Can humans be married to other worldly spirits and have intimate relationships with them? Our guest, Dr. Megan Rose, says the answer is yes! We explore the subject on this edition of The Paranormal Podcast!

You can find Dr. Rose’s book on the subject at Amazon: Spirit Marriage: Intimate Relationships with Otherworldly Beings

This post contains Amazon affiliate links that benefit Jim Harold Media when you make a qualifying purchase. Thank you for your support!

TRANSCRIPT

JIM HAROLD: Can you marry an otherworldly spirit? Our guest says yes.

[intro music]

This is the Paranormal Podcast with Jim Harold.

JIM HAROLD: Welcome to the Paranormal Podcast. I am Jim Harold, and so glad to be with you today. We’ve been doing this show for 17 years; I don’t know if we’ve ever done a show on this subject, and I think it’s fascinating, and I have to be honest, I’m very curious about it. We’re going to learn more about the topic of Spirit Marriage: Intimate Relationships with Otherworldly Beings, and our guest today is Megan Rose, PhD. She is the author of a new book by that title.

Dr. Rose has a doctorate in East-West psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and a master’s degree in religion in society from the Graduate Theological Union. She is an initiated ceremonial magician, a Shakta Tantric practitioner, and a senior seer in the House of Brigh Faery Seership Institute. She serves as an ordained interfaith minister and psycho-spiritual counselor and is the executive director of the Entheosis Institute. Is that right?

MEGAN ROSE: You got it.

JIM HAROLD: Hey, imagine that. She lives in San Francisco, and I’m so glad to have her on the show. Dr. Rose, thank you for joining us today.

MEGAN ROSE: It’s a pleasure to be here, Jim.

JIM HAROLD: So, spirit marriage. Let’s just get that definition out there. When you talk about spirit marriage, exactly what do you mean?

MEGAN ROSE: “Spirit” is the largest umbrella term that I could think of to encompass all the many forms of not-currently-incarnated-in-a-human-form beings that folks could potentially be in contact with, and that includes deities, angels, ancestors, elementals, faery, and on and on and on. I use the term “spirit” not to insinuate that these aren’t real beings – they’re very real – but that they are paranormal. They’re beyond our normal five senses of perception.

And then marriage – again, it’s the biggest catchall term that helps people understand that we’re talking about commitment, we’re talking about bonding, we’re talking about something that is beyond just a kind of spirit guide or a kind of mediumship or channeling contract. And marriage is actually used by a lot of these traditions. In my research, I surveyed transcultural practices of spirit marriage, and the human marriage ceremony is actually used by a lot of these traditions as a way for the bonding to happen.

There are some differences, obviously, from human marriage, but it is this idea that it is a bonded, intimate, committed relationship between a human and an otherworldly or paranormal being.

JIM HAROLD: This is something we don’t hear about as much. Frankly, the fact that I’ve done over 700 episodes of this show – and maybe it’s been broached a time or two, but not really in a full episode talking about somebody writing a book specifically on this, so it’s maybe not the most common path of scholarship. How did you get on this path and start this journey on this topic of these spirit relationships?

MEGAN ROSE: I was having my own experience. I was raised in the Pentecostal faith, Pentecostal Christianity, so out of the womb, I was well-versed or steeped in practices like speaking in tongues or channeling the Holy Spirit, laying on of hands, all these sort of extrasensory, what’s called charismatic practices. So the foundation was already primed for me to be having extraordinary spiritual experiences anyway.

And then as I grew up and became disenchanted with some of the more fundamentalist aspects of Pentecostalism and Christianity, I began to really research and try to understand, what is this ecstatic, embodied, enlivened spirituality that really is rooted in an embodied practice? Our bodies are the vehicles for this kind of contact.

So I went to seminary and I studied it academically in seminary, and then about 10 years after finishing my seminary degree, I started having contact of my own. And this was 20 years ago now when my first contact began, so it was the early days of the internet, and I couldn’t really find anything on this phenomenon. I knew that there was historical and religious precedent for this because I was aware of some of the different origin myths and cosmology myths from different religious traditions. But here I was, having my own experience of a spirit that was asking me to marry it, and I had no idea that this was still happening in contemporary times.

So I began to try to research it, and pretty quickly found that there was not very much out there, like you just said. I decided that being an academic but also being a spiritual practitioner, that was my job. I say I decided, but it was more like the spirits were like, “This is going to be your job now!” That’s what really prompted me to dive in in earnest. I wrote my PhD dissertation on the topic, in which I did some historical analysis of it. Historically, anthropologically, religious, folklore, all these different areas of study.

But what I was really inserted in is: how is it practiced currently? Who are the contemporary practitioners? What are the contemporary traditions that still do this? Why? What’s the purpose? I ended up interviewing about nine different people from a variety of different traditions transculturally, all across the planet, that have this practice as one of their key spiritual technologies.

JIM HAROLD: I want to bring this up because you mentioned growing up with a Pentecostal Christianity group of folks, and I’m pretty familiar with that myself. I grew up kind of in a similar way, almost. I know that a lot of those people would say something like this, and I bet you’ll agree – they’ll say, “Those spirits that people are ‘married’ to, they’re not really spirits. They’re agents of the devil, and they’re deceiving people into thinking they’re having these loving relationships. These demons are pulling their souls down into hell,” essentially. I think that’s what a lot of them would say.

What would you say to that when people are in these relationships with spirits? How can they discern if they’re in a relationship with something good or just something pretending to be good?

MEGAN ROSE: First of all, let’s address the elephant in the room, and that is that Christianity has done a really good job of saying “Our spirits are okay. If you’re talking to Jesus, if you’re talking to the Holy Spirit, if you’re talking to angels or maybe even some saints, that’s cool. But everybody else is evil. Everybody else is wrong. Everybody else is bad.” Let’s call a spade a spade and realize there’s a lot of othering that happens. Not every Christian denomination, not every Christian believes that, but particularly in the Pentecostal, there is a lot of “us versus them,” and that is really rooted in this Western colonialist framework of needing to save, needing to convert, needing to get everybody to buy into this one homogenized religion.

My research and my practice is really rooted in Indigenous and feminist spiritualities and queer spiritualties and really looking at the people that have been othered and saying, no, these groups that have been marginalized have valid, vital, powerful spiritual practices and traditions that have generally been persecuted.

I like to say that spirit marriage is the practice that’s been hidden in plain sight. It never really went away. There’s certainly plenty of examples of Christians who have had various kinds of spirit marriages, which I go into in great depth in my book. But I didn’t focus on the mainstream religion and mainstream religious traditions in my book for precisely that reason, because I really wanted to focus and center on the traditions that have been marginalized and demonized by more mainstream religions.

Having said that, discernment of the spirits is absolutely key. We have to learn and refine our extra senses to be able to assess and understand, what is the spirit that is reaching out to me? What is their agenda? What do they want? Why do they want it? Do I want to work with this spirit? It is one of the cornerstone practices of all occult and esoteric spiritualities: really learning discernment of spirits. And that is an art. That requires discipline, it requires mentors to teach you how to discern spirits, and really rolling up your sleeves and leaning how to get good at it.

For myself, when I was beginning to have these experiences of the spirit drawing near me and eventually asking to marry me, I didn’t just immediately say, “Oh sure. You want to marry me? Grand! Let’s get married.” Just like you would want to get to know a human person that wanted to marry you or was interested in you, it takes time. It takes practice.

In my case, I really felt like I needed mentors who already knew the territory of spirit marriage, and I was working with a psychotherapist, but I found someone who was a transpersonal psychotherapist, who wasn’t going to immediately dismiss these paranormal experiences as internal aspects of myself, but really understood the territory of spiritualism. So I had my checks and balances in place, and I think that’s really key: finding the group, the community, the mentor, the people that are on your team of checks and balances that can help you be really grounded and sane and safe with these practices.

Just because a spirit wants to talk to you or draw near you, doesn’t mean that you necessarily want to be in a relationship with them, just like just because somebody is interesting and pursuing you in the physical realm, doesn’t mean you necessarily want to be in a relationship with them. So you have to take your time, get to know them if you’re not already in a tradition that’s practicing this. And that’s some of the beauty of having a traditional, having a lineage that you’re working with. A lot of those checks and balances are like the banks of the river that hold you or give you a container within which to explore.

JIM HAROLD: The topic is that of spirit marriages, and we’ll be talking with Dr. Megan Rose more about it, and specifically about her own spirit marriage, right after this.

The Paranormal Podcast is brought to you by Framebridge. Framebridge makes it easier and more affordable than ever to frame your favorite things without ever leaving the house. From art prints and diplomas to the photos sitting on your phone, you can Framebridge just about anything. And with Father’s Day around the corner, Framebridge also makes the perfect gift. In fact, select gifts ship next day.

Now let me explain how it works. You just go to Framebridge.com and upload your photo, or they’ll send you packaging to safely mail in your physical pieces. You preview your item online in dozens of frames, styles, and gallery wall layouts, choose your favorite, or get free recommendations from their talented designers. The experts at Framebridge will custom-frame your item and deliver your finished piece directly to your door, ready to hang.

And instead of the hundreds you’d pay at a framing store, well, it’s much more affordable at Framebridge. Their prices start at $39, and all shipping is free. Plus, my listeners will get 15% off their first order at Framebridge.com when they use my code CAMPFIRE. Order online at Framebridge.com or stop by a Framebridge store to work with a designer in person if you’re in New York, D.C., Atlanta, Philly, Boston, or Chicago.

I had them do a pro football jersey of one of my all-time favorite players, kind of a throwback player, and it’s in my basement rec room. I absolutely love it. Also, I’ve decided I’m going to have Dar, for Father’s Day – I’m going to ask, at least – that they do a framing of the picture of Dar and the girls for my office. I think that is going to be so cool.

And I love this idea of creating permanence, because I love digital photos – believe me, I think it’s great; we see those digital photos we took of the girls when they were little, and that’s great. But will they stand the test of time? I don’t know. I would feel much more comfortable if we had a physical representation. Plus, it’s a beautiful thing to display, and something you can easily see on your office desk or hung on the wall of a home. I think it’s a great complement, and I really recommend it. And it’s great for Father’s Day.

Family is so important to dads, and what more kind gesture and touching gesture could there be than to do a family photo or a picture of the kids or something that is meaningful to you as possibly a couple? I just think it’s such a great gift, and I really, really, from experience, can say they do great work, and it’s extremely affordable. So I highly, highly, highly recommend Framebridge.

Get started today. Frame your photos or send someone the perfect gift. Go to Framebridge.com and use promo code CAMPFIRE to save an additional 15% off your first order. Just go to Framebridge.com and use promo code CAMPFIRE. Framebridge.com promo code CAMPFIRE. We thank Framebridge for their support.

Enter to win Jim’s Spooky Studio Book Giveaway. Go to jimharold.com/giveaway for the rules and get yourself entered. Now, back to the Paranormal Podcast.

JIM HAROLD: Welcome back to the Paranormal Podcast. I am Jim Harold. So glad to be with you once again, and we’re having a fascinating conversation – a different conversation, but fascinating nonetheless. It’s on the topic of spirit marriage, and our guest today is Dr. Megan Rose. She has a recent book out called Spirit Marriage: Intimate Relationships with Otherworldly Beings.

I hope I’m correct, but I understand – am I correct? You are in what would be considered a spirit marriage, is that correct?

MEGAN ROSE: Yes, that’s correct.

JIM HAROLD: I think many of us, most of us, whether you’re in an actual legal marriage or a committed relationship with another human, we have a model for how that works. We understand how that works and things like division of labor and one person might take out the garbage and another person one night might wash the dishes. You can kind of get your mind around that.

But spirit marriage might be a little harder for people to understand how something like that works. I’m sure there are many different experiences, very different kinds of spirit marriages, but could you give us a little insight, if you don’t mind, on your spirit marriage and how it works, so we can understand?

MEGAN ROSE: Sure. The being that I have an indwelled relationship with – there’s other terms for marriage. There’s indwelling and merge. I like to say that it’s kind of on the spectrum of paranormal or spirit contact, and it’s more of maybe an advanced practice in that things like mediumship or channeling or having a spirit guide or just spirit contact in general are on this spectrum, and when you get to the point where a spirit is wanting to marry you, which is usually what happens – the spirit will propose either to the individual or to an elder in the tradition, and the elder will bring the request to you to marry the spirit, for various reasons – that is more like you are bonded to that spirit, and usually there is an indwelling or a cohabitation, a sort of co-sharing of consciousness.

One of my mentors, Orion Foxwood, who’s an indwelled faery seer in the House of Brigh Faery Seership – and that’s the name of his spirit wife, Brigh – he says when he closes his eyes, he sees into her world, and when he opens his eyes, she sees into his. Orion’s mentor, RJ Stewart, who was a hereditary Scottish faery seer, says they do things that we can’t, and we do things that they can’t.

So together, we come together to create a symbiosis or what I like to call a co-creative consciousness where – humans, we’re so bound by linear time. Space–time is one of the things that defines incarnation. And they’re not. These otherworldly or paranormal beings have a much more multidimensional perspective, so they can see things that we can’t, but we can make things. We can create things that they can’t.

In my own example, in my own relationship, this book that I wrote was the co-creation between myself and my spirit spouse. As I said earlier, this spirit began to manifest for me, and through various rituals and divinations with mentors, I determined that it was in fact a bona fide contact. So then I began to research on my own what was going on, and then I was shown, I was guided through a series of really powerful dreams, that I actually needed to go back to school, do a PhD, and write on this subject because it was a topic that needed to be out there and discussed more openly.

There are many, many people, highly, highly educated people, that are spirit marriage practitioners. By and large, most folks, unless you’re in very certain small, protected circles, do not feel comfortable or safe talking about this stuff publicly. And in some cases that’s for obvious reasons.

But what I really am hoping to do, particularly as a religious studies scholar, is begin to open up the conversation between these different traditions, between these different practitioners. I’m getting emails all the time from people who are saying, “I thought I was the only one” or “I have a PhD and I have this research part, but I’m also a practitioner scholar like you are and I have this contact, and I’m feeling much more settled and invited and encouraged to be more open about this because of your research.”

For me, the whole research and the opening of this discussion is one of the ways that my beloved, my contact, has worked through me and worked with me.

One brief little story that I’ll share is when I was collecting these stories – I have nine different practitioners that I interview in the book from seven different traditions, and I knew that I needed to collect stories from the African diaspora tradition, Haitian and New Orleans voodoo. I didn’t know anyone in those traditions. As an outsider, as an academic, when you go in to try to talk to somebody, particularly about a very private spiritual practice, you often don’t get access, or you get very veiled and cryptic answers.

I had really sought to talk to people who knew me or knew about me or knew someone that I was referred to so they would trust me enough and understand that I was going in with a lot of respect and a lot of humility, talking to them about this very intimate practice. But I hadn’t found anyone in the voodoo traditions.

And then I had a dream. It was one of those powerful paranormal dreams in which I was in New Orleans and this old Guede, this mambo, came to me and said, “I want to talk to you. I need you to come to New Orleans because I want to talk to you.” And the spirit gave me its name, which was the name of a lwa that I didn’t even know was a lwa at the time. But in the dream, they were like, “Write this name down because you won’t remember any of this dream, but you’ll remember writing this name down.” So I wrote it down, I woke up from the dream, and I was like, “Well, I guess I’ve got to go to New Orleans. How am I going to make that work? I don’t really know anybody in New Orleans.”

So I reached out to some friends of friends that were running a folk magic festival in New Orleans that year and said, “I had this dream. This is the lwa, this is the situation in the dream,” and they put me in contact with a mambo, with a voodoo priestess in New Orleans. She was like, “Oh yes, I know who you need to talk to” and set me up with a few interviews. She said, “If you come to New Orleans, you can interview these people.”

And I know that was the fingerprint, that was the touch of my companion setting that up. And that’s just one story. There have been so many what you would call synchronicities around this project, the book. Even how the book got picked up and published. I hadn’t even finished my dissertation and I had a publisher calling me, wanting to publish this. And that was really phenomenal for me because when I started this research in earnest 10-some odd years ago now and the PhD program, I thought, “Really? I’m going to write about this? Is anybody going to be interested in this?” And even my school was like, “Really? You’re going to write about that?” I was like, “This is what I’m being shown I have to do.”

It was a little bit “if you build it, they will come” kind of moment where I felt like, well, as an academic, it’s an edgy topic to be writing about, particularly when you’re self-disclosing your own practices. But it was pretty clear that that’s what I needed to do. And I will say that by trusting that, by listening to the guidance of that spirit beloved, the roads have been opened. The way has been pretty phenomenally paved for me to bring this material out right now.

JIM HAROLD: I’m going to ask something, and it’s probably going to sound flip, but I don’t mean it flip, in a flippant way. Is there a spirit dating scene? Let’s say that somebody says, “I’m more interested in exploring relationships in spirit world than I am in the person-to-person world.” Is there a way to enter into that and seek out the available spirits? Is that a thing?

MEGAN ROSE: It’s interesting. It really depends on the spirit, their cosmology, and the tradition that you want to work in. I’ll tell you what I tell most people when they say, “I don’t have a spirit that’s asking me to marry it. Can I still do this?”

What I like to say is – and this is really upheld by many different religious traditions that I surveyed – we all have a divine self. We all have a rarified aspect of ourselves that is nested within. We’re like a physical manifestation of that divine presence. Sometimes it’s called the true self. Jung certainly referred to this when he talked about his process of individuation. In the ceremonial orders, it’s called one’s holy guardian angel. In the voodoo tradition, it’s called the matet. In the tantric traditions it’s called the Ishta-deva or Ishta-devata. It’s the chosen deity or the patron deity that you are here as a flavor or an expression of. Each of us has that at our disposal should we choose to step into relationship with it.

So we can search for that. We can look at our own life story and the qualities that we carry. This is where things like astrology and the enneagram can be really useful because we can look at the archetypal beings that we have a lot of resonance with and perhaps find a deity.

And I like to encourage people to start with deity because deities tend to be the “safest,” the most vetted of spirits. They usually have a pretty strong mythology around them, oftentimes living practices or reconstructionist practices. And it depends on the deity; not all deities are benign. There are some fierce deities out there. But we can each begin to reach to that, and at least in that case we know the signatures. Some deities even have a highly developed set of visual cues like cosmograms or iconography or things like that. It’s really not all that different than when Christians talk about having a personal relationship with Jesus.

So we find that being and we begin to cultivate our relationship with them and go through the dating process. Perhaps that being that you’re getting to know and spending time getting to know – some of the devotional aspects of this spiritual technology come to the forefront here – maybe that deity introduces you to another being, or maybe it becomes your beloved. It really depends.

These types of relationships are as varied and unique as human intimate relationships are. There’s no one right or only way that human relationships or human intimacy shows up. But I think starting with the divine self is a good entryway into exploring these types of practices. And I talk a lot more about that in my book.

JIM HAROLD: I want to ask this question, but I want to do so in a way that I’m respectful, and also that we keep it to broadcast standards and so forth. But is romance, whether you’re talking about whomever’s relationship, and people that you talk to, in some or all of these marriages, is there an intimacy? Is there romance? Is there a sex life? Is that all part of it?

MEGAN ROSE: It can be. Eroticism was reported by some of my co-researchers, the people that I interviewed. There’s certainly a precedent for it in the historical and anthropological accounts. I experience it in my own contact. But eroticism with these non-corporeal beings is a really different mechanism than what we’re doing when we’re intimate with our physical human partners.

Intimacy with a human partner is about pleasure or procreation or connection, and although pleasure might be a byproduct of erotic spirit contact, it’s by and large not necessarily the reason that that happens.

Caroline Kenner, the Washington witch doctor that I interviewed, talks about how when these beings – remember, they’re not bound – bound is maybe not the right word. They’re not manifested in a physical form, so their vibration, for lack of a better word, is faster, quicker than ours. When we come into contact with them, they often set off all the bells and whistles in the human nervous system that feels a lot like erotic or sexual contact. That may not be, and generally isn’t, the intention of the spirit. It’s just what our body does when it comes into interface with these things.

The caveat I should say is at least the benevolent ones that we want to be in relationship with. There’s stories and precedent for incubi and succubae and some of the more deleterious entities, and I did not focus my research on that. I focused my research on the spirits that we want to be in committed, bonded relationships with.

So it can feel a lot like eroticism in the body, and certainly we can enjoy that, just like in the sexological circles there are all sorts of things that the human body endogenously does that doesn’t even require external stimuli to bring someone into a state of arousal or exultation. We can feel that feeling looking at a gorgeous sunset or eating a piece of really yummy chocolate or drinking wine or all these sensual things that really bring us into more of an aroused state. All of those things aren’t necessarily the intention – the pleasure isn’t the goal of erotic arousal but it’s like a byproduct.

In any event, it is and can be part of the territory, but going back to what I was saying about Caroline Kenner, Caroline says that when these spirits interface with us in that way, it’s kind of actually like a recalibration or an attunement that’s happening to the human nervous system. Because the byproduct of many of these marriages is the expansion of human consciousness. And we see this down through the historical and anthropological records, that folks who recorded these types of marriages had all sorts of interesting gifts of the spirit that were bestowed upon them. Everything from prophecy to healing to poetry and the ability to craft things in a refined way.

And most commonly just the expansion of one’s extrasensory perception. Like in the yogic schools, the marriage to the deity and the marriage to these extraordinary beings gives rise to the siddhis, these extraordinary powers that the yogis are able to manifest. This kind of deep intimacy with these spirits precipitates that kind of evolution of consciousness.

JIM HAROLD: Something you talk about in the book which I’ve always found fascinating is the concept of automatic writing. How does that come into play with some spirit marriages?

MEGAN ROSE: I used automatic writing quite a bit in the early days of my “getting to know you” phase of connection with my spirit contact. But it wasn’t just like “I’m going to open up and whoever wants to write through me is able to write through me.” It was a very specific, ritualized form of “I’m opening now this one specific channel for this one specific connection and voice to converse with.”

Being a writer, that was something I found really easy. Some folks, automatic writing isn’t their thing, and they’ll find other tools and techniques for communication. But I found automatic writing was extremely useful, particularly when you have maybe a cast of characters or you have maybe more than one spirit that you’re in communication with. In my case, I had my divine self that I was in communication with, but also I had this spirit beloved, and it was really trying to tease out the voice or the touch or the experience of the one versus the other.

So it became useful to have an automatic writing process where I was like, “Okay, now my faery beloved is speaking,” and then open up and see what they had to say, and then, “Okay, now this is a voice from my divine self” and open up and see what they had to say.

JIM HAROLD: Aside from your own spirit – I keep saying “spirit message” it’s just programmed into me – spirit marriage, excuse me. What is one of the favorite ones that you documented and talked to the experiencer about? One of your favorite spirit marriages.

MEGAN ROSE: Oh gosh, they’re all so varied and wonderful. I think the one that I found really powerful was the West African shrine keeper Madronethe. Madronethe is an initiate in the Dagara tradition from Burkina Faso, West Africa. She was a student of Dr. Malidoma Somé, who recently passed. Malidoma had been coming here to the West Coast for a while to establish the spiritual Dagara technologies here in the Bay Area as an outpost; he had an East Coast village, and he was here creating a West Coast village for a number of years.

Madronethe’s husband and herself were initiates of his. Her husband’s actually an elder in that tradition. There were certain shrines that they needed to establish for the village, for the community here, because in the Dagara cosmology, it’s very earth-based and elemental, with many different spirits that have many different functions that uphold the community. So there were some shrines that her husband needed to install, but they couldn’t install those shrines until they had this one shrine installed to Tingan.

Tingan is a spirit in that tradition that is like the masculine energy of earth, and he governs stability and finances and a sense of being grounded and belonging. So you can see why in establishing a community, you really need that sense of financial and grounding stability beneath you before you can do other things. So Malidoma and the husband were scratching their heads, saying, “Who’s going to be called upon to marry the Tingan spirit?” Because to establish a shrine, you need a shrine keeper, and a shrine keeper is essentially the spirit spouse of that spirit.

Malidoma said, “Oh, it’s your wife. She in her professional career is a financial advisor and works with people on their material wealth. She would be a perfect shrine keeper.” So she was actually invited – as I said earlier how this happens – she was invited by the elder in her tradition to step into this marriage with Tingan. But in their tradition, it’s not just this disincarnate spirit; you actually find a physical object. In this case, Tingan manifested best through a tree. So she had to find a tree that was able to host the Tingan spirit and become the Tingan shrine for their community.

She found this big, gorgeous redwood tree, this 200- or 300-year-old redwood tree in the mountains, that became the Tingan shrine. They went through a whole marriage ritual that you can read about in the book, about how they installed the shrine there. Then she became the shrine keeper, and once a week now, I think, she goes and holds ceremony there at the shrine for people to come in their community and work through any issues that they have with scarcity, finances, stability, grounding, all of these different things that Tingan governs.

I think that’s such a practical and beautiful illustration of this African spiritual technology that has been brought to the United States and is really supporting a community of people in their earth-based spiritual practices.

JIM HAROLD: Well, I am certain after this interview, many people are going to be interested in learning more about spirit marriage and the book Spirit Marriage: Intimate Relationships with Otherworldly Beings. Dr. Rose, where can they find out more about the book and all of your work?

MEGAN ROSE: The book’s available pretty much online at all online resellers. If you want to learn more about the book, I have some giveaways on the spiritmarriage.com website, where if you have your own account or experience that you want to share, I have a form on the site there. I’m constantly collecting these stories. I finished my PhD in 2019 and then turned it into a book right away – the book’s just come out – but I’m still collecting more and more stories. [laughs] Because they’re just coming out of the woodwork.

So that’s spiritmarriage.com specifically for the book, and then I have a practice where I teach a course on spirit marriage as well as support people in group coaching programs that are going through this progress and want a community. That is drmeganrose.com.

I try to give a broad enough example in the book where people could go to one of these traditions and receive support if they wanted to go into a specific tradition, but I do have a lot of folks that are working with spirits or beings that don’t really have a specific tradition that they would align with or the spirit would align with. So they come to me, and I’ve created an interdisciplinary community of practitioners. Some practitioners are married to many different spirits cross-pantheon, so they’re not just working in one siloed tradition. They’ve got all these different spirits and a variety of different cosmologies. So I tend to be a little more – hence the “interreligious minister” angle.

JIM HAROLD: Well, I’ve enjoyed our discussion. I’m sure our audience has, too. The book is Spirit Marriage: Intimate Relationships with Otherworldly Beings. Our guest has been Megan Rose, PhD. Dr. Rose, thank you for joining us today.

MEGAN ROSE: Thank you so much, Jim. It’s been a pleasure.

JIM HAROLD: A very interesting Paranormal Podcast indeed. We hope that you enjoyed it, and if you enjoy the shows, please do us a couple of favors.

First, tell a friend about the Paranormal Podcast. I always feel that Paranormal Podcast gets a little bit of, I don’t know, second-class citizen status behind the Campfire because people just love the Campfire. So if you say, “Hey Jim, I love the Campfire, but I also love the Paranormal Podcast,” please tell a friend.

Also, please make sure to go toy our favorite podcast app of choice; make sure that you followed, or you subscribe, whatever verbiage they use, and then rate and review it, too. That helps us a lot because what happens is people see the ratings, they see the reviews – and they’ve got a lot of podcasts to choose from. There’s millions of podcasts these days. But they say, “Ooh, Susie from Paducah said it was great. Joe from New York City said it was fantastic. Maybe I’ll give it a try.” So please, go ahead and rate and review. And that goes for all the shows, but today I’m asking for the Paranormal Podcast because we think sometimes the show gets a little ignored behind the Campfire, and we want to do everything we can to rectify that.

We thank you so much, and we’ll talk to you next time. Have a great week, everybody. Bye-bye.

[outro music]