Occult Confessions

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.

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 magical cap of invisibility, to slay the giant Hippolytus during the battle between the titans and the gods and who taught the Egyptians their burial rites. We go in search of the legend, the myth, the sage Hermes “thrice great.”

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?

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 this episode, we say yes. Yes, it is.

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.

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 about the rise of the anti-Christ? We'll find out in the first of our two-part series on Todd's Illuminati Witch Cult conspiracy theory.

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.

In the last of our special series on plagues and religion, Rob discusses the ten plagues of Egypt. What hidden meanings exist in the story of the plagues and the way the narrative is structured? Is there any scientific basis for the way the plague narrative unfolds? And why did God harden Pharaoh's heart?

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is one of the most dangerous books of the twentieth century. It inspired pogroms in Russia, Nazis in Germany, and anti-Semitism across the Western world. The Protocols fed a variety of conspiracy theories pulling together religious, occult, and illuminati themes. In this episode, we explore the influence of the Protocols from the last days of the Romanovs to George Soros.

Julian of Norwich lived through the black death, ensuing riots, the Western Schism, and the persecution of a variety of heretical movements by the medieval Church. During a near-death experience, Julian had a mystical vision in which she discovered that God is not wrathful but loving and that sin is both necessary and an illusion.