Generous Faith

Series 2 Episode 3: Magic and Mystery

Guests: Dr Shanon Shah and Max Gordon

Generous Faith is a series hosted by Reverend Georgia Ashwell, a podcast that celebrates the curious and the questioning. In these challenging times we’re thinking about how to live a good life - a life which embraces questions and explores a generous way to understand faith, life and the world. Join Georgia and featured guests each month to seek those spaces found between the binaries, spaces where beauty and mystery often dwell. This podcast is produced by St John’s Waterloo in collaboration with Morley Radio.

We begin season 2 with a magical conversation. Is magic evil? Can you believe in God and magic? Is it all the same? Join me, Georgia Ashwell, as I interview two guests, Max Gordon, a tarot reader, astrologer and psychic from the U.S, who has been reading professionally for over thirty years. And Dr Shanon Shah, a Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King's College London (KCL). He conducts academic research on minority religions and alternative spiritualities at the Inform, an educational charity affiliated with KCL.

Together we talk about the binary of faith and magic – why was faith always displayed as good and magic bad. But doesn’t magic occur in the bible? Christianity has at the centre of the faith – the Holy Spirit – could it be that magic and faith are not so polarised. Maybe all magic is from God.