Occult Confessions

Wilhelm Reich was a student of Sigmund Freud's who went on to develop views on human sexuality—views that questioned prohibitions against contraception and sex education and wondered over the longterm sustainability of monogamous relationships—that scandalized society. He escaped the Nazis and fled to America only to be imprisoned by the FBI, hounded by Immigration services, and ultimately persecuted by the Food and Drug Administration for his vitalist theories on the existence of an ether-like substance called orgone which penetrated the universe and, according to Reich, could be accumulated to heal even the most deadly of diseases. In this episode, we elicit that occult or rather fringe scientific confession of Dr. Wilhelm Reich.

Is the root of all religions the worship of penises and vaginas? Nineteenth-century writer and Rosicrucian-enthusiast Hargrave Jennings thought so. He said that the worship of the reproductive powers is prehistoric and at the secret origin of all of the world's religions. Eggs and palm fronds at Easter, the Hindu lingam, pagan and Judaic pillars, the Ark of the Covenant, and the cross itself are all signs of the cult of the yoni and phallus.

On 25 July 1755, Giacomo Casanova—arguably the most famous libertine in Western history—was arrested for possession of illicit literature. Among the books authorities confiscated from his house were the Key of Solomon, the Zohar, and the devil-conjuring Picatrix. Early in his life, Casanova had attempted to enter the priesthood and he knew enough of Kabbalah to convince a senator and three of his occult-inclined friends that he possessed a secret numerological formula. And yet, in his autobiography, Casanova professed disdain for magical thinkers of all kinds, iterating at every opportunity the Enlightenment credo that one must only trust reason in answering life's many questions and quandaries. How can a man be both a magician and a disbeliever in magic?

The exciting conclusion of Church Secrets conflict with the Girl with the Crab Shell Tattoo featuring segments from Borderline Crime, Woah Drama, Sunrise Wellness, Get it Girl, and Church Secrets.

Some scholars who think about the history of Christendom link the notion that sex is sinful or dangerous for the soul to the fact that almost all Christian religious leaders in Europe from about the fifth century until the Reformation were celibate or at least paid lip service to practicing celibacy. If sex is good, why wouldn't priests allow themselves to marry and procreate? There must be something uniquely holy about depriving onself of sex which then implies that there must be something sinful or degrading about sex. The question of how and why we got the idea that priests should be celibate is not a minor one. It echoes across the culture and informs the way we think about sex across the Western world straight up to the present day.

We pick up our discussion of tantra by following it across the ocean from India to America. American tantra came to focus specifically on sex. It inspired the founders of the Ordo Templi Orientis, which would go on to become a home for Aleister Crowley, Pierre Bernard’s various tantric yoga and healing orders and schools, and the Wiccan pioneers Gavin and Yvonne Frost. Tantra also became a direct import with Tibetan and Indian gurus fleeing oppression or prosecution to start over in America.

Geoffrey Samuel loosely defines tantra as the ritual practices and tradition, within both Buddhist and Hindu Saiva sources, “that present themselves as sophisticated and elevated means for the attainment of exalted spiritual goals, yet contain constant reference to practices that seem deliberately transgressive and bizarre.” These include orgies at crematoriums, cannibalism, creating instruments out of human body parts, and having sex on top of corpses. Historically, tantric practices were associated most closely with the cults of the Goddess, a singular and powerful divine feminine force who emanates many faces and forms. We try to get a birds-eye view of the long history of Tantra from ancient India to twenty-first century America.

Rob is joined by prison psychologists Dr. David Morelos and Dr. Jessica Micono of the Psychology After Dark podcast. They talk about what psychologists consider fringe today, when a belief becomes pathological, the place of parapsychology in modern psychology, and how new approaches to consciousness might revolutionize the field.

Rob and the gang are back with the second season of their semi-fictional occult exploration: The Dark Pool. This season, an esoteric grimoire provides the blueprint for a journey into another dimension. Listen wherever you get Occult Confessions.

In this episode, Rob is joined by Daniel Walker and Simone Lasher of San Francisco's Satanic Bay Area and the Black Mass Appeal Podcast. They talk about the meaning of satan through history and why conspiracy theorists have chosen satan as the mascot for their so-called liberal elite. Why is satan associated with liberal ideals? Is satan necessarily anti-conservative?