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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

01:00:06

20.13: Requesting the Commodore

Occult Confessions ·

2023/08/11

We received no requests for L. Ron Hubbard, but Rob became fascinated by his role in Jack Parsons' story and decided to do a deep dive on dianetics-inventing, sci-fi-writing religion founder. Resources for this episode include John Atak's "A Piece of Blue Sky" and Bent Corydon's "L. Ron Hubbard: Mystic or Messiah."

en-US

01:30:37

20.12: Leaving a Gnostic Cult (Interview Special)

Occult Confessions ·

2023/07/28

Lynn Short was a member of a gnostic group she now describes as a cult. In our interview, Short tells us about how she developed internal sexual and psychological controls that became damaging to live with and how scandals within the organization led her to become an apostate. What are the limits of religious anti-materialism and how does a narrow conception of religion lead to deep spiritual dissatisfaction?

en-US

00:56:56

20.11: The Philosophy of the Left Hand Path...

Occult Confessions ·

2023/07/14

Shea Bile talks about his experience creating occult groups in San Francisco and Belgium and discusses his new book about the intersection between Neitzsche and occultism. How has the German existentialist been misunderstood and how does he illuminate a path for left hand and satanist occultism?

en-US

01:11:01

20.10: Take a Strange Ride

Occult Confessions ·

2023/06/30

Please allow us to introduce to you the newest podcast from the Alchemical Actors. This is our first full episode and one of two parts about Walt Disney's vision for a city of the future. For more deep dives into the weirder side of popular culture, follow us wherever you're listening to Occult Confessions. Don't see Strange Ride? Let us know.

en-US

01:00:16

20.9: The Poughkeepsie Seer

Occult Confessions ·

2023/06/30

A few years before the middle of the nineteenth century in Poughkeepsie, New York, a seventeen-year-old boy sat down, closed his eyes, and dictated a book that detailed the formation of the cosmos more than a century before NASA would send out its rovers, laid out a theory of the transmutation of species several years before Darwin would publish his theory of evolution, and advanced a strong and sometimes dismissive criticism of Christianity at a time when Protestantism was a dominant cultural

en-US

01:06:44

20.8: Eliphas Levi

Occult Confessions ·

2023/06/16

Eliphas Levi, who left the priesthood to pursue a life in magic, is a seminal figure in the development of nineteenth-century occultism. He carried forward largely forgotten ideas from the Renaissance and brought together the worlds of Kabbalah and Tarot. Many students sought him out and contemporary occultism would not have been the same without his influence.

en-US

01:21:16

20.7: Sex, Marriage, and Ida Craddock

Occult Confessions ·

2023/06/02

Ida Craddock was an occult sex reformer who wrote about how married couples could spiritualize their unions, giving them control over pregnancy and the right to choose when they had their children. She claimed that she herself had married a spirit or angel from the non-physical realm and that such unions were common in the history of mysticism and religion. Craddock would be persecuted by notorious moralizer, Anthony Comstock, who would try and fail to purge Craddock’s work from the occult

en-US

00:59:12

20.6: Grigori Rasputin (Part Two)

Occult Confessions ·

2023/05/19

In the second half of our conversation about Rasputin, the infamous magician meets his end. How did Rasputin become such a controversial figure in Russian politics. And how many tries did it take to bring down the notorious starets?

en-US

00:52:20

20.5: Grigori Rasputin (Part One)

Occult Confessions ·

2023/05/05

The biography of Grigori Rasputin is hotly contested and frequently disputed. Did he perform supernatural feats? How much influence did he have over the tsar? Was he responsible for the downfall of the Russian monarchy? Drawing on scholars and first hand witnesses to Rasputin’s life, we attempt to cobble together a picture that is as true to the man as possible.

en-US

00:59:46

20.4: The Brotherhood of Saturn

Occult Confessions ·

2023/04/21

In the first half of the twentieth century, a Luciferian order of German occultists formed to cross the threshold, practice sex magic, and achieve a form of self-deification. Like many occult groups of the same time period, they claimed to have an ancient origin stretching back to ancient Rome by way of a secret quasi-Rosicrucian group who worshiped Wotan during the period of the Renaissance. This was the Brotherhood of Saturn, created by the occult bookshop owner and writer Gregor Gregorius.

en-US

00:50:10

20.3: Jack Parsons (Part Two)

Occult Confessions ·

2023/04/07

Parsons’ occult experimentation became an enormous financial and emotional liability when L. Ron Hubbard ran off with Parsons’ paramour, Betty, and all of Parsons’ savings. In this episode, Parsons attempts to recover his losses, writes a series of sometimes good and sometimes bad magical treatises, and meets his untimely end while mixing chemicals for a Hollywood movie.

en-US

00:28:43

20.2: The Eleventh Seal or the Rabbit and the Rooster...

Occult Confessions ·

2023/04/01

Are the Alchemical Actors a “cult that couldn’t cut it” or was Rob’s May 2023 retreat merely a creative exercise in occult hijinks? Judge for yourself on this special episode.

en-US

01:04:32

20.1: Jack Parsons (Part One)

Occult Confessions ·

2023/03/24

Jack Parsons was one of the world’s first rocket scientists, inventing an early version of the same fuel that was used to carry humans to the moon without ever having earned a formal degree. Parsons was almost entirely self-taught. Obsessive about rockets, he often took great risks in his experimentation with the explosives that would eventually take his life. Parsons was similarly voracious and impetuous in his study of occultism. He fancied himself a black magician, earned Aleister Crowley’s

en-US

00:50:04

19.14: Gay and/or Christian (Interview Special Part Two)

Occult Confessions ·

2023/03/17

Luke is joined by a panel of occult confessions listeners to discuss their experiences at the intersection of sexuality and Christianity. Together, they address whether it's possible to be gay and Christian today.

en-US

00:50:00

19.13: Gay and/or Christian (Interview Special Part One)

Occult Confessions ·

2023/03/03

In this special episode, Rob sits down with Jacob Wheatley, one of our founding alchemical actors, to discuss their experience with conversion therapy as a gay teenager growing up in a Christian household. Jacob's story reveals the pain caused by these methods and Jacob tells us how they convinced their conversion therapist that conversion therapy doesn't work.

en-US

00:49:50

19.12: Charles Leadbetter

Occult Confessions ·

2023/02/17

Charles Leadbetter was one of the Blavatsky-trained second generation of theosophists and a frequent collaborator with Annie Besant. Leadbetter believed in reincarnation and his ability to recall past lives including an experience meeting Pythagoras in 504 BCE. Leadbetter claimed to have spent the next two-thousand-three-hundred years since meeting Pythagoras in the “heaven world” before being incarnated back on earth. While born without any memory of the heaven world, the lessons he learned there

en-US

01:16:40

19.11: The Urantia Book

Occult Confessions ·

2023/02/03

Heaven or Havona exists at the center of a collection of super universes within one of which our universe and our planet are found. So says the Urantia Book, channeled by an anonymous source and compiled by a committee calling itself the Forum. At its heart, the book is a reinterpretation of Christianity through a space age lens with creator gods incarnating on various planets throughout the universes they construct. According to Urantian doctrine, Jesus of Nazareth was the seventh bestowal or

en-US

00:58:06

19.10: The Many Christs of Anna Kingsford (Part Two)

Occult Confessions ·

2023/01/20

In 1876, Anna Kingsford began to have visions and psychic impressions of her past lives which became the basis for the spiritual and theosophical books that were to follow. Edward Maitland, who would be her confederate in these endeavors, was practicing a form of meditation that involved tracing his ideas back to their origin at the core of his consciousness.In summer 1881, Kingsford gave a series of lectures in London on religion and occultism which came to be called her “Perfect Way” lectures

en-US

00:45:26

19.9: The Many Christs of Anna Kingsford (Part One)

Occult Confessions ·

2023/01/13

Anna Bonus Kingsford was at the center of one of the biggest controversies in the Theosophical Society during Helena Blavatsky's lifetime. Arguing that Christian occultism was more accessible to a Western audience than the Hindu and Buddhist version Blavatsky had come to prefer, she threatened to split the London Lodge in half. To hold things together literally and figuratively, Blavatsky and Olcott had to make an emergency visit back from Adyar, India to London to quell the conflict brewing among

en-US

01:28:42

19.8: Christian Sex Education (Part Two)

Occult Confessions ·

2022/12/30

John Paul II was the second-longest reigning Pope in Catholic history and spent a lot of time writing and thinking about sex and marriage for a Pope. We consider the prohibition of contraceptives, the meaning of masturbation, and the Catholic Church's preoccupation with adult entertainment.

en-US

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