Occult Confessions

Four college students have agreed to participate in a sound experiment designed to push their minds beyond the limits of human experience. Almost immediately, strange messages, inexplicable noises, and uncanny sensations begin to haunt them as the experiment threatens to take over their lives. Are they the victim of an elaborate prank, being tormented by demons, or navigating their way into a high...

John Dee was born in London in 1527 and died in 1608 or 1609 at his home in Mortlake, Surrey. He was a mathematician, astronomer, consultant to explorers, alchemist, translator of angelic language, and amassed one of the most impressive libraries in Europe gathering around three thousand books and another thousand manuscripts. His reputation as an occultist has lasted through the centuries and is...

The alchemists that inspired the myth of Dr. Faustus all shared his reputation for great learning and were accused of trafficking with the devil. In this episode, we trace a kind of family tree from the medieval friar Albertus to the Renaissance abbot Trithemius and his famous students Agrippa and Paracelsus.

Who was Hermes Trismegistus, regarded by the Greeks and Egyptians as the inventor of language, writing, religion, music, astronomy, and wrestling? Who was Hermes Trismegistus author of the eighteen tractates that came to be called the Corpus Hermeticum as well as the Asclepius and the Kore Kosemue? Who was Hermes Trismegistus, who Cicero called the fifth and final of the five incarnations of the G...

The text of the Emerald Tablet can fit on the back of a t-shirt but through the ages experimenters across Europe and the Middle East have puzzled over this spare collection of lines in search of the secret to transmutation. What is the key to the philosopher's gold and how does it relate to the mystery of the soul's incarnation on earth?

Beginning in the 1970s, satanists and occultists of various stripes were accused of abusing children and performing blood sacrifices. In the 1990s, these accusations blended with claims by conspiracy theorists of a vast government effort to manipulate the public. We analyze Cathy O'Brien's account of her time as a CIA sex slave. Why is this story consistently rejected by her fellow conspiracy theo...

Was John Todd really an occultist? The evidence suggests that he was. Why, then, did he invent so many lies about wiccans, druids, and other occultists whose circles he traveled in when we converted to become a fundamentalist preacher? In this episode, we interrogate Todd's theory that H. P. Lovecraft wrote about actual occult practices, compare Todd's career to the "Satan Seller" Mike Warnke, and...

Throughout his life, John Todd moved back and forth between playing the role of a neopagan occultist and a fundamentalist Christian. He argued that he was a "born witch" and leading member of the Illuminati before discovering Christ. He said that the Illuminati worked to actively propagate satanic and occult belief among the American populace through rock music, popular television and movies, and...

In the dark recesses of the history of conspiracy theory, Catholics mistakenly worship the Babylonian fire god and Philistine water god and Lucifer sits on a throne of diamonds at a Masonic lodge in South Carolina. In this episode, we look at some of the modern world’s first anti-occult conspiracies created by nineteenth-century anti-Catholic Scottish minister Alexander Hislop and twentieth-centur...

In the last of our special series on plagues and religion, Rob discusses the ten plagues of Egypt. What hidden meanings exist in the story of the plagues and the way the narrative is structured? Is there any scientific basis for the way the plague narrative unfolds? And why did God harden Pharaoh's heart?

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is one of the most dangerous books of the twentieth century. It inspired pogroms in Russia, Nazis in Germany, and anti-Semitism across the Western world. The Protocols fed a variety of conspiracy theories pulling together religious, occult, and illuminati themes. In this episode, we explore the influence of the Protocols from the last days of the Romanovs to Geo...

Julian of Norwich lived through the black death, ensuing riots, the Western Schism, and the persecution of a variety of heretical movements by the medieval Church. During a near-death experience, Julian had a mystical vision in which she discovered that God is not wrathful but loving and that sin is both necessary and an illusion.

The Rosicrucians began in Renaissance Germany as a secret order that was so secret it didn't have any members. Despite the order's lack of membership, the French pursued alleged Rosicrucians and burned them like witches. New organizations calling themselves Rosicrucian emerged in the eighteenth century to preserve mystery and symbol within a Protestant context. And in the twentieth century, the AM...

In the face of coronavirus or CoVID-19, Rob meets up with Dr. Matt Hatkoff, microbiologist and expert on the plague. Rob and Matt talk about three major pandemics that stretch across human history and compare them to our current situation with corona. Smallpox, the Bubonic Plague, and Cholera have all made significant impacts on human history and culture. What can we learn from history's plagues t...

On 13 October, 1307 France's Knights Templar were summarily arrested in a grand coordinated effort. They were accused of defiling the cross, worshipping false idols, and performing sinful sexual acts. In this episode, we uncover the French King's plot against the Templars, the satanic conspiracy that has dogged their reputation through the centuries, and their ties to the Holy Grail. Also, the Pop...

Nesta Helen Webster is one of the originators of modern Illuminati conspiracy theory. She argued that there was a continuous line of anarchist black magicians running from the Gnostics to the Bogomils to the Knights Templar, medieval witches, Rosicrucians, and Adam Weishaupt's Bavarian Illuminati. Our exploration of Webster starts our ninth series in which we ask whether or not there is a long-sta...

Sherry Shriner ran one of the most infamous internet cults to date. She propagated theories of soul scalping using snakes, celebrity vampires, British royalty crossing animals with people, and the anti-christ. Her views inspired at least one homicide and at least one suicide with the cult leader becoming directly involved with the victims.

From the nineteenth century through World War Two, white colonizers and occupiers sought to convert the people of Papua New Guinea and the islands of Vanuatu and press them into forced labor on plantations. These efforts resulted in mass death. Visions of liberation from the whites and then the Japanese Army took shape in what have come to be called Cargo Cults. Believers gave up working for the o...

Do aliens from outer space bookend human history? Were we planted here on earth by visitors in UFOs and will they come again to bring about an apocalyptic paradigm shift? In this episode, we trace the history of the Raelian movement and the theory that extraterrestrials can account for the events in the Bible as well as ancient mythology.

Did Nikola Tesla, the inventor of alternating current and one of the most important thinkers of the nineteenth-century, create plans for a death ray or particle beam peacemaker that would put an end to all warfare.

In Western New York's "burned over district" a series of religious movements rose up with apocalyptic visions. In this episode, we discuss two post-apocalyptic groups: the Shakers or Shaking Quakers, led by Mother Ann Lee, and the Perfectionists at the Oneida Community led by John Humphrey Noyes. Both believed that Christ's Second Coming had already happened and both argued for a complete overhaul...

The concept of a rapture is a relatively recent idea although a time of evil, destruction, and tribulation is as old as John's Revelation. In this episode, we trace theories of rapture, tribulation, the anti-Christ, and the judgment from John the Revelator to the present day.

Kali is one of the most notorious of the Hindu pantheon. As the unamiable consort of Siva, she needs to be calmed by her husband to keep from destroying the world. Christian missionaries accused her of encouraging human sacrifice, but her real mission was the destruction of the demons that hold humanity back from enlightenment. For this reason, Kali has become a key figure in Tantric worship. What...

Did the Mayan calendar end on December 21, 2012? And if it did, so what? Conspiracy theorists predicted a NASA-inspired plot or grand revelation produced by crystal skulls. New Agers believed that the ancient Mayans were actually extra terrestrials with a plan for a re-harmonization of the earth. But actual Mayans weighed in with their own theories, revealing a deeper message behind the 2012 pheno...

How is Chinese Traditional Medicine a form of spiritual healing? We work our way through the yin and yang theory, organs, disorders, and the divine penetrating illumination as we try and make sense of how and why this ancient practice works for modern patients.