Otherworld - Interview with Jessica Hundley

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

Jessica Hundley is a writer, filmmaker, and creative director whose journalistic work spans music, film, and the arts. She is the creator, author, and series editor of Taschen’s ongoing multivolume project, The Library of Esoterica, an expansive anthology that traces esoteric philosophies, mystical practices, and occult traditions through the visual history of art and media. Each volume delves into a distinct theme, from Tarot to Plant Magick and more, revealing how artists across time have interpreted the unseen. Jack speaks with Jessica about the making of this series, the artists throughout history who have used spiritual channeling in their creative process, and the newest volume in the collection, Spirit Worlds. ⁠Check out our Merch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ For business inquiries contact: [e-mail] If you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your story at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail] To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everybody, Jack here, and before we start today's episode, I have a few announcements and requests. I could use your help on a couple of these, so please listen up. First of all, we recently started a YouTube channel and have been uploading episodes with a really cool visualizer that we made. It would be very helpful to the channel if you could go subscribe. So pause this episode, go to YouTube, subscribe to our channel. on YouTube, we are Otherworld Pod. I'm also going to put a link to it in the description of this episode. So please go subscribe. It'll really help.

Secondly, do you have a problem in your life? A dilemma, perhaps, maybe an issue at work or a difficult relationship, something that you need advice on? And do you want that advice to come from a clairvoyant woman and her friend who is a podcast host? well, you are in luck. Me and Wendy, who I'm sure pretty much everybody knows at this point, are going to be doing a special episode on Patreon, where we listen to people's problems and do our best to offer advice. But in order to do that, we need your help and we need your questions.

So if you have a question that you want me and Wendy to answer, record a voice memo of yourself asking the question and explaining the situation. then email it to us. The email is producer at otherworldpod.com. It does not have to be paranormal in nature. In fact, I'm mostly looking forward to relationship drama, basic life questions, and even silly stuff. So once again, send that in to producer at otherworldpod.com. Record a voice memo of yourself asking the question, explain the situation. And I'm looking forward to this episode. And I can't wait to hear your questions. And if possible, please try to keep the length of these voice memos to a minimum, something reasonable, knowing that we're going to have to listen to all of these, of course. Lastly, we have a very long overdue set of new merch coming very shortly, so stay tuned.

And with that, we can officially begin this week's episode. So once again, subscribe to the YouTube channel and send me and when to your questions. Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This episode is an interview with Jessica Hundley. She's a journalist, filmmaker, and most notably, the creator and editor of the Library of Esoterica. This is a series of books published by Tashin and is an ongoing collection of encyclopedic

volumes that visually chart the histories of esoteric traditions. In my opinion, these are some of the best. modern books about the paranormal. Not only that, they are absolutely stunning and beautifully made. I'm sure many of you listening right now already have at least one of these books, if not all of them. If you don't own one, I guarantee you've probably seen one of them before. They just released their newest book, which is called Spirit Worlds, and I am actually featured in it. Just a small part, but still it's very much an honor to be a part of this incredible book series. Jessica is one of the coolest and most interesting people that I have met in the course of working in this sort of supernatural paranormal industry.

So to speak, I wanted to have her on to talk about the Library of Esoterica, her new book, and also what got her into all of this in the first place. So this is my conversation with Jessica Hundley, and you're listening to Otherworld. All right, welcome to Otherworld. I have joining me, creator and editor of Library of Esoterica, Jessica Hunley, welcome to the show. How are you doing? I am good. Thank you for having me on.

I'm a big fan of your books. I feel I've had these books long before Otherworld. I feel like Library of Esoterica is such a ubiquitous series. If anybody listening is not familiar with these books, I feel like you might secretly know what they are or have seen them because to me, these are books where like, everywhere I go, if I go into somebody's house, I'm likely to see one of these on the shelf or on the coffee table or something like that. You know, they're kind of everywhere.

Yes. How would you explain the Library of Esoterica series? Like, how do you describe the book series itself? Well, first, I like that it's a, that the coven is growing of people who have these books. They are encyclopedias of esoteric philosophies in the disguise of a beautiful art book. So they are talking about esoteric ideas, the paranormal, the occult, channeling divination, plant medicine, the history of the ways we interact with those traditions and practices, but also exploring the way we conceptualize and channel those ideas through art and sculpture and architecture and creativity.

Like I said, I feel like I had one of these books before I even knew what they were. I feel like it just appeared in my life magically. Somebody must have given it to me or something. But it's really cool because it's come full circle. I've, of course, met you since then, and I've obviously started the show. And now I'm in one of the books, your new book spirit world. You are. Yes, a very small part.

I have one page, but it's really cool to be in there. The books, like I said, the sort of coven of people who have the books in their homes and then the amazing contributors and scholars and artists and writers and seekers who are part of every volume is sort of this ever-expanding web that's being woven. And so I'm really happy to have your voice and have you be part of it because my background is culture journalism. And I think that telling stories is so important. It's kind of the most ancient form of connection. And the fact that you have this amazing platform where people are sharing their stories. I think is very much aligned with sort of the ethos behind the books I'm trying to create with Library of Esoterica.

How did you, well, two-prong question. What was the first book? And then how did you end up doing this in the first place? Because I'm familiar with your career. It did not start with the esoteric. Like, what got you into this in the first place? Let's just start with that. Yeah.

Yeah. My career, I started very early on as a music and film journalist, sort of with, I had a zine in the, in the late 80s, early 90s that allowed, at a time when a lot of bands and labels and independent labels were also coming up and were willing to do interviews with tiny zines like mine. What was it called? It was called Mommy and I are One. Okay. Which is actually a Freudian subliminal phrase that Freud would use on his patients that sort of universally connoted a feeling of security. I had a wonderful co-edder, Andy Hunter, who's an amazing, he actually is the founder of

Bookshop.org, the wonderful competitor to Amazon that's trying to get people to buy books from brick and mortar stores instead of from giant warehouses. So bookshop.org, shout out. My zine co-editor, Annie Hunter, founded that. He's amazing. But yeah, I was able to kind of hone my chops as an interviewer and as a journalist very early on through my zine. And from that led to me writing for and being an editor at many magazines

and newspapers over the years. But I would say that it did not start with the occult that I was exploring, but it certainly started with the underground, the independent, the weird, the cult, cult films, independent music, punk, goth. That was sort of my world, which always sort of, you know, tangentially touches, I think, on this core counterculture and underground and sort of, tapping into a deeper lineage in art, I think. Yeah, the books, it's kind of a mix between theory, art, history, and then, of course, like a documentation of the supernatural. Yes.

But were you a believer in this stuff yourself? Was it just something that was interesting to you? Was there an evolution there? I was a believer. And how did that begin? You were, okay. I was. I got my first tarot deck as a kid.

I grew up in the haunted lands of Massachusetts. There was this amazing kind of urban Wiccan shop in this town near my small town that had tarot decks. And I remember getting tarot decks and like mugwort and sort of practice. of practicing my adolescent witchcraft in the woods behind my house. But I had a tarot deck and always was very fascinated by tarot and divination. And so the first book of the series is tarot and the sort of history of tarot, which is this esoteric philosophy and tradition that's been around for at least since the 1100s. So we've been sort of using that tool.

to tap into our own intuition with these sort of archetypes that the cards represents and the symbology for centuries. So I find that totally fascinating that we kind of still resonate with these same kind of archetypes. I also felt very tapped into the other realms. I think maybe a lot of people do as children. I spent a lot of, I was an only child for a long time and I grew up in the middle of nowhere in the woods. I spent a lot of time by myself, a lot of time talking to trees and animals. And I had several invisible friends who creep my parents out to no end. But I remember vividly, you know, having lots of people I was talking to, you know. Were they all working on the zine with you?

This is way earlier, but yeah, I'm still channeling whoever my guides are, right? And then when I was about 14, we moved to a house that was being built actually for us in this kind of like 80s subdivision that we went to go kind of check on the construction. and little bonones to me, my parents had had to sign off on the property, and during construction, the Massachusetts History Museum had to oversee the excavations because it was actually the entire neighborhood was built on a Native American burial ground. Oh, boy. And so, of course, I was completely horrified as a 14-year-old. old and we moved into that house and my parents eventually in the basement built like a

rec room where I spent a lot of my time and hung out with all my friends. I had the TV down there. It was kind of like the teen hang zone and it was literally surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of Native American remains just on the other side of the wall. They excavated several remains when they excavated my basement of the house I lived in. And I had some pretty intense experiences there, which really kind of instilled in me a respect for the other side. And also, you know, in doing the new book in the series of Just Spirit Worlds, which talks a lot about the ways that we ritualize death and kind of honor death through across cultures

and throughout time and sort of brought me right back to the not so honorable way that a 1980s subdivision is built. It was straight out of poltergeist. Yeah, that's something I've learned through the course of the show. we actually have two episodes that sort of remind me of this description of your childhood. One involves a woman on the East Coast who similarly bought a house and was discovering a lot of artifacts in the property. And then I also spoke to somebody who's an archaeologist who essentially told me that

like anywhere they're building all over the country, they're finding stuff. Like, we're lucky if the crews are even paying attention to it. But it's just like very likely that most. malls are being built on top of grave sites of some kind. Yeah, it's horrible. I mean, I don't think that this could have happened now because it was, I mean, my neighborhood literally was on this massive hill, which had been built over, you know, thousands of years and honored as a burial mound. So the Massachusetts Archaeological Society and the History Museum literally were,

there, like, on site to take out whatever was excavated. So it was definitely known. And I don't think, I think now you could never do that. It's, I mean, looking back, I mean, I was horrified at the time as a kid and still am. Yeah, you were a kid. Let's remind that it's just not your house. No. Parents home. My parents were just doing what they thought was, you know, providing. Providing. Yeah. Yeah, no, this was not my home. I never would have, yeah. And so what was happening down there? I want to hear about this. You know, there was always this, it was always very cold down there, no matter what. I mean, we're talking about New England, so it was cold a lot. But the basement was always very cold.

and I definitely felt presences down there and I was a big fan of horror movies I've always been really obsessed with ghosts and with horror movies and I at the time was kind of just I would have my friends over and we would watch movies down there

this VHS days watch horror movies and but we I remember this one incident so distinctly because I think we are watching maybe like police academy. We were watching something really banal and silly. And there was probably about eight of us, including kind of some hardcore punk dudes and like tough, tough guys and jocks. And we were watching this very innocuous 80s comedy.

And the temperature in the temperature in the, the basement dropped significantly within seconds and we could suddenly see our breath. And none of us said anything, you know, police academy or whatever was playing in the background. Everyone's trying to be cool. Silent, silence, ignoring this fact that it got completely. And then my friend said, let's get the fuck out of here. And we all ran upstairs. There was this presence there that was very angry that wanted us out.

I remember that it was so bonding, but at the same time, we didn't talk about it. None of us had said anything until my one friend said, let's get the fuck out, and we all just ran because we were all feeling this entity asking us to get the hell out. And we, I remember years later, I ran into, I think there was probably about eight of us down there. I ran into a friend and I said, do you ever remember that time? And they immediately said that that entity came into your basement and we all ran for our lives. So it was this, it was a very intense shared experience that wasn't really acknowledged, which I think happens a lot in these situations. And looking back, I feel like something was moving through that room

and maybe Hatt was trying to return to where it had been laid to rest and was not, you know, was angry at the sort of aberration that had occurred where a sacred grounds had been occupied by much of teenagers watching police, at me. Yeah. Yeah, I don't blame them. I don't blame them either. Okay, we actually have to take a quick break, but we'll be right back. Did you have any other experiences happen before starting the book series? You know, I am sort of always been open, I would say, receptive. And I think that one of the things about in general being a creative of any kind is that you need to be sort of open and curious and you also, I think, understand that when you are creating, there is a channeling

that happens and a receptivity that happens. And whether you say it's coming from a guide or from source or from a spirit or from a celestial being or an alien or it's still coming from somewhere and is being channeled through you and through your voice and your experiences of course but i think anyone who who writes or paints or makes music there's a or dances or there's a very um obviously there's ideas that that come from a subconscious place that is perhaps connected to another realm. You led perfectly in the next thing I wanted to talk about because Spirit Realms covers this artists

and people throughout history who have claimed to have channeled their artwork through speaking to a spirit or a guide or something like that. Yeah, I mean, there are certain artists who we have featured almost in every book, and I would say they are predominantly the surrealists who were tapping into the subconscious and to dreaming, it was a major art movement that explored the supernatural

and the subconscious pretty directly. And as a result, you have artists like Leonora Carrington or Remedios Varo, Dorothea Tannin, Hila Fland, of course. Sort of like the unsung creator of abstract art. Yes, yes. She was working with a group. She had a group of five women and they were doing, they would come together and sort of channel and do automatic writing and the paintings that we now know her for, which she called her paintings for the future, were all channeled works. And that's part of the reason why she felt like people would not understand them until. now and i i was lucky enough to go to the gougainheim show that was the first big show of her work and her her paintings are massive you know they're like six feet tall by eight feet she had in her journals drawn a vision of how she wanted the works to appear in what she called the spiral temple

And she drew in her journal this spiral temple where the paintings for the future would someday be shown. And it's the Guggenheim. Really? Frank Lloyd Wright was alive when she was alive. But he had not begun work or broken ground. I don't think that they came into any contact. And so in building the Guggenheim, it really was so. epic and that drawing from her journal was at the very start at the bottom and she sort of made your

way up through the levels. Yeah, it was very profound. That's crazy. And what specifically was she channeling? She was very religious, but also studied theosophy and spiritualism. And she was channeling spirits, which she would call spirits or guides. She was doing automatic drawing drawing, which was a process of just sort of letting her hand go where the spirits guided her. So she, and she writes about these paintings coming through her from another place. And this practice of automatic writing, automatic drawing was pretty popular at the time at the turn of the century. I think it's interesting because it really kind of lived, these ideas live side by side, with religious practice.

Some of the really beautiful paintings in the new book also come from Quaker spirit art. The Quakers would channel and create a lot of their work, you know, into these spirit drawings and into furniture and their quilts. All of them were about sort of praying and connecting with what they felt God was telling them to create. Are there any extreme examples of artists who were using channeling or communication with like another being?

Because I mean, it's interesting, like all creativity, you could say all creativity, where does it come from? You know, an idea. It seems natural, but it is kind of strange when you're a person who their job is to create. Creating is different than being creative. Like, it's one thing to be able to take a bunch of existing things and kind of complying. bind or arrange it together, but to invent a completely unique and new idea out of the blue is, it's strange. I guess we don't really think about where that stuff comes from, you know, having a thought, a lightning bolt moment. And when you open that up to considering like,

oh, maybe that could come from somewhere else, yeah, it gets pretty spooky to think about. But are there any artists you could think of who had maybe like a prolonged contact with like a specific entity or really pushing the, the, the, boundaries of summoning something to help them. One of my favorite artists who's being rediscovered only lately and really was not known during her lifetime is this artist, Paulina Peavy, who created all sorts of incredible painting. She also would put on these amazing costumes to kind of, and made all these amazing masks.

and she is super interesting. She's encountered during a seance in the 1930s this spirit. She called La C-A-M-O, L-A-M-O, La C-A-Mo, who she said was from another world. She called him her spirit muse. And she would meet with La C-A-Mo. She first encountered him at a seance. and then would sort of channel him in these trance meetings and ask him to direct her brush.

And she would channel his energy and create these incredible, incredible works of art. And she believed that he was actually an extraterrestrial, not a ghost, but an extraterrestrial alien consciousness. Her work is just mind-blowing. It's really beautiful. We have a few of her pieces in spirit worlds. She was also a psychic. She came out of the spiritualist community. The seance she went to in the 30s was held by a pretty prominent spiritualist.

And yeah, she's really incredible. But I mean, I would say, yes, all art is channeled, right? It's just a question of, if you are calling it that. But one of the things about creating these books and sort of seeing how these ideas are manifested through art is I really think things like astrology or taro or working with plants or connecting with the earth through ritual.

They're all just these tools to kind of tap in and be able to clear that channel, right? And be able to kind of connect to self first and then connect to whatever it is that you're supposed to be offering to the world in your own way. Are you familiar with the work of Alex Colville, I think? That's just reminded me of it. He has a few paintings that, like, there's this famous one where it's like a dog on a bridge, and it looks like a screenshot from a video game.

Yes. But it was painted in the 50s or something like that. It's very strange. There's a few of these paintings that look like low-poly video games from like the early 2000s or something. That's amazing. You know what? It was painted long before. I'm just looking, we're working on the new book right now, which is Mystical Beasts.

And I'm looking through, because that name sounds familiar, we have one of his pieces in our research, which is a horse kind of running on a train track. And it's very a theory. Oh, yeah. Yeah. His work is beautiful. Very ethereal, ghostly. What was your favorite book to work on? I really love, so so far we've done taro, astrology,

witchcraft, plant magic, sacred sites, and spirit worlds. And there'll be at least four more. But I would say plant magic, which I wrote entirely myself, which is about our relationship. to the plants, the tree worlds in myth and religion and ritual. It also is, of course, about the use of plants for consciousness expansion, where, of course, a lot of art is channeled through plant medicine. You know, so much art past and presence has been done through a ceremonial connection to

consciousness expanding plants and cactuses. I mean, you made a whole documentary about musicians who are using Klan Medicine of types to create music, you can say, which is something I recently learned about you. Yeah, this is a bit of a tangent, but we recently discovered that Jessica made a documentary about, like, Doom Metal and Stoner Metal called Such Hawks. Such Hounds, which is a folk song, medieval folk song, but it also is a dead metal. lyric from the band Dead Meadow. I love rock and roll. I would say my first love as far as writing. And I would say that my first love musically was heavy metal, was Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin and, you know, early 70s metal.

And all of that is very occult and magic and, you know, exploring. the worlds of fantasy and does shadow worlds, you know. That's probably how I got into this stuff too if I wanted to be realistic with myself, you know, from music first and then sort of picking up things here and there just from things that bands would reference or I would like see on a poster or something, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's this wonderful kind of history through music of kind of opening the door, right? I mean, you have Jimmy Page living at Alastor Crowley's house and you have psychedelic move, a psychedelic rock which would not exist without lysurgic acid, which is, you know, from a mold, from a fungus, from ergot, from a plant material, a mineral earth-based material.

You know, the mushrooms and the molds and the trees and the cactus have all been being used to channel. for a long time. I didn't mean to distract you from your discussion of the plant magic book by bringing up the documentary. There's a whole section. Yeah, it is all connected. We always start with history. We always end with how these philosophies are incorporated into popular culture.

So, you know, the witchcraft book and the Spirit World's book has horror movies and ghost stories and, you know, Susie Sue has made it in at least. twice to the books and Kate Bush and, you know, how we express these ideas in contemporary culture. And then the last chapters are always how these ideas are expressed and channeled through contemporary art. And, yeah. Were there any moments you could think of where while making any of these books, you found yourself like really getting pulled in, you know? Yeah. I think everybody who does this has had moments where you're like, oh my God, I'm finding the truth, you know? Yes. Yes. Are there any times where you've really, really been pulled in by something?

By pulled in, do you mean frightened? Frightened? That works. Or? You know, we very intuitively react to images that we get. And there were, I would say, for witchcraft and for spirit worlds particularly there were some artifacts there's some there's some that are pretty intense that are it made it in there were a few that felt too charged too potent for us to include just some very ancient artifacts from rome um there's actually a sculpture that is in the Getty Museum that is this terrifying infant sculpture that is just horrifying. I'm going to have to find the name of it. We did not put it in. And it's actually at the Getty. And if you go to the room at the Getty that it's in, you're like, you don't want to get near it.

It's, I need to write a horror film about it because it's a, it's a, it's a, It has a whole crazy history too. If anybody wants to see it, just go to the Gettie and walk around until you get scared. Until you see the scary baby sculpture. Simon of Trent. Simon of Trent. Look up all you listeners prepare to be horrified by Simon of Trent and the story of Simon and Trent, Simon of Trent, which is a sculpture at the Gettie.

Yeah, and the story behind it is quite horrifying as well. Well, there seems to be like paintings that are less horrifying than the sculpture. Yes, the sculpture. There's many paintings, but the sculpture at the Getty of Simon of Trent. It's the whole story of this murdered child is, yeah. Okay, I can see why you didn't keep that in the book. Yeah. Has any weird stuff happened to you while you have worked on the book?

Have you ever freaked yourself out? You know, I can very easily freak myself out at any time before, after, during making these books, before I made these books. I mean, people ask me this stuff too, actually, and you're giving me the same answers that I give, so I totally understand. Yeah.

I am curious, though, if you've had any further experiences outside of the basement, though. I have had, I would say, no, I have had particularly in the last probably 10 years, which I think is something that a lot of people can relate to. I have been very often experiencing celestial UFO, non-human intelligence sightings. Really? My husband and I have a property in the desert and Joshua Tree and Landers, which is... Yes, you do. You live very close to a place I was working for a little bit. Yes, near the Integatron and the Integatron, yes. Both places that were, I mean, the Integratron was ostensibly built on alien technology from plans.

Mm-hmm. And that's a whole other beautiful tangent. Of course. I've done it. episode on it. They've heard it. Yeah. And I mean... Shout out to Salgonda officially credited as an architect. Yes. Yes. Yes. But you've seen stuff out there. For sure. And I mean, movement, stars that are, you know, moving really fast, shooting stars, crazy night sky sightings, orbs, you name it. I also was invited to a private retreat at Esselen. last year, where some of the key sort of declassified military UFO guys were at, and we experienced some visitations during that.

Can you elaborate? Are you allowed to elaborate? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think the whole point of them bringing together the people they did, it was 150 people from all over the world working in spirits, spiritualism, spirits. religious leaders and then scientists and physicists, astrophysicists, neuroscientists, and then sort of leading the whole retreat were these military, ex-military team that is in charge of kind of researching non-human consciousness.

I think one of the reasons they wanted us all together to sort of divulge the declassified information was so that we could talk about it and spread it to our communities in our own ways. And for me, I was like, yeah, no shit, there's aliens. And if you look at any of the art in the books that I'm doing, you know, from cave paintings to plant medicines, you know, non-human consciousness, what does that mean? I mean, there's non-human consciousness all around us. There's trees. There's animals. There's a consciousness to everything, right? And what they believe is that the ships are piloted through consciousness. And so the way that they are trying to bring them closer

and into our orbit is through these remote viewing specialists, Navy SEALs who are trained in telepathy and remote viewing, which is really meditation, you know. And, um, I captured on my phone these blue orbs, which is something that a lot of people who are deep into this research see quite often. And they also feel very much to me like spirit paintings. Oftentimes you can sort of almost make out faces in them, and there are these orbs that move very erratically, blue in color. usually. How far away were these things? I took a picture. It was a full moon. I took a picture

after we had seen a lot of stuff on the horizon, these kind of flashing lights and movement after all meditating with the leader who they called in the military unit, they called him the Summoner, which I thought was such a great name for a heavy metal record. But the Summoner we all meditated with blindfolds on, and then we took the blindfolds off, and there were all sorts of crazy lights in the sky. And Esselin, for those that don't know, is on overlooking the Pacific.

It's this epic sort of cliffside property. Most people would know it from the finale of Mad Men. That's where Don Draper goes. And it's a place where it's been around since the 60s, and a lot of very famous sort of seekers and thinkers and philosophers have taught there or gathered there, like Ram Dass or, you know, sort of early Silicon Valley, you know, tech people were going there to kind of, you know, me and talk about ideas. It's a really powerful place.

Did they ever have podcasters out there to just kind of like work and hang out? I don't know, but let's make that happen. Maybe we should do an other world's library of esoterica retreat there. Please. Please. Let's make it happen. It's an incredible spot. But yeah, so back to the blue orbs. How far were these things?

Where did you see? So they were hovering. So there are these beautiful bathhouses that are a little bit further down the cliff. They are sulfur springs, hot springs. And they were above the ocean, I don't know, not floating. where the bathhouses were, which were half a mile away, quarter mile away, floating above the ocean, moving. And I caught, I caught, I took, so I was taking a photo of the full moon. And I didn't like what my position was because I wasn't getting the moon right.

And I moved over a few feet and took another few photos. And then I looked at the photos. And in the first one, there's no blue one. and then in the second and third, there's one that is moving. It moves, starts to flow up. And when you zoom in on it, there's all these crazy sort of faces in it, which I like to think were like the spirits of, you know, Timothy Leary and Ram Dass and all these sort of powerful energies of people that were on this place. But the summoner said that it was the blue beings, he called. them.

That's really weird. Yeah. My opinion on that stuff bounces and ricochets all over the place. I'm sure that's the same for a lot of people listening to this right now when it gets to the alien stuff. And especially when it comes to government-related military things. Yes. There's probably a bunch of people that hear something like that and think, oh, yeah,

this is all set up to trick these people and spread misinformation. Yeah, well, it was interesting. The real truth. Right. Well, it was interesting because there was a lot of people that reacted in some ways negatively to the ways that the military was talking about this, the military people. And there was a lot, it got very tense, actually. Interesting. In the dialogue.

Really? Yeah, because some people did not like the language that was being used. It was very militaristic. It was very like, you know, harness and capture. And then there was also, but it was fascinating because there was also this incredible, this Reese archaeologist, anthropologist who works with sound recordings and sound as like a feeling frequency. And he's written a ton of books. He's this French, he kind of invented the sound bath.

He's this French musician. and ethnomusicologist. And we ended the retreat. It was five days. We started it with this talk where there was a lot of tension. And we ended it in the head of the military unit, this very hard ex-marine Iraq war vet. We ended it with a sound bath.

And I looked over and he was laying on the floor with like a sari wrapped around his head, like holding hands with the woman who had confronted him at the first meeting. It was like, it was like this, you know, a really interesting group of people who never normally would be together for five days learning from each other. And it really was the ending of Mad Men. Yes, it was. That's actually pretty funny. D'Andreper technically was a veteran. Yeah, exactly.

Yes, he was. That is crazy. Is there any kind of goal that you've had in the process of making these books? What is it that drives you to keep doing these? Because they're quite big and there's quite a lot of them. I guess this is, yeah, kind of a broad question, but one of the last ones I'm going to ask you. What is the series to you and what keeps you doing it?

I brought this idea to Tasha and I had done other books with them, music and film. books, and I'm actually working on some other books with them, some film books right now. And I am so excited that the books have been as successful and popular as they are, because to me, it is this evolving platform for a community, past and present, of voices of, you know, artists from the past, thinkers, scholars from the past. and the present contemporary artists, contemporary architects. It's this community that is growing and growing with each book. The reason that I wanted to be a journalist and a writer

was to share things that I think are beautiful or valuable or cathartic and really be bringing them back and showing them to, a new audience in a new way where they can feel like they are like they're being given a key and they can enter it's not hidden, it's not obscure I'm not the kind of

I love disdgging and getting having, I have a, my husband and I have thousands of records but I've never been the kind of collector that only wants that lost album for myself. I want to find a way to get it reissued. I want to find a way to get a, you know, film restored.

I want it to be shown to a new audience in a new way. And the core ideas behind this books are to be presenting these ideas, which have been made sort of obscure or scary, and be presenting them in a way that feels modern, that feels inclusive, that feels open and excited and kind of allows people in to then go deeper with whatever resonates with. I don't know. I'm a journalist first, and I always say, like, I'm trying to create these books as a way for people to be introduced to these ideas in a non-dogmatic way

and in a way that feels kind of grounded a little bit in the history. And also in sharing them in a journalistic way where there's some objectivity. enthusiasm too. I'm a culture journalist, so I'm writing about these topics because I find them fascinating. But I do think you're doing the same in that it's important to kind of share these ideas and share these stories and, you know, let people take what they need and leave the rest, you know, because I do think curiosity and dialogue is more important than ever now. And, you know, sort of seeking the truth is really everybody's individual path. And I think it's really important to be sharing ideas and stories and histories and the unknown and the paranormal, the spirit realms,

whatever you want to call them, the mysteries that we don't quite understand. A lot of them we have begun to understand. And it's only through curiosity and dialogue. exploration and sort of of a fearlessness and non-judgmental, non-dogmatic way I think is the only way, the only way in.

Well, Jessica, thank you so much for talking to me. Where can people get Spirit Worlds, the newest book from Library of Esoterica? If you go to the Library of Esoterica dot com or you go to our Instagram, the Library of Esoterica, or you sign up for our newsletter,

then you can get any of the books through Toshan, but also through our particular Library of Esoterica affiliate link, of which we give all the money to nonprofits, to different charities and nonprofits. And or you can find it through bookshop.org. And, yeah, they're luckily everywhere around the world, they're in different languages. That's incredible. I have the book myself. I also have your giant Manly P. Hall remake book in my office, which is so big that I need to buy some sort of stand to put it on because I think it would literally break my bookshelf if I put it somewhere. Yes. Manly P. Hall is a final shout out. It's actually the final statement. We have a mission statement at the end of every book, a page. called For the Seekers. That's the same in every book. And it ends with a Manly P. Hall quote. And Manly P. Hall wrote The Secret Teachings of All Ages in 1928, which is what that book is a replica of the original edition. It's out in many different forms. He's a huge inspiration to our series. And the quote is to live in the world without becoming aware of the meaning of the world is like wandering about in a great library. without touching the books.

I think that's a perfect way to end this episode. Jessica, thank you so much for coming on the show and talking to me, and congratulations on the release of your new book. Thank you so much for all you do. And, yeah, I look forward to dreaming up some magic to come with you. Thank you so much, and folks, thank you for listening. Go check out Spirit Worlds and Library of Esoterica. Thank you once again to Jessica Hundley for coming on the show and speaking to me.

Obviously, go check out Spirit Worlds. Go check out the entire series of Library of Esoterica if you haven't already. I have these books. Like I said, they are incredible. Also, do not forget, subscribe to the Other World YouTube channel. It would really help. And of course, like I said, send me and Wendy your questions. I would love to give you advice with Wendy.

We would love to give you advice on whatever is bothering you, paranormal or otherwise. I can't wait to do this. I think it'll be a fun episode, possibly even ongoing series of Patreon episodes. So once again, send us a voice memo with your question or predicament and email it to producer at otherworldpod.com. Once again, thank you to Jessica Hunley. and you've been listening to Otherworld. Otherworld is executive produced

and hosted by myself, Jack Wagner. Our producers are Theo Schaefer, Theo Krantz, Haley Pearson, and Nikki Kate Delgado. Our theme song is by Cobra Man. Our artwork is by Coldassack Studios. Please show us your support by subscribing, leaving a five-star review,

and telling your friends about the show. If you want to hear bonus episodes of Otherworld, you could become a patron at patreon.com slash Otherworld. Our social media is at Otherworld Pod. Thank you to the team at Odyssey, Leah Reese Dennis, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Eric Donnelly, Kate Rose, Colin Gaynor, and Hillary Schuff. Follow and listen to Otherworld now for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

And finally, if you or somebody you know has experienced something paranormal, supernatural, or unexplained, you could send us your stories at Stories at Otherworldpod.com.