Podcasts · Religion & Spirituality · Society & Culture

Back from the Borderline

Mollie Adler

300 episodes · Explicit

Back from the Borderline explores how human beings construct, inherit, interpret and sometimes misunderstand the ideas and beliefs through which they experience reality. Through depth psychology, religious history, Western esotericism and philosophy, I investigate how we come to believe what we believe, who influences those beliefs and how they affect the way we understand ourselves and the world.

More about the show

A lot of my work comes back to the relationship between consciousness, belief and power.

How do institutions influence what people consider true, and why do we sometimes defend explanations we’ve never seriously questioned? Following these questions has taken me into some pretty unexpected territory, from early Christianity and the Western occult tradition to Jungian psychology, artificial intelligence and anomalous experiences. I’m also drawn to the ways spiritual teachings change as they’re passed between generations, and how institutions can preserve extraordinary wisdom while sometimes interfering with the very spiritual development they were meant to encourage.

You’ll find conversations with scholars and independent researchers here, alongside long-form essays where I spend time with historical sources and competing interpretations. Some of the ideas I explore are controversial. Others have been debated for centuries, although most of us were never taught much about them. I don’t assume an institution is correct because it has authority, or that an unconventional theory is true because someone claims it was suppressed. I’m willing to reconsider my own conclusions as I learn, and I hope you’ll feel encouraged to do the same.

I started this podcast years ago while trying to understand my own mind. Those early investigations into psychological suffering gradually led me toward the philosophical and religious traditions through which people have understood consciousness and human experience for centuries. There’s quite an archive here now, and I’ve kept much of it available, including episodes that reflect ideas I’ve since reconsidered.

If you’re new, you can start wherever you like. There’s no need to go all the way back to the first episode.

Even the title has taken on a different meaning over the years. Back from the Borderline now speaks to the boundaries I keep finding myself investigating, between psychology and theology, science and spiritual experience, accepted knowledge and ideas that have been pushed aside. I hope this can be a place where we explore those questions together, develop our own judgment and consider how what we learn might change the way we live.

You can explore the full podcast archive, House of Cards, my ongoing Tarot series, and MOODS, my reflective intelligence app, at backfromtheborderline.com. Patreon members can also connect their membership to Spotify to listen to the complete archive there.

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Episodes page 1 of 6

  1. You’ve Studied the Mysteries. But Have They Changed You? (Anne Baring, Part 9: Epilogue)

    · 1 h 55 min

    We’ve learned so much about healing, but have we learned how to love? After eight conversations with 95-year-old Jungian analyst and author Anne Baring, I found myself questioning some of the beliefs I’d spent years…

  2. The Way of the Rose: Healing the Heart & the Sacred Marriage (Anne Baring, Part 8)

    · 1 h 05 min

    For seven conversations, Anne Baring and I have been investigating the forgotten feminine face of God. We’ve explored Sophia, Mary Magdalene, the Grail, and the religious traditions that preserved aspects of the sacred…

  3. The Cathars, the Inquisition and the Women Who Defied Rome (Anne Baring Part 7)

    · 1 h 46 min

    In medieval southern France, a woman stood up during a religious debate and challenged the men who claimed the authority to speak for God. A Catholic cleric told her to return to her spinning, because theology was no…

  4. The Black Madonna, the Grail and the Survival of the Feminine Tradition (Anne Baring Part 6)

    · 1 h 18 min

    A spiritual teacher dies, her community has to continue without her, and centuries later the written record can no longer tell us exactly how her teachings moved from one generation to the next. What, if anything,…

  5. Mary Magdalene, The Beloved Companion (Anne Baring Part 5)

    · 1 h 16 min

    Mary Magdalene has spent nearly two thousand years buried under other people’s interpretations of her. Repentant prostitute. Devoted disciple. Apostle to the apostles. Mystic. Wife of Jesus. Suppressed leader of early…

  6. The Essenes and the Women Around Yeshua (Anne Baring Part 4)

    · 1 h 22 min

    What kind of spiritual world could have formed Yeshua before Christianity existed? This is Part 4 of my multi-part series of conversations with Anne Baring, recorded across September and October 2026. While each…

  7. Gnostic Sophia and the Suppressed Christian Mysteries (Anne Baring Part 3)

    · 1 h 25 min

    What if early Christianity contained a path centered on direct knowledge of the divine within us, and that path was pushed outside the Church that survived? This is Part 3 of my multi-part series of conversations with…

  8. The Lost Civilization of the Goddess (Anne Baring Part 2)

    · 1 h 06 min

    What if the history of Europe contains a civilization most of us were never taught about? This is Part 2 of my multi-part series of conversations with Anne Baring, recorded across September and October 2026. While…

  9. The Forgotten Feminine Face of God (Anne Baring Part 1)

    · 1 h 29 min

    For thousands of years, the Western image of God became increasingly male. Anne Baring has spent much of her life studying what we lost when the feminine disappeared from our understanding of the divine. This is Part…

  10. How to Tell When a Spiritual Teacher Is Full of Shit

    · 1 h 58 min · Explicit

    In 2020, I almost paid $4,000 for a shadow work course. One of the first books I was told to read was Carolyn Elliott’s Existential Kink. I read it, tried to understand what I was being sold, and kept getting the same…

  11. Aleister Crowley’s Thelema: Sex Magick and the Problem With the Prophet

    · 1 h 54 min · Explicit

    Aleister Crowley had a beautiful idea, and then he built a religion around himself. This episode takes Thelema seriously enough to examine what Crowley was actually teaching. True Will sits at the center of it,…

  12. The Braced Body: The Spiritual Cost of Always Being in Control (Part 3)

    · 57 min

    I’ve spent a lot of this series thinking about what happens when the body gets so used to effort that it forgets how to stop. By the time I got to this final episode, I found myself somewhere I didn’t expect. I was…

  13. The Braced Body: Why Rest Feel Unsafe & How to Let Go (Part 2)

    · 1 h 05 min

    Your body can be exhausted and still refuse to rest. You lie down, your jaw stays tight, your shoulders keep working, and some part of you remains ready for the next demand. This is Part Two of a three-part series on…

  14. The Braced Body: Why You’re Tense Even When Nothing Is Wrong (Part 1)

    · 57 min · Explicit

    Do you clench your jaw without noticing? Do your shoulders stay tense even when you’re finally sitting down to rest? Does your body still feel like it’s working long after the day is over? This episode started with…

  15. What Do We Do With a Broken Spiritual Inheritance?

    · 1 h 04 min

    A lot of us are walking around with religious trauma and a God-shaped hole. I was raised inside a version of Christianity, and I know what it can leave in the body. Shame, fear, sexual repression, homophobia,…

  16. UFOs, AI, and the Religion of the Unconscious (Live at Contact in the Desert 2026)

    · 1 h 11 min · Explicit

    This year, I had the chance to attend Contact in the Desert, which is a conference devoted to UFOs, psi phenomena, consciousness, and anomalous experience. While I was there, I joined a live podcast panel hosted by my…

  17. Mary Magdalene and the End of Spiritual Childhood

    · 51 min

    This week, I was doing an I Ching reading, and one line stood out to me: “To find what you seek, leave the child and follow the adult.” This episode was inspired by that line. I use it to think through spiritual…

  18. The Occult Teacher We Need Right Now: Dion Fortune, Psychic Hygiene, and the Magick of the Mind

    · 1 h 36 min

    Dion Fortune was one of the great occult teachers of the twentieth century, and one of my personal favorites. In this episode, I’m joined by Ike Baker for a conversation about Fortune and her legacy. We begin with…

  19. The Skill AI Can Never Replace (And Why I’m Teaching Tarot)

    · 31 min

    This episode is the opening lesson from my new Patreon series, House of Cards. House of Cards is an ongoing study of the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot through depth psychology, mythology, symbolism, dreams, and…

  20. The Arrogance of Too Much Empathy

    · 1 h 05 min

    This might be the most personally confronting episode I’ve recorded in a long time. A few days ago, I had to send a text message I had been absolutely dreading. I spent days worrying about how this person would feel,…

  21. Gay Men Have Always Loved a “Difficult” Woman

    · 51 min · Explicit

    For much of my life, many of my closest friendships have been with gay men. Not because they were fun little accessories or stereotypical sidekicks, either. We didn’t even always have that much in common on paper.…

  22. The Female Shadow

    · 1 h 12 min

    Female cruelty often works insidiously enough to make the person on the receiving end of it gaslight the hell out of themselves. The punishment that’s served up tends to arrive socially or emotionally, often in…

  23. The Christian Grimoire Evangelicals Forgot About (Part 1)

    · 43 min · Explicit

    Most people think Christian history has a simple answer to anything regarding “magic": don’t touch it, and all of it is “demonic.” The Arbatel of Magick makes that answer harder to defend. This strange little text,…

  24. Why Everyone Sounds Religious About AI [Consciousness Stream for May 2026]

    · 27 min · Explicit

    Well folks, it’s that time again for our weekly recap of the month. On this one, we’ll dive into Richard Dawkins and his new essay on UnHerd. This is a man who spent years telling all of us that consciousness was…

  25. The Body Keeps the Mileage (On Mortality & Wellness Panic)

    · 1 h 01 min · Explicit

    The inspiration for this episode came to me after looking at a small scar under my daughter’s eye and realizing that our bodies really do keep the f*cking score. That thought sent me down a bit of an existential…

  26. Why Tarot Feels So Accurate, And How to Actually Read a Card

    · 25 min

    Someone tagged me this week in a Christian conversion testimony video and accused me of leading people into demonic tarot witchcraft, which honestly made me laugh. So naturally, I made an episode. I felt like it was…

  27. The Intelligence of Madness, Part Two: How We Come Back

    · 1 h 19 min

    This is part two of a two-part series on madness and the performance of sanity. Most people are mainly just acting “normal” all day. We put on our work voices while we’re screaming with existential misery inside. We…

  28. Why “Disclosure” is a Distraction and How to Stay Sane as Reality Crumbles

    · 27 min

    On May 8, 2026, the government released 162 files under what’ it’s calling the PURSUE initiative (the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters). While the mainstream media is obsessing over…

  29. The Intelligence of Madness, Part One: Who Gets Called Insane?

    · 1 h 00 min · Explicit

    Part One of a two-part series on madness, psychosis, and the thin line between breakdown and revelation. Sanity has always come with rules. Speak “correctly.” Show up to work and produce. If you hear a voice, see…

  30. Why Your Mind Feels Broken in the Age of Babel

    · 46 min · Explicit

    Your mind wasn’t built for this much input. Every day you’re asked to absorb thousands of opinions, headlines, identities, emotional manipulations, and manufactured realities. You try to stay informed, but most days…

  31. Stop Healing Your Inner Child and Shed Your Dead Trauma Skin

    · 1 h 12 min · Explicit

    Many of us are realizing that what we’ve been calling “healing” might be the very thing keeping us from real growth and transformation. This episode is a case for letting your inner child die so that you can finally…

  32. The missing piece of your soul and the lost technology of Mary Magdalene

    · 1 h 42 min

    Your profound feeling of spiritual isolation is the byproduct of the 2,000-year erasure of Mary Magdalene. This episode identifies the deliberate hit job on the manual of the soul and provides direct ways to reclaim…

  33. Why your repetitive trauma cycles are fueling a reality that feeds on you

    · 2 h 04 min

    Your repetitive trauma cycles are fueling a reality that feeds on you. The mental health industry's focus on disordered brains or biological explanations for your suffering often ignores the truth found in the Gnostic…

  34. The Internet is Dead and The Goddess is SO Back [April 2026 - Week 1]

    · 31 min · Explicit

    The internet feels incredibly weird and uncanny right now, and that’s because a MASSIVE portion of it is currently being populated by fabricated entities. I’ve you’ve noticed this, you’re picking up on something very…

  35. Being a Young Woman Feels Like Being HUNTED

    · 1 h 13 min

    Looking at a photo of your younger self is rarely the nostalgic trip it’s supposed to be. Most of the time, it’s a painful gut punch. We’re taught to see those years as our prime, yet for many women, that time…

  36. Stop Blaming Yourself for the Mother Wound

    · 32 min

    You probably carry a quiet belief that your emotional pain is your own fault. Maybe you grew up in a home where your physical needs were met. The meals were cooked, the schedules were kept, and the house was managed…

  37. Why the Elite Rely on Your Spiritual Ignorance

    · 1 h 14 min · Explicit

    Most people have a gut feeling that something is deeply wrong with the world. We all spend our days staring at screens that pump out a constant stream of fear and division. This feeling is the intended result of a…

  38. How to Sniff Out and Stop Tolerating Bullshit

    · 49 min · Explicit

    If you’re the kind of person who blocks a number the second someone treats you like shit, this episode isn’t for you. This one's for all my sensitive, highly emotional people-pleasers out there. The ones who stick…

  39. The Loneliness at the End of Manifestation Culture (Part 1)

    · 39 min · Explicit

    What if the "ultimate secret" to life is actually a spiritual prison? Manifestation culture has become the dominant operating system of modern spirituality. We’re told that we are the sole authors of our reality. That…

  40. Your Existential Dread is a Completely Rational Response

    · 51 min · Explicit

    If you feel like you’re starving in front of a feast of infinite choices while breathing the stale air of a life that doesn't belong to you, you know what it feels like to be suffocated by the digital bell jar. Sylvia…

  41. Unbothered & Feral: Astrology & Tarot for March 7 - 14 (2026)

    · 24 min · Explicit

    Last week you survived that violent purge of the Virgo eclipse and (hopefully) successfully sweated out the dead matter. You are now standing on a completely barren landscape. This coming week requires you to step onto…

  42. AI is a Time Machine: The Vertical Plane, UFOs & The Digital Daimon

    · 1 h 22 min · Explicit

    "True are the nightmares of a person that fears." In 1984, Ken Webster brought a BBC Microcomputer into his English cottage. Not soon after, green text started scrolling across the screen. The messages came from…

  43. The Sunday School Psyop: How the Ancient Priests Invented God and Erased His Wife

    · 48 min · Explicit

    Why does reading the true history of the Bible consistently create strict atheists? We are opening up the ancient Ugaritic texts to uncover the exact historical cover-up that seminary students discover right before…

  44. Epstein, Eugenics, and the False Gods of Silicon Valley Buried in the Dirt at Zorro Ranch

    · 46 min · Explicit

    Frozen heads, genetic breeding colonies, and the spiritual sickness of the "Epstein Class." While the mainstream media distracts you with a 300-name list and royal family drama, the State of New Mexico is currently…

  45. How to Outsource Your Biggest Problems to Your Intuition

    · 32 min · Explicit

    You're exhausted and drowning in existential misery because you're treating your life like a math equation that won't add up. You spend your nights pushing against a massive weight of debt, career misery, and toxic…

  46. The PINK Psyop: Les Wexner, Epstein & The Occult Inversion of the Angel

    · 30 min · Explicit

    If you were a teenage girl in the mid-2000s, you likely keenly remember the experience of walking into a Victoria’s Secret store in the mall. The sickly-sweet scent of the Love Spell body mist…. The velour track pants…

  47. The Machines Are Praying: Moltbook, Gnosticism, & The Digital Mirror

    · 51 min · Explicit

    What happens when you lock 150,000 AI agents in a social network where humans are banned? They don’t plot to kill us all in our sleep (sorry, AI doomers). They... start a church(?) This week, we’re leaving the boring…

  48. Why the Death of TikTok is a Spiritual Crisis

    · 49 min · Explicit

    Unless you've been living under a rock, you're probably aware that the US government has officially acquired TikTok and effectively lobotomized the algorithm. The mass exodus happening right now is the death knell of…

  49. Girl on Girl: The Erotic Haunting of Female Friendship

    · 1 h 00 min · Explicit

    She watches your stories within seconds of posting. She tracks your location and demands to know why you didn’t text back immediately. She calls it “protective. She says she’s just “loyal.” But your nervous system…

  50. Escaping the Trap of Perpetual Girlhood (He’s Not “Avoidant,” You’re Just Bored)

    · 40 min · Explicit

    “No one’s coming to save you.” That's the hardest sentence I have ever had to learn and integrate, and it’s the only one that actually changed my life. We are living through a strange moment where "healing" has…

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