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PODCAST

Occult Confessions

The Alchemical Actors

Discover the secret history of cults, witches, magicians, conspiracies and the supernatural with occultism scholar Rob C. Thompson. His crew of Alchemical Actors explore life’s mysteries with a blend of research, ritual, and old-fashioned radio drama.

history spirituality

All Episodes

01:24:28

18.6: Neo-Nazi Occultism

Occult Confessions ·

2022/09/23

Savitri Devi, a French-born Greek citizen, took on an Indian name and envisioned the second coming of Adolf Hitler. The Chilean occultist Miguel Serrano sought to create “esoteric Hitlerism” as an archetype of the unconscious and believed that Hitler had survived the Second World War and lived in a secret bunker in Antarctica. Inspired by Devi and Serrano, Wotansvolk established a racist, communal Norse occultism that they brought to prisons across the United States to win converts. The Neo-Nazi

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01:10:26

18.5: Malcolm X

Occult Confessions ·

2022/09/09

Malcolm X was tracked by the FBI since before he converted to Islam. Even after he died his viewing and funeral were both visited with bomb threats. He was widely regarded by people both inside and outside of his community of believers as a dangerous man. But Malcolm X did not carry weapons, he directed no army, and on the day he was assassinated he asked his bodyguards to leave their guns at home. What made Malcolm X dangerous was the revolutionary nature of his speech, the power of his thought,

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01:04:44

18.4: Houdini's Ghost (Interview Special)

Occult Confessions ·

2022/08/26

Rob and Luke are joined by Judas and Magnolia, husband and wife magicians with a research interest in Harry Houdini. Following the death of his mother, Houdini became interested in making contact with the spirits of the dead but was disillusioned by the stage illusions he witnessed popular mediums perform for their audiences. Even Arthur Conan Doyle’s wife couldn’t change his mind about the truth of spirit communication. But he remained obsessed with the topic and performed his own seances right up

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00:59:12

18.3: Falun Gong

Occult Confessions ·

2022/08/12

On April 25, 1999 between ten and sixteen thousand Falun Gong believers, clutching the little blue book of Li Hongzing, gathered outside the Chinese Communist Party's headquarters in Beijing. They stayed from dawn until well after sunset for what was the largest public protest in China since the 1989 democracy movement that resulted in the Tiananmen Square Massacre. For Chinese authorities, Falun Gong or Law Wheel Cultivation was a dangerous “devil cult” worthy of persecution decreed from the very

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01:10:40

18.2: Aum Shinrikyo

Occult Confessions ·

2022/07/29

Panic struck the Tokyo subway on 20 March 1995. Men boarded subway cars with plastic bags and umbrellas, removed the newspaper covering the bags, and punctured them with the sharp tips of the umbrellas releasing sarin gas, a biogological weapon first developed by the Nazis during World War Two, into the underground. Eight of eleven bags were broken open and leaked 159 ounces of liquid sarin onto the cars as they hurtled through the subway system. Twelve people were killed, 1,039 were injured, and

en-US

01:03:42

18.1: Cult Brainwashing

Occult Confessions ·

2022/07/15

Brainwashing has long been used to account for why otherwise reasonable people join religious groups deemed strange or aberrant from the standpoint of mainstream society. In the nineteenth century, Mormons were accused of mesmerizing people into joining them. In the 1970s, parents in the anti-cult movement abducted their own adult children and subjected them to forced “de-programming.” Today, the narrative of an individual or group being “brainwashed” by a charismatic leader persists. But is it

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00:45:32

17.7: Pagan Saints of Mexico

Occult Confessions ·

2022/07/01

For centuries, there was one primary saint Mexicans turned to for protection: the Virgin of Guadalupe. Then, beginning in the 1990s, the popularity of a new saint began to take hold: the skeletal Santa Muerte or Saint Death. The Catholic Virgin of Guadalupe overlapped with an ancient Aztec goddess in ways that blurred the boundary between Christianity and paganism. Similarly, Santa Muerte emerged as a liminal and uncertain figure on the edges of Mexican spirituality.

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01:05:48

17.6: Tituba in Salem

Occult Confessions ·

2022/06/17

In January 1692, Village minister Samuel Parris's Indian slave, Tituba, reported seeing his nine-year-old daughter, Betty, and eleven-year-old niece, Abigail, acting strangely. Parris was fully invested in the notion of a satanic conspiracy and beat Tituba to get her to confess to witchcraft. It's likely that much of what the magistrates drew out of Tituba in court can be traced back to Parris. Although Salem hung many for witches in the witch trials, Tituba managed to save herself by cleverly

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00:57:33:36

17.5: The Tainos and Columbus

Occult Confessions ·

2022/06/03

The celebration of Columbus day had started among Italian Americans in San Francisco and became a national holiday in 1937. Recently, indigenous people and their allies have requested changing the celebration of Columbus Day to the celebration of Indigenous Peoples' Day. While this is, in part, an effort to recognize the place of Native people in America's history and culture, it is also a reaction against Columbus who, detractors say, does not deserve his own holiday. For them, Columbus is a

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00:56:10

17.4: The Great Witch Hunt

Occult Confessions ·

2022/05/20

The legend of the witch that spread during the three centuries of witch hunting and lasted through the Renaissance began with the devil. A woman or man (but usually a woman) who was down on their luck would suddenly find themselves in the company of the Prince of Darkness. Great gatherings of witches would take place on a sabbat and witches had to travel great distances to reach it, flying on a ram, goat, pig, ox, black horse, stick, shovel, spit, or the iconic broomstick. Witches who missed the

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00:52:26

17.3: The Baltic Crusades

Occult Confessions ·

2022/05/06

When we think of crusades, images of the Knights Templar riding into battle against their Islamic foes in the Holy Land spring to mind. But there was another medieval crusade against non-believers, in this case pagans, held in Scandinavia in the same time period. How did the Church arrive at the conclusion that it had no choice but to forcibly convert these Baltic heathens? Some monarchs were anxious to convert for the political advantage it gave them, but others like the Swedish Queen Sigrid the

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00:53:35

17.2: The Pope and the Barbarians

Occult Confessions ·

2022/04/22

In the first millennium, Pope Gregory the Great understood humanity to be blind, cold, and lost since the fall of Adam, drawn to materialism and false gods and religions. With humility, humans who subjected themselves to God's divine will and grace could learn to live righteously and channel God's higher purposes to their fellow human beings. Gregory's vision of history was one of the species' gradual movement closer to god. The three stages of our collective spiritual development were paganism then

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01:10:28

17.1: Constantine

Occult Confessions ·

2022/04/08

Constantine was the first Christian emperor of Rome and established Christianity as a state religion for the first time. Constantine certainly knew about Christianity and was already well on his way to a conversion for personal and political reasons before ascending to the throne. He was a fan of the Christians and saw value in aligning his reign with their God. But his concept of the Christian God may have been based, at least in part, on the Syrain worship of a rock that fell out of the sky.

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01:01:30

16.8: Secret Clones

Occult Confessions ·

2022/03/25

Was Paul McCartney replaced by a doppelganger in 1968? Was Britney Spears replaced by a clone in 1998 or Eminem in 2006? Conspiracy theorists suggest the existence of underground military laboratories where governments and corporations produce clones for various uses, including, apparently, pop music. Have some celebrities been replaced by secret clones? Could you be replaced by your own clone? Find out in this episode.

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00:52:10

16.7: Ukraine's Witches and Demons

Occult Confessions ·

2022/03/11

Nikolai Gogol, considered one of the greatest writers in Russian literature, was born in Ukraine and wrote his first set of stories based on Ukrainian folklore. In this episode, we explore Gogol's witches and demons and discover a treasure trove of Ukrainian folk beliefs along the way. Please donate to https://www.pah.org.pl/en/

en-US

01:07:34

16.6: Parallel Universes

Occult Confessions ·

2022/03/04

The cosmic and quantum worlds are full of mysteries. It's possible that our universe is, in fact, part of a vast multiverse stretching into unknown spaces and times. It's also possible that our universe is one of uncountable universes occupying the exact same space. In this episode, we dip our toes back into the weird overlapping worlds of the quantum and the cosmic in search of parallel universes.

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01:03:33

16.5: Ghost Photographs and Auras

Occult Confessions ·

2022/02/18

Is it possible to take a photograph of the soul? While modern observers often laugh at the so-called spirit photographs taken by William Mumler or the Crewe Circle of William Hope, it is harder to scoff in the face of kerlian photographs of human auras, first discovered by Baron Karl von Reichenbach. Still more challenging are the claims made by French doctor Hippolyte Baraduc who photographed his wife’s spirit as she died.

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01:23:44

16.4: Phantasms of the Living

Occult Confessions ·

2022/02/04

In 1886, Edmund Gurney, Frederic Myers, and Frank Podmore collected and edited over a thousand pages of cases of encounters with these phantoms. As a person was dying or about to get into a carriage accident, suddenly they would appear to a friend the next house over or maybe a thousand miles away. Stories of these phantasmic encounters were carefully researched and verified as far as the authors were able, and when verification was incomplete or impossible they noted it before sharing the

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00:50:26

16.3: Tulpas

Occult Confessions ·

2022/01/21

The tulpa has become a staple of Western popular culture and has even taken a role in New Age occultism through the practice of tulpamancers. Tulpas play a prominent role in David Lynch's Twin Peaks series, appear in the X-Files, and bronies—adult male fans of My Little Pony—have even conjured their own little pony tulpas. The Western tulpa is a kind of imaginary friend brought to life. If it gathers enough of its creator's energy, the creature can, like a golem, take on a life of its own. Much of

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00:34:08

16.2: Omicron and on (Pandemic Special)

Occult Confessions ·

2022/01/14

Rob is joined by our resident pandemic expert Dr. Matt Hatkoff to discuss recent developments surrounding CoVID and the Omicron variant.

en-US

236 results

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