Occult Confessions

Phineas Parkhurst Quimby was one of the first American healers to come up with the idea that disease was a mental phenomenon that could be cured using the mind. Mary Baker Eddy incorporated scripture into the process with her own spiritualized version of this theory. And Therapeutic Touch brought these ideas back into a secular context. In this episode, we discuss the American Mind Cure and Rob gi...

If the demon is the disease then exorcism is the cure. The rite was most popular in the Roman Empire and again during the rise of Protestantism and it persists into the twenty-first century. How did exorcism change from the reign of Constantine to medieval Europe to Anna Ecklund in Iowa in 1928?

From ancient Bablyon to the Occult Revival, occultists have categorized demons and created formulae for their invocation and control. We follow the long thread of this tradition through the Book of Tobit, The Book of Enoch, the Testament of Solomon, and the Lesser Key of Solomon.

At the time the gospels were written, enemies of the early Christians circulated anti-gospels arguing that Jesus was a black magician. In fact, Jesus fell into the category of a divine or holy man who healed through an innate ability. Jesus was one of a host of healers circulating around the Roman Empire during this time period. What made him stand out from the crowd and why did he become the foun...

Terence McKenna was a pioneer of the Psychonaut community--utilizing psychedelic drugs to induce deep explorations on planes of being occupied by mysterious beings. In this episode, we discuss the science and culture of extraterrestrial mushrooms, stoned apes, and Machine Elves.

How does belief shape the power of medicine? Tribal shamans among the Native Americans, Inuit, Hmong, and throughout the world demonstrate effective healing by applying their arts to body, mind, and spirit. We open our series on spiritual healing by considering how and why shamanic spirit healing has worked for thousands of years.

During the Cold War, the CIA and US military endorsed psychic warfare by employing two physicists from the Stanford Research Institute to train a crew of paranormal spies, also known as remote viewers. In this episode, we consider the history of Project Stargate (also known as Gondola Wish, Grillflame, and Starburst) as it locates crashed planes, enters the enemy's mind, and details secret activit...

How did King Arthur, Sir Lancelot, and the Quest for the Holy Grail inspire Dion Fortune's nationwide campaign to protect the British from Nazi psychological, spiritual, and physical conquest during World War Two? In this episode we discuss Fortune, an important inspiration for modern-day Wicca and neo-paganism, and how Arthurian legend informed the magical process she led to repel the Nazis.

Notorious occultist Aleister Crowley engaged in a campaign of anti-British propaganda during World War One, but there is evidence that he may have been doing so in service of the British Government as an undercover agent. This case is bolstered by Crowley's relationship with James Bond author and British Intelligence Officer Ian Fleming during World War Two. In this episode, we ask whether Aleiste...

The White Lotus Society, Red Turbans, Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and "Boxers" were all inspired by mystical visions or held a series of supernatural beliefs that drove them to rebel against the powers that be inside China. In our nod to "Game of Thrones," we analyze both successes and failures in dynastic overthrow from Mongolian emperor Kublai Khan to Cixi, the Dragon Lady.

The Lakota chiefs gathered at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and each spoke their piece about whether or not to send a delegation West to Nevada to meet the messiah. They decided a delegation would go out in late summer or fall 1889 under the leadership of Good Thunder. In 1890, the official delegation return with the opinion that the messiah had, in fact, arrived. Short Bull, who had...

At a trial in late seventeenth-century Livonia, Thiess of Kaltenbrun claimed to be a hound of God, a werewolf who transformed to do battle with witches in hell. In this episode we try and figure out the origins of Thiess's conception of himself as a holy werewolf. We discuss berserkers, wolf warriors, Hungarian shamans, benandanti, and European werewolf lore.

Right wing Christian conspiracy theorists have suggested that Helena Blavatsky's Theosophical Society is secretly controlling the United Nations through an organization called the Lucis Trust and that this is part of a conspiracy to promote Satanic principles around the world. In this episode, we figure out exactly how and why these ideas don't exactly add up and why people choose to believe them.

A few years before she died, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky finished her masterwork, The Secret Doctrine. This remarkable book outlined the creation of the universe and of humanity as well as the spiritual evolution of all beings back into unity with the Absolute.

Was Helena Blavatsky the agent of a secret group of occult adepts or a pawn in a vast, international chess game? Advocating for Indian religious traditions, she did not endear herself to Christian missionaries and this seemed to serve her Masters' purposes. Until they allowed her to fall victim to a reputation-destroying scandal.

In 1879, Helena Blavatsky and Henry Olcott arrived in India to found the international headquarters of the Theosophical Society. In India, Blavatsky performed amazing paranormal feats which became the center of an intercontinental argument about whether or not her occult masters, hidden somewhere in the Himalayas, were genuine.

John King was one of the most powerful spirits to surface in nineteenth-century spiritualist seances. As the father of spirit Katie King, he figured in one of the biggest scandals of the 1870s involving the US Congressman Robert Dale Owen. He was also the familiar spirit of Helena Blavatsky. In this episode, we track the history of spirit materializations and ask whether John King could be the spi...

Olivia leads our discussion about the connection between Christian Gnosticism and the Reptilian Conspiracy by way of David Icke. Why do so many people believe that our reality is a projection coming from a hollow moon orbiting the earth?

The Matamoros Cult was responsible for a series of grisly murders on the Mexican border. Inspired by the Afro-Caribbean tradition of Palo Mayombe, they utilized human body parts as magical talismans to protect themselves from law enforcement. Strangely, their grave sites were mapped out by the serial confessor Henry Lee Lucas, a murderer who claimed to be responsible for killing two hundred people...

Satanism as the source of a popular culture panic includes tales of mass child sacrifice and the cultivation of teenage breeders. The reality has more to do with teenage rebellion and legend trips. The religion comes to us by way of Anton LaVey's Church of Satan and Michael Aquino's Temple of Set, and they define what it means to follow the Left Handed Path which has little if anything to do with...

The swastika, Heinrich Himmler's personal magician, and Adolf Hitler's favorite occult magazine provide our window into the Nazi Party's occult inspiration. What supernatural beliefs helped to shape one of the most reviled movements in history and how does this reflect on the meaning of the occult beyond Hitler's Germany?

In 1909, Aleister Crowley wandered into the desert to complete a thirty-one-part ritual originally designed by Renaissance mage John Dee. While there, he conjured Choronzon, the Dweller of the Threshold and demon of nothingness, and may have gone mad. In this episode, we track Crowley's career from just after the writing of the Book of the Law until his death.

From his first introduction to occult practice to the conjuring of the twelve kings of hell on Loch Ness to the invocation of Egyptian gods in Cairo, we track the history and meaning of Aleister Crowley's often misunderstood Law of Thelema: "do what thou wilt."

Gilles de Rais was the marshal of France, companion-at-arms to the medieval saint Joan of Arc, and responsible for staging a billion-dollar pageant in honor of the miracle at Orleans. He was also tried and convicted for murdering over one hundred children as part of an alchemical ritual to summon a demon and restore the fortune he spent away. But was Lord Marshal de Rais really a demon-conjuring k...

In our first Halloween special, Rob explores Edgar Allan Poe's ideas about the unconscious and the Alchemical Actors perform two Poe classics: "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" and "M.S in a Bottle." We learn how Poe's original audience felt about mesmerism and what it meant to journey into the unfathomable ocean of the mind.