Damien Echols’s wrongful conviction, sentencing, and eventual release as part of the West Memphis Three case is the subject of the HBO documentary Paradise Lost and West of Memphis, a documentary produced by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh. While in prison, Damien was ordained into the Rinzai Zen Buddhist tradition. His books include the New York Times bestseller Life After Death, High Magick, and Angels and Archangels, as well as Ritual: An Essential Grimoire and Yours for Eternity (both with Lorri Davis). Today, he teaches magick and works as a visual artist.
Damien Echols is an author and artist who teaches classes on magick around the country. The story of his wrongful murder conviction was documented in the films Paradise Lost and West of Memphis. With Sounds True, Damien has published the book High Magick and the complementary audio program A Course in High Magick. In this podcast, Sounds True founder Tami Simon speaks with Damien about his forthcoming book, Angels and Archangels,which offers us a practical set of tools for working with these timeless forces for divine wisdom and healing power.
Damien Echols was wrongfully convicted of murder in the infamous “West Memphis Three” case and spent more than 18 years on death row before his exoneration and release. Now he teaches Western ceremonial magick—the same practice he credits with saving his life in prison. With Sounds True, Damien has published the book High Magick and a practice-oriented audio companion, A Course in High Magick. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Damien about magick and how it is meant to “constantly ingest more of divinity.” Damien describes two of the central practices of magick—the Middle Pillar and the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram—and details why they are so foundational to the modality. Damien explains how he first discovered magick while in solitary confinement and details the concept of “will” in relationship to the Buddhist concept of dharma. Finally, Damien and Tami talk about what it means to manifest a “light body” and the overall goal of spiritual liberation through magick. (83 minutes)
Tami’s Takeaway:
Damien Echols is a “current-bearer”—someone who is able to pass to others an experience of boundless light. When I met with Damien in November of 2018 at a launch event for his new book, High Magick, I could tell that something had recently happened to him that had dramatically increased the intensity of this current. In this conversation, he describes how the practices of magick, which he calls “a Western path of enlightenment,” brought him to an experience of ego dissolution, which he describes as “experiencing myself as a small handful of sand that someone threw into a tornado.” The takeaway: an invitation to let go of any feeling of separateness, enter the abyss, and discover the interconnected light that awaits us.
Every person on this earth is born with an entire universe of potential in them. Most people never cultivate the seeds of that potential, so the seeds go to waste and the people go through life wondering what went wrong, or blaming the world for everything that did go wrong.
Magick waters those seeds to make that potential stir, grow, and flower. It accelerates our spiritual and mental development in ways we never could have predicted. Our ability to shape our destiny and the world around us using magick is limited only by our own belief, dedication, and creativity.
The goal of my new book, High Magick, is to provide you with the opportunity to experience the magick that resides within you—within each and every one of us, without exception. These rituals and practices are merely guidelines—a place to begin.
To get you started, here’s a short video where I share a basic magick practice for more healing love.
Once you begin experiencing magick, you will never see life the same way again. You’ll grow increasingly aware of the currents of energy active all around you, and the interactions between energy and the material realm. And you’ll discover that, contrary to what you may have been told, there are no limits.
I’m not here to tell you what to believe, and I’m not here to convert anyone. That’s not my job. My job (if you could call it that) is simply to show you what has worked for me through thick and thin. In that way, I guess you could say it’s my job to help. And my hope is that you’ll find these practices as useful in your life as I have found them to be in mine.
What does it mean to truly see another person—not just their surface, but their soul, their yearning, their infinite dignity?
This week, Tami speaks with David Brooks—acclaimed New York Times columnist, author, and PBS NewsHour commentator—about his remarkable journey from emotional guardedness to what he calls “heart vision.” In this profound interview on Insights at the Edge, David shares the mystical experiences that transformed his understanding of human connection, including a pivotal moment in a New York subway when he suddenly perceived everyone around him as souls in motion.
Join Tami and David to explore:
David’s emotional awakening and the journey from cerebral detachment to human vulnerability
The distinction between diminishers and illuminators—and how we see others
Why attention is the ultimate form of generosity and morality
The difference between heart intelligence and mental intelligence
How perception itself is an act of creation, not passive observation
Practical skills for seeing others deeply: the on/off switch of attention, being a loud listener, and avoiding the topper trap
Why he identifies as a religious rather than a spiritual person
The moral order of the universe and how our yearnings reflect something woven into reality itself
How rupture and repair shape us—and why staying in pain can be necessary for growth
David’s wisdom reminds us that in a world increasingly dominated by data and algorithms, the art of truly seeing another human being remains our most sacred—and most practical—capacity.
Listen now to discover how cultivating the illuminator’s gaze can transform every relationship in your life.
This conversation offers genuine transmission—not just concepts about awakening, but the palpable presence of realized teachers exploring the growing edge of spiritual understanding together. Originally aired on Sounds True One.
What truly matters when we face the end of life? After decades of sitting at the bedside of hundreds of dying people, Frank Ostaseski has distilled the deepest human concerns into two essential questions: Am I loved? Have I loved well?
This week on Insights at the Edge, Tami welcomes Frank Ostaseski—co-founder of America’s first Buddhist hospice, the Zen Hospice Project, founder of the Metta Institute, and author of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully. Frank brings extraordinary wisdom from his pioneering work in compassionate end-of-life care, along with profound personal insights from his own encounters with heart surgery, strokes, and the transformative vulnerability of being “on the other side of the sheets.”
Join Tami and Frank to explore:
The two essential questions that arise when facing death—and what they reveal about living fully now
Why emotional flexibility is the true condition for healing and transformation
How to meet our own fear and pain without abandoning ourselves or others
The practice of “allowing” as a path to both wisdom and compassion
What happens in the dying process: surrender, reconstitution, and coming home
Why Frank is allergic to the notion of a “good death”
The indestructible love that emerges when we keep our hearts open through pain
How to practice dying by paying attention to everyday endings
This conversation is for anyone grappling with loss, change, or the fundamental questions of existence—offering not prescriptive answers, but the profound medicine of honest presence and the recognition that our vulnerability itself is one of our most beautiful human qualities.
This conversation offers genuine transmission—not just concepts about awakening, but the palpable presence of realized teachers exploring the growing edge of spiritual understanding together. Originally aired on Sounds True One.
What if awakening isn’t a single destination but an endless unfolding of reality’s many faces? This week on Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon facilitates a groundbreaking conversation between two of the most profound spiritual teachers of our time: A.H. Almaas (Hameed Ali), founder of the Diamond Approach, and Zen teacher Henry Shukman.
In this rare dialogue, these teachers—meeting for the first time—explore how different wisdom traditions point to distinct dimensions of awakened experience. Rather than claiming all paths lead to the same mountaintop, they celebrate the unique territory each tradition reveals: from the “blazing forth” of creative emptiness to experiences where consciousness itself dissolves, from the recognition that each point contains the entire universe to the discovery that everything is made of love.
Join Tami, Hameed, and Henry to discover:
Why awakening is an endless process rather than a final arrival
The profound difference between thinking and heart-knowing
How to navigate the fear that arises at the threshold of ego dissolution
The role of trust, compassion, and basic trust in profound transformation
What happens when individual consciousness completely ceases
Why nothingness and being are inseparable faces of reality
How grief and catastrophic loss can become doorways to awakening
The Zen teaching of uni-locality—experiencing that one point is everything
Why love may be the most fundamental nature of reality itself
This conversation offers genuine transmission—not just concepts about awakening, but the palpable presence of realized teachers exploring the growing edge of spiritual understanding together. Originally aired on Sounds True One.
