Occult Confessions

Delving into Celtic mythology, the podcast explores the enigmatic figure of the Morrigan, a war goddess with triple aspects. It discusses her associations with war, prophecies, and gender duality, as well as her mythical tales with Cuculain. The episode also examines the symbolism of crows in relation to the Morrigan, highlighting themes of death, rebirth, and resilience.

Legendary Welsh witch Rhiannon uses magic to marry the man she chooses, linked with Epona goddess. Podcast explores her mystical essence, moral dilemmas in Celtic legends, mythical adventures, and family dynamics. Also includes tales of jealousy, mysterious fortresses, dealing with mouse hoards, and analyzing the mythology of Rhiannon.

The podcast delves into the roles of Druids in ancient Celtic society, including their functions as judges, ceremonial heads, magicians, and teachers. It explores the mystical world of Druids, discussing their belief in gods as ancestors, healing practices, association with plant magic, and controversial topics like human sacrifice and divination practices. Additionally, it touches on Celtic mythology, dream reading, sacrificial deaths, and the cultural significance of Celts and Druids in defining Celtic identity.

In an episode recovered from the dustbin of our archive, we invite you to explore with us the strange lore of the Infertile Order and the Myth of the Cheese. Did Hiram Miraalaarn encounter planetary nymphs on his way to Venus? Are the birds to blame for our inability to pair music and lyrics in the Song of Lurm? Find out in today's very special episode.

Druids were a part of ancient celtic culture—a series of kingdoms or empires that stretched through Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Britain, and Gaul—the region of modern France as well as parts of Belgium and Italy. The Celts were distinct in each region but also shared important cultural structures and practices as well as language. Part of the challenge of recovering the druids from the fog of history is that much of their knowledge was kept strictly within an oral tradition. The Celts were by no means illiterate and had a longstanding relationship with written language but they believed, and the druids in particular believed, in memorization. Eventually Celtic tales, history, and practices were recorded by Celts but this was largely after Christianization. Historians then have to rely on the word of outsiders—mostly Romans—to make sense of who the Celts and Druids were in ancient times. But these writers often had a highly skewed view of the Celts since they were their enemies and they sought to conquer and subdue the Celts just as the Celt sought to conquer and subdue them. The Celts, after all, pillaged Rome in 387 BCE and directly threatened the Senate. All that having been said, we can get a pretty interesting if not detailed picture of the Druids by looking at these outsider accounts and the later accounts of Celtic writers. Julius Caesar has been one such source, having written on the Celtic people he encountered during his military exploits. Those accounts reveal a class of people responsible for the intellectual life of one of the most interesting cultures in the history of the Western world. They were poets, historians, judges, and magicians.

We sit down with Ed Crimi, owner of the Vampa Vampire Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania and talk about his collection of vampire kits collected from around the world. Crimi also tells us about the room in museum devoted to the Archangel Michael. For more about the museum, visit: https://www.vampamuseum.com.

The Aghoris are a sect who worships Shiva by way of Shakti or the goddess, often in the form of Kali or Tara. They spend their time at the crematorium in the sacred city of Banares or bathing in the cold waters of the Ganges in winter. They strive to overcome aversion by confronting what humans are most averse to beginning with death itself.

How has ancient Gnosticism resurfaced as a new religion in the modern and postmodern world? Rob introduces the path of gnosticism into modern occultism and Rob and Luke interview Paul Joseph Rovelli, founding director of the Gnostic Church of L. V. X., and the church's social media director Joseph DeOliveira.

In modern occultism, Isis is often regarded as a bearer of mysteries and a symbol of feminine power. When Helena Blavatsky invoked her name in the title of her first major work, Isis Unveiled, she sought to reveal the hidden spirituality of the East through an Egyptian lens; a religion that she claimed sat at the heart of all worship and was more true than the bastardized Judeo-Christian practices passed down in the West. Isis has played the role of purveying the secrets of a culture apart to Westerners going all the way back to the Roman empire. The Greeks and Romans were quick to adopt her cult and celebrate her at public festivals and secret initiations. But what was hidden behind the veil of Isis? How much do we know about her cult today?

The Gnostics believed they had access to the truth; the real truth, not the truth that everyone else thinks is the truth. Everyone who's not a Gnostic that is. While there are certain themes that tend to unite Gnostic groups, they were actually quite distinct and widespread across the Christian world in the time of the Church Fathers. Christian Gnostics—who will be our focus although Hermeticists are also sometimes classified as Pagan Gnostics—tended to believe that the Old Testament God or Yahweh was actually a demigod and that the true God was unknowable, existing in an unimaginable realm somewhere in the cosmological beyond. They tended to believe that humans possessed some grain or seed of the godhead within them and they often underwent elaborate astrologically-themed initiations to join their orders. While their particular theology was ultimately defeated and buried by the Catholic Christians, their beliefs informed Christian doctrine. Arguably, the canonical gospel of John was, in fact, a Gnostic text and a Gnostic bishop very nearly became the Pope in Rome. But Gnostics were considered heretics and the men who defined early Christian doctrine wrote bitter attacks against them. Ironically, these attacks became a significant source for contemporary scholars' knowledge of the ancient Gnostics beliefs and practices. Be careful how detailed you are in arguing against your enemies. You may just be preserving their ideas across the ages.