Welcome to Episode 31, “The Oracle of the East Village,” featuring filmmaker, painter, musical ethnographer, and occult magician, Harry Smith (1923-1991). Smith is best known for his influential 6-LP Anthology of American Folk Music, as well as his experimental films and paintings, all of which he designed according to esoteric correspondence systems. Smith also helped document the musical rites of the indigenous Lummi and Kiowa communities, and the religious chants of New York Rabbi Naftali Zvi Margolies Abulafia, as well as the music of The Fugs and Allen Ginsberg. And connecting these luminous branches was a magically rooted trunk, as Smith was a lifelong practitioner of ceremonial magic. Welcome to the unknown body of Americana…