Krishnamurti's philosophy was about getting free from thought and time, releasing memory and belief, and becoming fully present. He taught that there was no method or ritual or plan that could achieve this state of perfect presence and no guru who could guide you. Each person had to be their own guru and discover the truth of what is ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more

We tend to think that the story of Adam and Eve only became a problem from the standpoint of believability after Darwin in the mid-nineteenth-century, but, in fact, the strangeness of the story has dogged Christians throughout history. God creates two people and puts them in a garden to eat and have sex and name some animals. He puts two trees in the garden and says they can't eat the fruit off of one of the trees. Then a snake comes by and tells the woman to eat from the tree anyway so she does and the man feels bad and eats the fruit too and God throws them both out of the garden. The story ..read more

In this final installment of our biography of Jiddu Krishnamurti, the teacher disbands the Order of the Star and is banished from Theosophical Society Headquarters. He becomes an advisor to Indira Ghandi and questions whether his strange path to knowledge can ever be replicated ..read more

The second part of our series on the teacher and philosopher Krishnamurti begins with his spiritual awakening beneath a pepper tree in Ojai, California. Krishnamurti was plagued by terrible episodes of physical suffering accompanied by great spiritual insight. We continue through to George Arundale's bizarre plot to insert himself into the highest ranks of Krishnamurti's organization and theosophy writ large ..read more

(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 o ..read more

In the second part of our conversation about Annie Besant, she leaves the secularists and joins the Theosophical Society. We consider how the Mahatmas continued to produce letters after Blavatsky's death and how closely Besant's theosophy resembled the first generation ..read more

We open our story on the child messiah, Jiddu Krishnamurti, with a two-part episode on Annie Besant, a woman he came to regard as his adopted mother. Having been an atheist, social reformer, and advocate for birth control, Besant became the president of the Theosophical Society and one of the most influential occultists of the early twentieth century ..read more

For parents like me who chose to share 2010’s revival of My Little Pony with my children, the animated series’ emphasis on social-emotional learning is the primary draw; however, these lessons are framed in distinctly occult terms. The series is subtitled “friendship is magic” and while this may suggest that friendship is awesome, in the context of the show it often means that it is literally a matter of spells, potions, and esoteric books. The show’s association with real-world occultism in the form of pony-inspired tulpas shows the degree to which it has successfully tapped into a New Age sp ..read more