x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

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

01:23:31

14.1: Vril or the Magical Underground Frog People

Occult Confessions ·

2021/05/28

Edward Bulwer-Lytton is one of the most important figures in Victorian occultism who you've probably never heard of, in part because Lord Lytton was a man before his time. He was likely a practicing occultist who invented the occult novel with his book, Zanoni. The concepts of the “dweller on the threshold” as well as the magical power of “vril,” an occult energy like astral fluid or akasa can both be attributed to Bulwer-Lytton’s novels. He also predicted the cataclysmic impact of nuclear power and

en-US

01:06:28

13.8: The Satanic Panic Returns

Occult Confessions ·

2021/05/14

The pizzagate and Qanon conspiracies are the offspring of legends of ritual abuse propagated during the 1980s and 1990s as part of what's come to be called the Satanic Panic. The myth of a secret group of powerful people abusing children goes back millennia but recent themes of elite manipulation and mind control date to the 1970s. In this episode, we complete our history of the false legends of ritual abuse by bringing them up to 2021.

en-US

01:06:27

13.7: Nazi Mind Control

Occult Confessions ·

2021/04/30

Almost immediately after the second world war, the American military initiated a program to collect the Nazis' most promising scientists and bring them to the US in a form of intellectual and technological reparations. Anxious to best the USSR, which was also recruiting among Nazi scientists, the Americans often turned a blind eye to some of the darker atrocities some of these researchers had been implicated in. The Americans and the British adopted rocket scientists, chemists, and, perhaps most

en-US

01:13:52

13.6: The CIA's Original Pin-Up Slave

Occult Confessions ·

2021/04/16

In the 1940s, Candy Jones was a successful model and performed in the South Pacific with the USO in a show that had been written for her. In the 1970s, she married New York midnight radio host Long John Nebel. When she had trouble sleeping, he volunteered to help her by trying out hypnosis. While hypnotized, Jones began to tell an incredible story of being mind controlled by a doctor in Oakland, California and performing covert operations, possibly for the CIA.

en-US

01:19:55

13.5: Michelle Remembers a Satanic Cult

Occult Confessions ·

2021/04/02

In 1980, Michelle Smith and her psychiatrist, Lawrence Pazder, published a book that would shape the culture of the decade to come, lasting into the 1990s. Billed as “the true story of a year-long contest between innocence and Evil,” the book recounted lurid memories of abuse that Michelle had recovered in therapy with Dr. Pazder. Going into a trance-like state, Smith discovered that she had been the victim of systematic abuse at the hands of a satanic group in Victoria, Canada. After bringing her

en-US

00:38:13

13.4: Mystery Magic Theatre: The Girl with the Crab...

Occult Confessions ·

2021/04/01

Who is the girl at the pizza emporium and what's the deal with the tattoo on the back of her neck? James visits "Church Secrets" and Olivia and Bri visit "Get It, Gurlll" on this very special episode.

en-US

01:39:08

13.3: The Manson Myth

Occult Confessions ·

2021/03/19

In 1972, Ed Sanders published one of the earliest investigative accounts of the Manson family in his book "The Family." Sanders argued that the Manson family's murders were part of a pattern of ritual evil that Manson learned from the Process Church of the Final Judgement as well as the Solar Temple of the O. T. O. Both groups successfully sued to have their names removed from subsequent printings of the book. In this episode, we explore the myth that Charles Manson was a New Age Satanist.

en-US

00:59:39

13.2: The Black Mass (Part Two)

Occult Confessions ·

2021/03/05

The second part of our story of the black mass begins with Renaissance and Victorian tales of the witches' sabbath complete with human sacrifice and sex in the woods. We bring our narrative full circle by ending with the anti-Catholic false confession of Maria Monk, who claimed to experience ritual abuse at a nunnery in Montreal.

en-US

00:51:44

13.1 The Black Mass (Part One)

Occult Confessions ·

2021/02/26

In the ancient and medieval world, early Christians, Gnostics, medieval Waldensians and Fraticelli, and European Jews were accused of participating in acts of ritual evil including child murder and illicit sex. The first of our two-part series on the black mass tackles early instances of the false legend of satanic abuse.

en-US

00:51:01

12.6: Future Plagues (Pandemic Special)

Occult Confessions ·

2021/02/19

Rob is joined by microbiologist Dr. Matt Hatkoff and PhD candidate Bryan Delius, whose research focuses on the intersection of disease and environmental change. Together, they discuss CoVID vaccination, the spread of disease from animals to humans, the global impact of human population growth, and the likelihood of another pandemic in our lifetimes.

en-US

01:01:16

12.5 Contemporary Chaos (Interview Special)

Occult Confessions ·

2021/02/12

In this episode, Rob is joined by Luxa Strata from the Lux Occult podcast and Nia Ain, a longtime chaos magician and member of the Illuminates of Thanateros. Together they discuss the influences of Austin Osman Spare and Aleister Crowley on Chaos Magic(k), the various intersections between Chaos Magic(k) and popular culture, how to get started in Chaos Magic(k), and My Little Pony.

en-US

00:57:07

12.4: Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth

Occult Confessions ·

2021/01/29

Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth is perhaps one of the most influential groups in the practice of chaos magic(k). In this episode, we explore the career of its founder, musician Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, trace the basic rites of the Temple, and tackle P-Orridge's theory of occult splinters and samples.

en-US

01:14:59

12.3: The Founders of Chaos Magic(k)

Occult Confessions ·

2021/01/15

Ray Sherwin and Peter Carroll are the founders of the Illuminates of Thanateros and the international occult practice of chaos magic(k). In this episode, we explore their theory and practice as they laid it out in their initial texts, Carrolll's Liber Null and Sherwin's the Book of Results.

en-US

01:04:55

12.2: Discordians and SubGeniuses

Occult Confessions ·

2021/01/01

In the 1960s and 1970s, Gregory Hill and Kerry Thornley founded a religion around the principle of chaos in which everyone was the Pope and anyone could be a Fenderson. In the 1980s, the Church of the SubGenius with their cult of Bob Dobbs followed up on the Discordians' tradition by inventing their own millenarian movement anticipating the arrival of the extraterrestrial Xists. In the second part of our chaos magic series, we follow the history of these two practices.

en-US

01:03:32

12.1: Austin Osman Spare

Occult Confessions ·

2020/12/18

Austin Osman Spare is widely regarded as the spiritual progenitor of chaos magic. He was a modernist artist from the first decades of the twentieth century and a man ahead of his time in many ways. His art, drawing on automatic writing and drawing, predated surrealism by more than a decade and his occult practice--involving sigils and masturbation--inspired a movement that wouldn't coalesce until the 1970s.

en-US

01:15:34

11.6: Night-mares and other nocturnal terrors

Occult Confessions ·

2020/12/04

A visit from the mare is, by all accounts, terrifying. Shortly after falling asleep, you're suddenly stirred awake again except that your body is paralyzed. You can't move. You feel an evil presence approaching your bedside, crawling up beside you, and sitting down on your chest, crushing the breath out of your lungs. Encounters with the mare cross continents and time periods making them a fairly uniform intercultural experience. In this episode, we trace beliefs across cultures and uncover true

en-US

00:40:23

11.5: Wendigos

Occult Confessions ·

2020/11/20

The wendigo is a creature of Canadian First Nation Algonquian folklore; a resident of the forests of Nova Scotia. Like vampires or werewolves, the wendigo had been a human being before it was transformed into a grotesque monster possessed of fantastic spiritual and physical power. In the nineteenth century and possibly before, stories emerged from among the Algonquian tribes of people who became obsessed with consuming human flesh that ultimately transformed them.

en-US

01:01:06

11.4: Djinn

Occult Confessions ·

2020/11/06

In the West, our most common association for the djinn is Aladdin and his wonderful lamp. But this famous djinn is but one of a whole race of fire spirits inhabiting a non-material world that overlaps out own. According to tradition, there good djinn and evil djinn, depending on which have converted to Islam. In this episode we explore Interactions between the djinn and humanity which stretch beyond Arabia and Persia's ancient pagan past into the present day.

en-US

01:10:27

11.3: Satan's Vaccine Conspiracy (Pandemic Special)

Occult Confessions ·

2020/11/03

Why does anyone believe that Bill Gates is an anti-Christ attempting to "mark" the population with a CoVID vaccine? In the special episode, Rob invites microbiologist Dr. Matt Hatkoff back to talk about the surge, the pandemic, vaccines, and conspiracies.

en-US

00:59:38

11.2: Vampires

Occult Confessions ·

2020/10/23

Our modern vampire is most directly descended from Bram Stoker's Dracula, but where did Stoker get his vampire from? The answer is not as easy as Vlad the Impaler. In fact, Vlad doesn't have very much to do with Dracula at all. Our modern vampires are the product of a variety of sources including fiction, legend, a literal vampire epidemic in the 18th Century, and Lord Byron's personal physician.

en-US

236 results

Similar Podcasts

The Old Front Line

Paul Reed

Today In History with The Retrospectors

The Retrospectors

جنود خلدهم التاريخ

ALSUMOOD PODCAST

Film History - Daily

Inception Point Ai

Madonna - Biography Flash

Inception Point Ai