Occult Confessions

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.

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.

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.

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 stories of people who believe they've encountered a demon in the night.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Chinese alchemy, Taoism's influence on Chinese culture, unique challenges of spelling and standardizing Chinese words and names, magician duo Judas and Magnolia, the immortals Lan Siai Ho and Hu Xiangu, differentiation between Waidan and Naidan alchemy, listener feedback, engaging with the community, upcoming series on evil spirits