My Story

Hello there, I am Angelo. As I sit here to write a detailed “about me” biography for you to get to know me better, I ask myself, “How did I get here?” By “here,” I mean becoming the person I am with seemingly disjointed interests. Currently, I am actively writing about ancient Greek history and religion. Before this, I started my career focusing on tarot and esotericism. Odd, you may think.

While these two things seem like they don’t connect, divination and history, deep down, these two paths I lead do have a common core in which they tie them together: my fascination with time. What is divination but a means to inquire about the future and history with the past? Both paths also overlap with the present. Understanding our past through historical research informs our present. Divination focuses not only on the future but also on attempting to understand the present better. Both explore the unknowns. Both history and divination try to make sense of what we cannot experience directly ourselves but try to understand through “signs” or “sources.”

That is the best explanation for how I got to where I am today. My fascination with time is what led me to explore and learn. But where did this fascination with time come from? It originates (I believe) with my father, who himself was interested in the ancient world. He loved to read Thucydides. He was the one who instilled in me a love for the ancient Greek world from a young age. Before his untimely passing, while I was a child, I recall a documentary (on VHS!) about ancient Greece he would play for me on TV. I was mesmerized by the beautiful reconstructions of the ruins that were shown. How splendid they were! I was hooked.

Another memory I have that stands out as influential was the time when we were in Greece one summer. We were standing on a hill, and he pointed over to the large mountain in the distance (Mount Erymanthos) and said, “That is where Herakles wrestled the boar.” The wrestling of the Erymanthian Boar was Herakles’ fourth labor. I look back at these memories with joy and sadness. Joy for knowing he had taken the effort to show me these things and pass on what must have been his own passion for Hellenism to me. Sadness for all the lost memories I’d never have and lost teachings I never learned from him.

As I grew older, roughly middle school, I became an avid watcher of the History Channel. This was back when it was still a decent channel to watch. I watched all the programs that were related to any biblical and religion. That is where I learned about Gnosticism and thus my exploration into alternative religions and the history of religion itself.

I also found the tarot while in middle school. Like many teenagers seeking power and control over our uncontrollable lives, I peeked into witchcraft and magick. I didn’t practice much; I was mostly just in it for the candles.

The tarot seemed like the perfect fit for me; it overlapped many interests I had at the time. I took to Tarot like a fish to water. The Tarot is a complete package of art history, religious symbology, and esoteric knowledge. It encapsulates all the things that fascinated me then and still today.

As I came into early adulthood, my academic interests began to solidify. At the end of that journey, I would complete a BA in Religious Studies and an MA in Ancient History. While working on my graduate degree, I embraced polytheism full-heartedly. It felt like I had arrived at my final destination, a homecoming of sorts. This arrival ‘home’ - back to Hellenic religion, through the path I took, felt like taking the long way home.

This period was the most educational of all, I must say. I started my MA program, went deep into both the esoteric and exoteric sides of the Hellenic tradition, began a blog on Patheos, became appalled by many things I encountered with the online Pagan world, ended my blog on Patheos, finished my MA, relaunched my blog and started a podcast on Substack.

So, this is, in short, who I am and how I got here – a historian and diviner. A person deeply in love with Hellenism and the Mysteries. An explorer of time.