Occult Confessions

John King was one of the most powerful spirits to surface in nineteenth-century spiritualist seances. As the father of spirit Katie King, he figured in one of the biggest scandals of the 1870s involving the US Congressman Robert Dale Owen. He was also the familiar spirit of Helena Blavatsky. In this episode, we track the history of spirit materializations and ask whether John King could be the spirit of the privateer Henry Morgan.

Olivia leads our discussion about the connection between Christian Gnosticism and the Reptilian Conspiracy by way of David Icke. Why do so many people believe that our reality is a projection coming from a hollow moon orbiting the earth?

The Matamoros Cult was responsible for a series of grisly murders on the Mexican border. Inspired by the Afro-Caribbean tradition of Palo Mayombe, they utilized human body parts as magical talismans to protect themselves from law enforcement. Strangely, their grave sites were mapped out by the serial confessor Henry Lee Lucas, a murderer who claimed to be responsible for killing two hundred people at the order of the secret , possibly imaginary Satanic assassins' guild, the Hand of Death.

Satanism as the source of a popular culture panic includes tales of mass child sacrifice and the cultivation of teenage breeders. The reality has more to do with teenage rebellion and legend trips. The religion comes to us by way of Anton LaVey's Church of Satan and Michael Aquino's Temple of Set, and they define what it means to follow the Left Handed Path which has little if anything to do with the legendary panic.

The swastika, Heinrich Himmler's personal magician, and Adolf Hitler's favorite occult magazine provide our window into the Nazi Party's occult inspiration. What supernatural beliefs helped to shape one of the most reviled movements in history and how does this reflect on the meaning of the occult beyond Hitler's Germany?

In 1909, Aleister Crowley wandered into the desert to complete a thirty-one-part ritual originally designed by Renaissance mage John Dee. While there, he conjured Choronzon, the Dweller of the Threshold and demon of nothingness, and may have gone mad. In this episode, we track Crowley's career from just after the writing of the Book of the Law until his death.

From his first introduction to occult practice to the conjuring of the twelve kings of hell on Loch Ness to the invocation of Egyptian gods in Cairo, we track the history and meaning of Aleister Crowley's often misunderstood Law of Thelema: "do what thou wilt."

Gilles de Rais was the marshal of France, companion-at-arms to the medieval saint Joan of Arc, and responsible for staging a billion-dollar pageant in honor of the miracle at Orleans. He was also tried and convicted for murdering over one hundred children as part of an alchemical ritual to summon a demon and restore the fortune he spent away. But was Lord Marshal de Rais really a demon-conjuring killer or was he framed by the Inquisition?

In our first Halloween special, Rob explores Edgar Allan Poe's ideas about the unconscious and the Alchemical Actors perform two Poe classics: "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" and "M.S in a Bottle." We learn how Poe's original audience felt about mesmerism and what it meant to journey into the unfathomable ocean of the mind.

Human sacrifice has been practiced across cultures among the ancient pagans, tribal Africans, Aztecs, and in the Old Testament. What are the magical implications of human sacrifice? Why do humans sacrifice themselves and each other? And are these sacrifices evil or benign?