Occult Confessions

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24.6: Body and Soul or the Fitness Cults Aug 16, 2024

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Americans are largely responsible for discovering how to make exercising a cult. The link between exercise and the spiritual life of the exerciser wasn't invented after Y2K nor were intense fitness, demanding fitness routines. But bringing these things together into a practice designed to cultivate commitment to the corporatized and franchised exercise routine as the best possible path to overall well being is a twenty-first century innovation, and one that is probably at this point a thing of the past. At least for now. Today on Occult Confessions: this history of fitness cults.

24.5: The Black Metal Church Burnings Aug 02, 2024

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Norwegian black metal in the 1990s served as the soundtrack for murder, suicide, and the burning of churches dating to the medieval period across the country with the musicians themselves at the center of these crimes. Andrew Mimms takes over the microphone to tell the story of the militant Satanist Black Circle who gathered a record store called Hell to create music but also mayhem.

24.4: Synanon Jul 19, 2024

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Synanon is really two different organizations separated by time with the same origin and some of the same personnel sort of like 1960’s Jefferson Airplane and 1980’s Starship. One has very little do with the other close-up but from a far enough distance they look kind of similar. The psychologist Steven Simon calls these two groups Synanon I and Synanon II. Synanon I called itself a charitable organization and focused its energies on drug rehabilitation in the inner city. Synanon II called itself a religion and established communes in urban and rural locations where residents followed whatever rules were passed down as part of the Synanon leadership's social experiment. Synanon I saved lives even though it was often protested by NIMBY neighbors who didn't want to run into recovering drug addicts at the grocery store. Synanon II accumulated vast resources and sought to intentionally freak out the general public, leading to the group's decline.

24.3: Dungeons, Dragons, and Satan Jul 05, 2024

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In the 1980s, the game Dungeons and Dragons or, more specifically, its creators and players were accused of operating a Satanic cult. Luke takes the lead microphone to explore the strange events that led to this profound confusion between the fantasy world of the game and the real world of 1980s America. Warning: this episode contains references to suicide.

24.2: MLMs Jun 21, 2024

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Multilevel marketing groups or MLMs engage in legal pyramid-style schemes that escape laws against such schemes because of the involvement of products including everything from make-up and detergent to diet pills, shampoos, and nutritional supplements. Nikki Hiller Henderson takes the microphone to lead the second of our actor-hosted episodes in our cults that aren't cults series.

24.1: The Secret Space Program Jun 07, 2024

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(Part 2 is now available on the Strange Ride channel). In this Strange Ride/Occult Confessions crossover episode Savannah kicks off OC’s newest season “cults that aren’t cults” by looking at the Secret Space Program conspiracy theory. The human race is under attack, and the earth needs all of our help if we’re going to survive to the end of this war. You’ve already started your journey by listening to this podcast, but stick with us. It’ll be difficult to understand. They don’t want you to understand, but you have to try. An evil Alien race known as the reptilians are keeping us trapped here on earth. To be used as food to fuel their galactic conquest. They’ve even taken up abducting us to turn us into Super Soldiers to fight in their never ending war for control over the universe. Some of us may have been those kidnapped soldiers. Once they have no more use for us they wipe our memories and throw us back to Earth. We are nothing to them. They are faster, stronger, smarter, BUT, not all hope is lost. Us humans of earth… We’re special. We have souls that have the power to defeat the reptilians once and for all, but only if we’re able to unlock that power.

23.8: Goddess Energy (Interview Special) May 31, 2024

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Rob and Luke talk with author and witch Gabriela Herstik about her new project, "Goddess Energy: Awakening the Divine Feminine through Myth and Magick." Gabriela talks about the intersections of Judaism and neo-paganism in her own practice, the many faces and incarnations of the goddess, and sex magic. For more about Gabriela's work visit linktr.ee/gabyherstik.

23.7: Commencement 24 May 26, 2024

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This graduation season, Rob was asked to be a commencement speaker for Chesapeake College's ceremony. In this special episode, Rob shares his speech with the confessors and talks intimately about what the opportunity means to him and what he hopes for the future of the species. .

23.6: The Georgia Guidestones Have Come and Gone May 17, 2024

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The Georgia Guidestones arrived mysteriously and disappeared violently, shrouded in secrecy as a monument intended to direct future generations of human beings. Rob sits down with Bryan Delius to discuss his research on the Guidestones and discover the full story of what became of the monument.

23.5: The Morrigan May 03, 2024

Show notes

The Morrigan is a perplexing figure to make clear sense of for the reasons that all Celtic mythology is similarly perplexing: it was part of an oral tradition that was only recorded in the medieval period after the believers in the Morrigan had long since disappeared. Unlike the fairly extensive record of the Greco-Roman deities, the references to the Morrigan and her fellow Celtic gods are far more scant. The fact that Celtic deities were often triple-natured and that their aspects could take on or subsume different names further complicates the project of pinning down exactly who the Morrigan was to the members of her cult. But we're going to see how far we can go in identifying the lore association with the Morrigan and what we can properly say about the goddess.

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