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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

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.

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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

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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

01:07:59

19.7: Christian Sex Education (Part One)

Occult Confessions ·

2022/12/16

Christian Sex Writers are an eclectic bunch from conservatives to liberals to doctors who fill you in on the birds and the bees while you wait for your blood test results. What are the Biblical sources for Christian sexual ethics, and are they consistent? Are Christian attitudes toward sex necessarily in opposition to the dominant views of Western culture? How can Christians reconcile God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply” while trying to do what the celibate Jesus would do?

en-US

01:09:06

19.6: Vampire Forensics (Interview Special)

Occult Confessions ·

2022/12/02

Brett Warren brings a forensic approach to the bodies of historical vampires. Brett brings a historian’s curiosity to the project–translating eighteenth-century texts and tracing the origins of the word “vampire.” How can modern medical science help us to better understand the cadavers excavated and eviscerated after their previous owners were accused of being vampires? To support Brett’s work visit: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arcanearchive/the-historic-vampire-debate

en-US

01:10:35

19.5: The Prosperity Gospel

Occult Confessions ·

2022/11/25

From the New Thought Movement of the 1880s to Charles Fillmore’s Depression-Era preaching to Joel Osteen’s megachurch, the notion that spiritual effort can yield material rewards has been a popular one for both New Age and Christian believers. The Prosperity Gospel asks that believers trust God and credit God for their own successes, but remind believers to work at the things they want. It preaches that money and material wealth aren’t evil and conveniently overlooks Jesus’s own poverty and

en-US

01:02:25

19.4: Live Action Religious Roleplaying (Interview...

Occult Confessions ·

2022/11/18

Anna Milon joins us to discuss her ethnographic research into the way religions are imported, created, and developed within Live Action Roleplaying. Do players bring their own religious convictions into the characters they play? What are the places where belief and fantasy overlap? Are there taboos players observe even though they’re acting our a fictional scenario? As both a player and a researcher, Milon gives us insight into the strange and fascinating intricacies of religious LARPing.

en-US

01:06:28

19.3: A Christian Theocracy (Part Two)

Occult Confessions ·

2022/11/11

Theonomy, Dominionism, and Calvinist Reconstructionism are all different names for the same idea: that the world would be better off it it operated according to a Christian Theocracy. In this episode Rob tackles the ideas of one of the more sober and influential theorists of this perspective, Gregory Bahnsen. Are ethics based on reason rather than belief in God’s law necessarily arbitrary? Did Jesus call on Christians to follow the whole of the Law or only some of the laws? And should Christians

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01:01:00

19.2: Haunting a Harvest Horror (A Mystery Magic...

Occult Confessions ·

2022/10/28

A mad scientist plots, fanatics roam and rant, monsters loom. This Halloween, the Alchemical Actors joined Rob’s college students to create a unique storytelling experience in a couple of acres of corn. In this special episode, Rob gives you a glimpse behind the scenes and Savannah takes you into the field to explore our harvest horror.

en-US

00:56:22

19.1: A Christian Theocracy (Part One)

Occult Confessions ·

2022/10/21

Recent United States Supreme Court decisions on the questions of abortion rights and prayer in public school have suggested to many observers that the Court is following a theocratic Christian paradigm in passing its verdicts. The Christian Right’s involvement in politics has been a staple of twentieth-century American society and has been championed by Billy Graham in his magazine Christianity Today, Jerry Falwell with his Moral Majority, and Pat Robertson in his presidential campaigns. At its

en-US

01:00:14

18.7: Klan Christianity

Occult Confessions ·

2022/10/07

America’s white supremacist Christian Identity churches preach the abhorrent doctrine that non-white races are the descendants of Cain, birthed through a satanic tryst between Eve and the devil. Christian Identity unites the strange principles of British Israelism in the United Kingdom–which held that the British people were a lost tribe of Isreal–with American Klan and Neo-Nazi ideology. We trace the pernicious origins and results of these ideas and consider why these ideas have been so destructive

en-US

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

en-US

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,

en-US

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

en-US

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

en-US

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

en-US

230 results

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