Category: Occult

Review of "The Occult Elvis" by Miguel Connor

4/11/2025

Elvis Presley deeply admired James Dean to the point that he modeled much of his persona as a singer and an actor on Dean’s, especially in the early years of his career. The two men had much in common, and it is unsurprising that Elvis (I’ll use the mononym here, in deference to the subject) and Dean also shared both voluntary and involuntary associations with the occult. As I discuss in my book, Jimmy: The Secret Life of James Dean, Dean came out of a somewhat mystical Christian background (encouraged by his friend, the Rev. James DeWeerd) and believed himself supernaturally destined for greatness, despite believing himself to be cursed with an inner evil. He studied books of ancient wisdom and Eastern mysticism and developed a rather Gnostic view that reality was itself an illusion. After his untimely death, he became a cult idol, spiritual guide, and psychopomp—and the subject of countless conspiracy theories. Many claimed to see his ghost, or that he had never died, or would return in glory, and one young woman even claimed his angelic form had supernaturally impregnated her virgin womb. Such stories presaged suspiciously similar anecdotes that swirled around Elvis decades later.

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Tucker Carlson Parrots "Morning of the Magicians" Story of Hitler's Occult Powers

1/14/2025

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On a recent episode of The Tucker Carlson Show, aspiring UFO czar Tucker Carlson sat down with UFO-obsessed journalist Michael Schellenberger, and part of their conversation revolved around the question of what UFOs really are. Schellenberger, began by fluffing Carlson and Joe Rogan with praise for the size of their audiences and their interest in UFOs, and then gushed over Rogan’s close relationship with Elon Musk before asking Carlson to explain why he and Rogan differ from Musk on the question of UFOs. Musk does not believe in an otherworldly threat, while Rogan thinks their ETs and Carlson… well, he reiterated his own evolving view that they are “spiritual entities” straight out of the Book of Enoch.

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California Fires Destroy Priceless Theosophical Archive

1/9/2025

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According to Prof. Wouter Hanegraff, writing on social media this morning, the apocalyptic fires devastating the Los Angeles area have completely destroyed the archives of the Theosophical Society, one of the largest collections of material on nineteenth-century esoteric beliefs in the world:

I was just told that the entire property of the Theosophical Society in Altadena near Pasadena has been completely destroyed by the fires in Los Angeles. This was the world's largest archive of Theosophical materials, including a library with 40.000 titles, the entire archive of the history of the TS, including ca. 10.000 unpublished letters, pertaining to HPB, the Mahatmas, W.Q. Judge, G.R.S. Mead, Katherine Tingley, and G. de Purucker, membership records since 1875, art objects, and countless other irreplaceable materials. The archives also contained works of Boehme, Gichtel, donations from the king of Siam including rare Buddhist scriptures, and so on.

News photographs showed the burned shell of the Theosophical Library Center, which housed the Society's collection. This is a devastating intellectual loss that only compounds the tragedy unfolding in California. Ironically, the first Theosophical Society headquarters in Altadena also burned to the ground in 1894.

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Tucker Carlson Claims a Demon Attacked Him in His Sleep

11/1/2024

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In his continuing arc toward paranoid Christian conspiracies, Tucker Carlson alleged in a new interview that a demon attacked him in his sleep last year. The conservative pundit and UFO conspiracy theorist shares his bed with his wife and four dogs but says he cannot explain how he received scratches on his body while he slept. An evangelical Christian on his staff told him it had to be a demon. Carlson told the story on a Christian podcast hosted by John Heers:

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Ufologists Accuse Journalist of "Attacking" Tim Gallaudet Over Cable TV Ghost Show

6/1/2024

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I usually prepare my weekend newsletter on Friday and take the weekend off. Naturally, that’s when the ufologists decide to make news. Chris Mellon, who only months ago insisted UFOs were alien craft, did an about-face and began talking about UFOs being drones and tweeting that everyone has always known the big problem was drones. Ross Coulthart gave a speech in which he alleged that he had arranged to have all the UFO secrets he knows published by a third party should unnamed nefarious forces succeed in assassinating him for knowing too much. He could, of course, forestall his death by simply revealing his secrets, or even who is after him, but instead he has hopped on the bandwagon with Lue Elizondo, Jeremy Corbell, Garry Nolan, and other UFO influencers claiming unspecified death threats.

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No, James Dean's Porsche Was Not Cursed

1/16/2024

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It’s been called the most cursed car in history, responsible for a trail of death and injury stretching across the twentieth century. But is James Dean’s Porsche Spyder really possessed by a supernatural evil? I didn’t think it would be necessary to explain why the so-called “curse” of Dean’s Porsche isn’t real, but the persistence of the myth across TV, YouTube, podcasting, and social media, where it is the most popular topic associated with James Dean, suggests that we need a clear explanation of where this false claim came from and why it isn’t true. I’ve discussed elements of the “curse” in various essays and articles, but it’s time to tie it all together and explain how a modern hoax turned into an ancient evil.

(Note: This essay contains some material originally published in my previous Substack essays and on my website. This essay is cross-posted in my Substack newsletter.)

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Review of Ancient Aliens S19E18 “The Power of the Talisman”

8/25/2023

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Avi Loeb told Michael Shermer that he was very upset about a New York Times Magazine profile depicting him as an out-of-touch scientific pariah who makes basic analytical mistakes and is increasingly unmoored from reality due to his obsession with space aliens. He ran to Shermer’s podcast to complain about the magazine alleging that he is thin-skinned and uses the media to retaliate against criticism rather than produce strong science. But what else should we expect from a man who is now a regular on Ancient Aliens? Loeb’s quest for aliens is a bit of magical thinking according to his peers, so it’s appropriate that this episode of Ancient Aliens is devoted to the magic of talismans.

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New York Times Praises Uri Geller for Profiting from "Benign" Post-Truth "Fraud"

7/8/2023

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This morning, the New York Times ran a puff piece in its business section claiming that 1970s-era spoon-bender Uri Geller has “won” the war against his debunkers by monetizing his fraudulent powers and attaining greater celebrity than his detractors. The story, by business reporter David Segal, praises what Segal describes as Geller’s repudiation of conventional standards of truth, substituting entertainment for evidence and using his postmodern attacks on evidence and reason to generate millions in revenue:

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This Was the Year That Was: 2022 in Review

12/26/2022

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This year wasn’t quite as bad as 2021, so I can’t be too upset at a year that, if nothing else, did not get appreciably worse. On the other hand, nothing really improved either. Between inflation and further work cuts in my failing industry, it’s been hard. When a prominent astrologer said this year would be the best of my life, I wasn’t sure whether that was a promise or a threat. It’s a good thing astrology is bunk, or else I would be painfully depressed to think this was the best things will ever get.

In a more general sense, this was a year devoted mostly to UFOs, which dominated the paranoid paranormal discourse for the first ten months, until Atlantis made a late run for the crown.

Here, then, is the year that was, edited and condensed from my blog posts and newsletter.

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Midweek Update: "Ancient Apocalypse," UFOs, and Ghosts--Oh, My!

11/16/2022

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The success of Graham Hancock’s Ancient Apocalypse surprised me greatly. The show reached #2 on Netflix’s viewership rankings in the U.S. and U.K. and was in the top 10 worldwide. Consequently, it has become the most-watched speculative history series in a decade, likely outstripping the viewership for previous ratings titans in the genre, like History’s Curse of Oak Island (3 million at its peak), Ancient Aliens (2 million at its peak), and America Unearthed (1.5 million at its peak) and easily leapfrogging similar series on the Discovery, Travel, and Science channels, which averaged around 600,000 viewers. (Netflix does not release exact viewership figures.) Part of the reason is likely due to Netflix itself. Cable channels narrowcast. Viewership for the History or Science channels is primarily older white men, while Netflix, which has found success with other New Age shows like the Gwyneth Paltrow Goop series, can put Ancient Apocalypse in front of all four quadrants: men and women, young and old. Thus, they can appeal to a wider anti-establishment audience that would not tune in on cable.

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<<Previous

Review of "The Occult Elvis" by Miguel Connor

Tucker Carlson Parrots "Morning of the Magicians" Story of Hitler's Occult Powers

California Fires Destroy Priceless Theosophical Archive

Tucker Carlson Claims a Demon Attacked Him in His Sleep

Ufologists Accuse Journalist of "Attacking" Tim Gallaudet Over Cable TV Ghost Show

No, James Dean's Porsche Was Not Cursed

Review of Ancient Aliens S19E18 “The Power of the Talisman”

New York Times Praises Uri Geller for Profiting from "Benign" Post-Truth "Fraud"

This Was the Year That Was: 2022 in Review

Midweek Update: "Ancient Apocalypse," UFOs, and Ghosts--Oh, My!

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