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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

01:14:59

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

01:07:22

11.1: Sex Demons or Succubi and Incubi

Occult Confessions ·

2020/10/09

The Malleus Maleficarum, King James's Demonology, and Ludovico Sinistrari's Demoniality were all central texts for establishing how demons might have sex with humans and to what ends. Who were the Nephilim involved in these unions and how can a supernatural demon fornicate with a natural human? In this episode, we explore the philosophy of the succubus and incubus.

en-US

01:16:45

10.7: Chinese Alchemy

Occult Confessions ·

2020/09/25

Chinese alchemy is focused on the discovery of an elixir of life. Masters sought to become corpse-free, physically spiritualized, or to ascend bodily into heaven. In this episode, we trace the history of the pursuit of this elixir from the ancient Chinese magicians through the dawn of inner alchemy.

en-US

01:21:15

10.6: Occult Art (Interview Special)

Occult Confessions ·

2020/09/11

In our first ever interview-based episode, Olivia has gone around the Western world to interview four artists about how their craft is shaped by occultism. Featured in this episode: performance artist Amy Kingsmill. tattoo and visual artist Henry Hablack, actor and collage artist Nikki Hiller Henderson, and poet Flora Leask.Episode Image: "Guardian" by Henry Hablack

en-US

23:08

10.5: Into the Dark Pool

Occult Confessions ·

2020/09/04

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 higher realm of consciousness? The truth hides deep beneath the surface of the dark pool.

en-US

00:55:53

10.4: John Dee

Occult Confessions ·

2020/08/28

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 perhaps his largest claim to fame today, but it belies his effort late in life to try and distance

en-US

01:11:08

10.3: Faustus and the German Alchemists

Occult Confessions ·

2020/08/14

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.

en-US

01:02:08

10.2: The Legend of Hermes Trismegistus

Occult Confessions ·

2020/07/31

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 Greek god Hermes and tutored the great Egyptian gods Isis and Osiris; who donned the Helm of Hades, a

en-US

00:55:59

10.1: The Emerald Tablet

Occult Confessions ·

2020/07/17

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?

en-US

01:56:28

9.12: CIA Mind Control and Satanic Ritual Abuse

Occult Confessions ·

2020/07/03

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 theorists? Is it possible to read her book as a critique of masculine power and government corruption? In

en-US

01:23:30

9.11: John Todd and the Illuminati Witch Cult (Part Two)

Occult Confessions ·

2020/06/19

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 follow Todd to the mental health facility where he lived out the end of his days.

en-US

01:28:18

9.10: John Todd and the Illuminati Witch Cult (Part One)

Occult Confessions ·

2020/06/05

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 Charles Manson. Why does the Illuminati want to take our guns and what happens in 1980 when they bring

en-US

01:31:05

9.9: Lucifer's Covert Operations

Occult Confessions ·

2020/05/22

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-century American aristocrat Edith Starr Miller, Lady Queenborough.

en-US

244 results

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