Cruelty, Evil, and the Sacred
A Teaching on the Absence of Love
About this event
No matter how loving, fair, and honest we are, there are those who move in the world with different values and objectives. In 2023, we invited our audience to a dynamic, multicultural teaching and ritual on cruelty and malice, and we’re happy to invite you back to revisit this lively talk.
From abusive kin or partners, spiteful colleagues or neighbors, systemic exploitation, the rough side of the spirit world, or strangers channeling hate—the perennial question remains: what can help us meet hazardous people and forces with discernment, love, and courage?
And what of the cruelties we indulge? Whether from fear, ignorance, or the intoxication of power; what supports healing and realignment with purpose when we’ve acted from malice or with intent to harm?
Our guests for this event were exceptional and included distinguished Iranian-American professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University, Omid Safi. Clementine Morrigan, socialist and agitator for cultural change whose popular zine series, Fucking Magic, was released as a book with Revolutionaries Press in 2025. And Himi Gogo Thule, initiated Sangoma priestess, diviner, and medicine woman from South Africa.
Enjoy this talk on us for a limited time.
If the topic moves you, we have another talk that will be held live in October 2025 called, Respecting Fear. There’s no cost to attend, and it’s happening in advance of our upcoming series, Manipulation, Fear, and Deception. In that six-part series, expect to explore uncomfortable places where “love and light” spirituality often refuses to go. In doing so, uncover deeper truths about yourself, community, and the collective patterns we’re all swimming in as well as antidotes to the harmful patterns where we get stuck.
How can you build the skills to meet malice and real danger with love?
What do traditions of mysticism and ritual arts bring to the topic of evil?
In what ways can reckoning with inner and outer cruelty support your path?
Explore related upcoming live offerings
Manipulation, Fear, and Deception : An Exploration of Courage and How People Change
A six-part course to uncover how manipulation, fear, and deception live in our lives, release shame and avoidance, and learn to meet fear not as an enemy but as a teacher, opening pathways toward greater courage, connection, and wisdom.
Our capacity to choose love in the presence of cruelty is a measure of our courage and character.
— Daniel Foor
Our Panel
Gogo Thule
Gogo has 10 years of practice and indigenous study dedicated to being a bridge to ancestral shamanic ceremonial traditions. Her background is rooted in entheogenic study, grassroots nonprofit work, spiritual life coaching and business administrative experience. As a thought-leader, visionary and storyteller, her words have been featured on The Kraal, Wake Up World, MindBodyGreen and other online publications. Her healing practice is rooted in ancient African cosmologies & spiritual traditions that elevate our consciousness in harmony with nature. She walks the path of a wisdom keeper devoted to preserving and honoring the ancestral way of healing.
Clementine Morrigan
Clementine is a controversial figure, a powerhouse, a writer, and a socialist. She’s been making zines since the year 2000 and is the author of several books that weave magic, sex positivity, leftism and solidarity, trauma healing, and kinder approaches to human culture. She’s one half of the Fucking Cancelled podcast and a vocal advocate for leftist, non-dogmatic, and Earth-honoring alternatives to cancel culture. Her work shines a light into the heart of shame, asking us to lean into our courage and our deep capacity for empathy and compassion. She believes that compassion is both more ethical and more pragmatic than shame.
Omid Safi
Omid is a teacher in the Sufi tradition of radical love, and a professor at Duke University specializing in Islamic spirituality and contemporary thought. A leading Muslim public intellectual, Omid is committed to the intersection of spirituality and social justice. He has published extensively on the foundational sources of Islam and Sufism, and he often appears as an expert on Islam in the New York Times, Newsweek, Washington Post, PBS, NPR, NBC, BBC, CNN and other outlets. His Illuminated Tours have taken more than 1,000 friends from over twenty countries to Turkey and Morocco since 2002.
Daniel Foor
Daniel is a doctor of psychology, experienced ritualist, founder at Ancestral Medicine, and the author of Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing. He is an initiate in the Òrìṣà tradition of Yoruba-speaking West Africa, a practicing Muslim, and has learned from the older ways of his English and German ancestors. Daniel is passionate about training aspiring leaders and change makers in the intersections of cultural healing, animist ethics, and applied ritual arts. He lives with his wife and two daughters near Granada, Spain in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
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