticism, hermetic philosophy, theosophy, the occult. Dr. Justin Sledge is the brains behind this channel. Although he’s not a magic practitioner himself, he has the academic chops as well as the ability to make even the most obscure and dense occult topics entertaining and easy to understand. Definitiely highly recommeneded.

Angela’s Symposium

Angela’s Symposium is created by Dr. Angela Puca, a university lecturer with a PhD in the Anthropology of Religion. She specializes in witchcraft, magic — especially its philosophical underpinnings and relation to religion — paganism, shamanism and Eastern and Western philosophy. Angela is first and foremost a scholar. I’m not sure if she’s a practitioner herself, although her clothing and jewellery style suggest that she is.

Glitch Bottle

Glitch Bottle is a podcast (i.e. listen only) channel that “uncorks the uncommon with magic, mysticism and the generally misunderstood.” The host Alexander Eth is a Solomonic Magic practitioner, researcher, poet and coffee lover. In this episode, he is talking to Alison Chicosky, who is another well-respected scholar and practitioner.

Rune Soup

Another podcast channel (with occasional video episodes) is Rune Soup, hosted by the Australian magician and a trained shamanic practitioner Gordon White, who also offers a Premium Membership on his website where you can take pre-recorded courses and live courses on various magic-related subjects as well as participate in live Q&As.

I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about Gordon White. I love his podcast and I think he’s an excellent interviewer who bring on a wide variety of interesting guests (here he’s talking to Kaitlin Coppock, who runs the highly regarded Sphere & Sundry). I’ve taken several of his Premium Membership courses and the guy is definitely very through and knowledgeable; however, he tends to go off about geopolitical and economic theories at times that I don’t find particularly interesting or relevant. Still, I’ve learned a lot from him and membership costs only ten dollars a month, so it won’t break the bank. If you’re looking for a community of like-minded individuals to exchange ideas, etc., the price is worth it for the very active forums alone.

Foolish Fish

Run by magic practitioner Denis Poisson, Foolish Fish is a more recent discovery for me, although it’s one of the older channels (from 2016) in this list. Although Denis posts a lot of great how-to, tip and educational videos about magic, one of the main focuses of the channel is reviewing esoteric books. Love the lowkey/low budget but high quality vibe as well as his fantastic accent. He also has a tiered membership scheme on his channel starting at $1.99 a month. In this video, he mentions Lon Milo DuQuette, a much beloved ceremonial magician. I highly recommend his book My Life with the Spirits: The Adventures of a Modern Magician which is an intriguing, spooky, highly entertaining and often hilarious read.

I hope you find these channels as interesting as I do. If you have any more tips on magic-related content you love to watch, please do share in the comments below.