Black Hoodie Alchemy

Welcome back to Black Hoodie Alchemy -- this week is a bit of a twist! Longtime listeners of Black Hoodie Alchemy will be very familiar with the strange character that is Tippy Patson -- the Redneck Mystic Extraordinaire -- and his appearances in episodes 14, 30, 38, and 59. Well somehow this idiot decided to record his very own BHA episode without me! Yes, he found my upload login and my Zoom password, and also didn't bother to let me know we were recording when I gave him a call in the middle of it! It's all a bit ridiculous, but I decided I might as well let the upload pass as is. After all, he did edit the whole thing with a commercial break and music, so hey whatever.

Oh and what is this episode actually about? Well, lo and behold, when he isn't hunting Illuminati gators or scrying with cow shit, Tippy Patson is apparently a cryptozoologist and hunter! He reports to have a lot of experience hunting these various creatures throughout Florida and beyond, and also seems to have gotten ahold of an internet database full of cryptids that helped fuel his research for this week's episode. As you can see by the list below, he goes through quite a few!

Welcome back to Black Hoodie Alchemy, folks! This week we're going down a vast rabbit-hole of cult mentality, hip hop, new age metaphysics, heavy racism, classical conspiracy theories, and ancient alien pseudo-history! This is the story of cult leader and "inspirational" hip-hop figurehead "Dr. Malachi Z. York" AKA just Dwight York, who is not a real doctor. This man, through his own psychopathic charisma, started a cult offshoot of the Nation of Islam in the early 70s in Brooklyn, NY. But this steadily began to infuse all of the many ancient alien, white-devil-Illuminati, half-baked metaphysics of an un-learned wannabe scholar, and at a time where minorities were blatantly second-class citizens, Dwight York found his own culture to be easy predatory pickings.

And as luck would have it for him, he happened to be forming his cult right at the daw of hiphop, in the very place that it was beginning. Because of this, he remained a lowkey figurehead in hiphop for some time, and in some cases continues to be to this day. Whether through direct affiliation or direct acknowledgements, York has brushed shoulders with people like Jay Z, Stevie Wonder, Andre 3000, Erica Badu, Nas, and many many more, including all the way into the features on Jedi Mind Tricks albums in the early Philly underground scene. York was also friends with Afrika Bambaata, an alleged sexual abuser and founder of the hiphop awareness movement called Universal Zulu Nation, which was known to heavily inspire groups like A Tribe Called Quest and others more.

Now, does this mean that all these artists and musicians are terrible people directly affiliated with Bambaata and York? Not at all. Their allegations came out long after these psychopaths had staked their claim in their cultures, and they existed in a time before the internet, when information was much easier to compartmentalize. But all that being said, it is highly likely that at least some of these artists -- like Jay Z -- might have had connections that they have since tried to bury in order to save their public image.

This is a complex web of African American culture, hip hop history, disturbing cult leader tactics, and so much more -- but it is not an indictment of hip hop or African American culture as a whole! Rather, this is an attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff, and remind us all that cult leaders and cult mentality can be found in all aspects of life, and that no one is immune.

I hope you dig the episode this week!

Buckle the hell up this week, because you're in for a wild ride! Former "Illuminati cloning lab manager" and "actor", codename: Jefferson Tilamookslinger AKA Steve Buschemi AKA Shnelius Maximus AKA Clone-Lab Supreme graces us with his presence!

Welcome back to Black Hoodie Alchemy, where we're getting into the juxtaposition of concepts like "God" and "evolution". This episode is a little bit of a follow-up to episodes 58, 48, 24, 16, 15, and 4 among others. You certainly don't have to listen to those episodes to enjoy this one, but it will help provide additional context -- especially if you're looking for more food for thought along these lines!

Considering a variety of concepts such as archetypes, memetics, chaos theory, adaptation, and the mystical experience, we consider the idea of "the image of god and goddess" evolving alongside humankind. While psychology can't explain everything, it truly helps us lay insightful framework in the psyche and therefore the unconscious mind. By its nature, the unconscious mind not only holds the information about ourselves that we are not readily accessing, it also holds the information about the environment that we are sensing but not readily accessing. Intuition, the strange systems we find in our dreams, and our propulsion and repulsion towards certain symbols are all aspects of this unconscious mind finding chances to wink at us from behind the veil.

But here is where so many open-minded people divide themselves: is it all in the unconscious mind, or is the unconscious mind a reservoir for or coalescence with cosmic forces of nature beyond our understanding?

Well no one is going to be able to answer that for you, but there is good news. Both of these avenues can at least be investigated through the same use of "occam's razor"; that is to say, by following the way that humans have interacted with their "images of divinity" throughout history, we will always gain the greatest insight.

It would appear that comparative religion is a collected memetic network of archetypes that humanity has used to climb its way up the evolutionary ladder. Many scientists have clearly stated the fact that through our psychological adaptations, we were able to bypass untold thousands of years of evolution through mere exchanges of symbols.

With all that said, what is your relationship to "the image of god and goddess"? The thing is: whether you believe in any of it or not, most humans throughout history did and do believe in them -- and that not only affects you psychologically, but it has affected you genetically. It is imbedded in the very nature of our human evolution, and the sooner we all understand this, the sooner we will begin to understand our genuine relationships to the divine.

It's easier said than done, of course. But it's all part of the Work.

Brief Videos:

For this week's food for thought, we are tackling psychoanalyst Carl Jung's work, 'Answer to Job'. Not only is it Jung's most controversial work, but it was also one of his personal favorites despite all the Christian spite it brought upon him.

This infamous book of the Bible sees Yahweh wager a bet with Satan over the life of one of Yahweh's most faithful followers. Job is not only pious and faithful but also very successful, seemingly without a reason to doubt God. But Satan poses: what if Job hadn't been so fortuitous? What if he had been given a great many more reasons to doubt God's love or even existence? Would he still be a faithful follower? Going against most of general Christian teachings would lead one to assume, Yahweh does something morally dubious and accepts this wager with Satan, allowing Job to suffer a tremendous amount. And all the while, throughout the book, we see Yahweh take an outright petulant jealousy out upon Job, as his faithful follower suffers without any notion as to why it's happened or how it may end.

The interpretation of the Book of Job's many archetypal, metaphysical, and ethical quandaries indeed helps set the context for the rest of the Bible in many cases. For if we cannot understand what kind of God would do such an extreme thing as engaging in a jealous bet, then how can we really understand the foundations of this God's love?

CG Jung tackles this massive topic in a way that holds the inspiration of a theologian, while still holding the practical and skeptical analysis of a psychoanalyst. Let it be remembered that one need not believe in God in order to understand the psychological significance of gods, goddesses, and so many other archetypes. Whether or not we believe in these things, they have inspired and fascinated humankind all throughout our historical existence -- and they have played a critical role in our adaptation process as a whole. Regardless of whether they exist "physically" or not, they exist in the psyche, and this isn't even saying anything about the archetypal forces of nature that they represent to begin with.

This is a behemoth of a topic -- one that will leave you mulling it over well after you've listened.

It's this, Christ being crucified on the cross, the Book of Revelation and more this week on Black Hoodie Alchemy!

This week we've got a little bit of a variety hour for you! The first half consists of punching up and having a good laugh at some of the celebrities who have recently tried to become cult leaders -- some more successful than others, and all extremely sick and demented. I go through the strange circumstances of horror-shows like Ezra Miller and R. Kelly, the simply-just-annoying Jared Leto, and manipulative shut-in Athene -- one of the internet's first popular game-streamers who is now running his own sad cult to replace his internet fame.

After that, I take the time to read through a chapter of my book, DIVE MANUAL, and dissect astrology as the philosophy of astronomy. This is a reasonable middle ground that I feel the believer and the skeptic can both settle on as a starting point. We know that astrology was the foundation of astronomy, and that humans attempted to wrap their heads around some of the many implications that they found in the stars. Furthermore, many concepts like the earth's axial tilt (discovered through astrology) are scientific facts that we hold today. But this of course doesn't mean that astrology in and of itself is actually a science. To say so would be categorically incorrect -- but so say that astrology has no value whatsoever is equally incorrect.

Astrology and its symbols, because of their sheer historical constancy, help us shed light on many archetypal, mythology stories, and help us as well understand the psychological history of our ancestors. And in many ways, concepts like the astrological natal chart were meant to serve as something akin to a symbolic "brain scan" of sorts. Or an attempt at one. By studying the beliefs of our ancestors, even if they are not "factually true", we are studying components of our human existence and its biography that are full of indispensable wisdom. After all, those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it. All this in mind, there are still questions like: what about all the different kinds of astrology, all the forgotten history we have no record of, and what about today's New Age bullshit?

It's all this and even more on this week's episode!

I hope you dig it.

Would you believe me if I told that in 1998, a real Japanese man would be tricked into a survival-horror version of the 'Truman Show' in real life? Would you then believe me that this broadcast got upwards of 17 million viewers at a time, and that it was all broadcast and sold under the genre of "comedy"?

Well believe it or not, it happened, and this week on Black Hoodie Alchemy I'm explaining the entire harrowing experience of Tomoaki Hamatsu on this gameshow -- the man forever dubbed now as "Nasubi" (which means "eggplant" in Japanese).

Through gameshow producers dangling the carrots of fame, glory, and honor in the name a burgeoning comedy career for Nasubi, this man became a contestant of a show that saw him locked naked in a room with nothing but a pillow, a radio, pencils, and index cards to write on in order to enter in as many sweepstakes as he wanted. Nasubi would have to do this -- surviving off of only what he won through the sweepstakes and with no other contact with the outside world -- until he won $10,000 worth of sweepstakes prizes.

Nasubi would have to endure these conditions for over a year, with more twists and turns than you could imagine! How was all of this legal, how did this man survive this full-on existential nightmare, and what is he doing now? All this and more on this week's Black Hoodie Alchemy!

I hope you dig it.

This week on Black Hoodie Alchemy, comedic actor Steve Berg (of Drunk History, Bob's Burgers, New Girl, Adventure Time, and movies like Tag and Don't Worry, Darling) joins us once more! Well... sort of. He actually "put me in touch" with an estranged "friend" of his named Jason Tortilla. As Jason explains throughout the podcast, he was a "professorial-type" that was unable to make tenure while at the Bristol Academy in the UK.

This week on the show, I am tying up some loose threads that can be found recurring all throughout the Black Hoodie Alchemy program: the idea of inner mythology. As above, so below; as within, so without -- the practice of alchemy through art and science helps to investigate and further define the inner realms of our psyche so hungry for transmutation. Through a web of dreams, art, intuition, and esoteric magick guided with rigor and discipline, the simple ideals and anxieties of our imagination can prove to be a long-running thread ready to be pulled, unraveling the shadowed mechanisms of our psyches so we may understand them with greater transparency. This is a topic that in many ways is the basis of this entire BHA program, so naturally there will be many familiar topics brought up here as we assemble them within the overarching context of investigating the mythology of the psyche.

Why were you so drawn to certain characters and themes as a child? Why are you so drawn to certain themes now? Why do your dreams lack certain aspects, and why might your life lack certain aspects? Many mystically-minded people are wont to interpret every piece of a dream to be a part of the greater whole, yet much fewer people take this approach in their daily lives. Does everything have meaning? Are there such things are coincidences or is everything meant to be? Perhaps, or perhaps not, but one thing is for certain: the more one pays attention to the details of their lives, the more information there is to be gained. Like a detective hot on the trail, an archeologist uncovering a buried monolith, or an artist bending over backward to paint a chapel ceiling, we grind and sweat over the mythologies of our own lives. For it is either we do this -- or perhaps our mythologies might grind and sweat us out first.

This week we have another very special cross-over episode for you! Not only is it the longest Black Hoodie Alchemy episode so far, but also the densest. Joined with Seriah Azkath (veteran radio host of Where Did the Road Go? in New York) and AP Strange (veteran researcher of the unexplainable and a historian of Fortean culture), we tackle the classic and unsung Fortean research book The Goblin Universe, by F.W. 'Ted' Holiday.

And if you listened to this conversation on Where Did the Road Go already -- I have another hour of our recorded talk that was only released on the WDRG Patreon, and you can listen to it right here! This extra portion of the conversation starts at 1:49:00 in the run-time.

Those familiar with researchers like John Keel of The Mothman Prophecies and Jacques Vallee of Passport to Magonia will be right at home in the contents of this strange book. The Goblin Universe is an ambitious attempt to analyze the relationship between Jungian analytic psychology and true genuinely unexplainable phenomena, to include cases like the Loch Ness Monster itself.

Yes, this book analyzes the possibility of reincarnating serial killers, a Catholic priest's attempt to give Loch Ness an exorcism, phantom jungle cats, poltergeists and classic ghosts stories, Men in Black encounters, ley lines, UFOs, Nostradamus, a lot of cryptids and so much more!

The Goblin Universe was released in 1990 -- after Holiday's death -- by his late friend Colin Wilson, who is another classic researcher in his own right. With a very lengthy introduction given by Wilson, along with proof-reads and basic edits, the book is released as is and boasts as many insightful ideas as it does half-baked ones. It's a sure bet that, should Holiday have survived long enough to publish it himself, not all of the contents would have made it into the final draft as they did in Wilson's hands, but this is part of the magic and mystique of this delightful treasure of a read!

For years, the book remained in obscurity, with print copies costing literal hundreds of dollars to acquire and digital copies being nowhere in sight. However, the tables have recently turned, and today you can find reprints and even official Kindle versions of the book! For the three of us having this recorded conversation, this was actually quite a surprise -- it seems that the Goblin Universe famine has ended quite recently, and our conversation couldn't have been timed better.

Tune in for this bat-shit crazy and detailed conversation about Ted Holiday's almost-fully-baked book that was still so far ahead of its time! Then, after that, read The Goblin Universe for yourself and ponder the legacy of the genuine and insightful man that Ted Holiday was.

This week, we take a break from the dense alchemy to consider how these concepts are applied in human life, namely in the life of one of history's most peculiar and tragic characters: Joseph Merrick aka The Elephant Man. Many are aware of the man's namesake and the rumor that Michael Jackson purchased his bones (Jackson was interested but never actually got them), but lesser known are the truly heartbreaking and inspiring bits and pieces that made up Merrick's life before he died at 27.

Born with a disease that no scientist can seem to completely agree upon (and likely a combination of a few of them to make this once-in-history character) the Elephant Man couldn't smile, couldn't whistle, couldn't sleep laying down, wasn't smiled at by a woman until his late 20's, and couldn't show his face without being absolutely terrified and/or disgusted by literally everyone who saw him. Yet he never let it break him -- he was always a gentle soul, looking to love and be loved.

His parents had abandoned him to a worker's camp, and even the doctor who proved to be his salvation was initially baffled to find that he wasn't mentally-handicapped. As Dr. Treves came to learn, Merrick actually had a vibrant intellectual imagination, he could read and write, and had a passion for the Bible, often contemplating his own existence and the existence of others. So often the Elephant Man lived in his own mystical imagination, like a warlock incapable of human contact, and yet somehow knowing so much more about it than we could ever grasp.

Before the saving grace of the kindly doctor, Merrick had been touted around Europe as a PT-Barnum-style "sideshow freak", being shown to cultures so horrified that his public display was quickly outlawed anywhere he went. All of this, and yet some-fucking-how, Joseph Merrick was able to turn it all around and even be quoted at the end of his life saying that he was happy every moment of the day.

How did all this happen? Learn the true story of Joseph 'Elephant Man' Merrick with me this week!

This week on the show, we discuss the philosophical perspective of the poet and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. His outlook will represent a dive deep into a different approach towards scientific empirical study -- an existentialist, humanistic approach to science that makes use of the self as a tool without tainting the study through biases. Furthered through existing concepts like Waldorf Education and Biodynamic Agriculture, Goethean Science continues to make an impact to this day, and it is all intrinsically tied to the alchemical mindset.

Ranked among the great alchemical poets and playwrights like Shakespeare, Milton and Dante', Goethe's rendition of the age-old tale of Dr. Faust selling his soul has maintained itself as one of the single greatest alchemical texts that we have in the modern era, and he spent decades of his life perfecting it. But when he wasn't writing his version of Faust, he was a scientist that was making great strides in botany, color theory and much more, his name in science coming up along names like Isaac Newton (another alchemist) and Renee Descartes. And as if those associations weren't impressive already, Goethe even served to heavily inspire some legendary esoteric names such as Carl Jung and Manly P Hall (names that come up often on this show) as well as Rudolph Steiner.

Join me this week as we immerse ourselves fully in the alchemical process!

This week's featured music -- don't forget to support all your favorite independent artists!

This week, we return to our alchemical roots and discuss some of the sacramental plants involved in the both the alchemical process and the alchemical historical timeline. Author, philosopher, and full-blooded alchemist PD Newman joins the show to help us sift through the weeds of esoterica here, and he's one of the best men for the job. Not only is he an accredited scholar and researcher, but also an alchemist in practice when it comes to philosophy and experimentation. He makes his own tinctures and medicines, he's worked as a cannabis master grower for medical facilities in Oklahoma, forages for his own fruits and various mushrooms, and even sifts through Native American texts, learning the ingredients of their old smoking blends to try for himself. He as well began growing the traditional Nicotiana Rustica tobacco plant, which is what the Natives Americans were known to use, and varies from the mass market Nicotiana Tabacum nearly all smokers enjoy today.

All this and you might think he's a hipster with a fedora and a handle-bar mustache, but PD Newman is an old hippie alchemist that lives and breathes what he talks about, and is humble enough to not flaunt his pursuits. Instead he truly seems to relish a conversation that might bring light to topics he loves so very much, and I very much relished the conversation I got to have with him. We not only talk about some of the alchemical histories of cannabis and tobacco, but we also discuss psilocybin, mescaline, and more.

Beyond this, I also got the chance to pick Newman's brain about Freemasonry in the modern day. Not only is he a 32nd degree Freemason of the Scottish Rite, but so was my late great grandfather, and we talk about masonry's history both in the context of alchemy and in the larger social perspectives. Given that any organization can veer into aspects of corruption, and that individual masonic lodges are run almost entirely independent from one another (just like a church), it can still be plainly seen that at the heart of any potential deviation is actually a rich, altruistic heritage of philosophical thinkers and actual brick masons building cathedrals. Either that or we're both just another couple of idiot or bought-out Masonic Shills!

It's all this and more this week! We hope you dig it.

This week we tackle one of the most horrifying real-life supervillain duos of all-time: Richard Kuklinski and Robert Prongay AKA The Iceman and Mr. Softee! A real true-crime epic, this story is one of the most hotly debated mafia-adjacent tales that we have today.

The premise is insane from the start: one of the most prolific mafia hitmen of all time teamed up with a former military demolitions expert-turned hitman/ice-cream truck driver. These men helped each other kill, and together learned new ways of murder and body disposal, all while somehow maintaining a low profile for years.

There is also the theme that these men existed on the outskirts of the one the grisliest eras in New York mafia history, rubbing shoulders with people like Sammy "the Bull" Gravano, Roy Demeo of The Gemini Lounge, and other big name made-men.

Kuklinski was said to have killed somewhere between 100 and 200 people, and it's said that cyanide was his favorite way to kill. He liked staying "creative", using weapons like guns, knives, road flares, ice picks, poisoned food, cyanide spray and injections, explosives, crossbows, and even a cave of wild man-eating rats in the forest.

It's commonly known that Kuklinksi did all this while maintaining a life that one could outwardly consider as an achievement of the "American dream", with healthy children and a seemingly happy wife, in a nice suburban home.

Robert Prongay appears to have done the same thing. The story of Mr. Softee is one that is much less documented, yet is certainly a matter of record. By taking what we've found on the public record and the stories that Kuklinksi has told, we can find the outline of this sinister ice-cream salesman.

This entire story is an amalgamation of police investigation, court record, prison confession, media fascination, and true crime he-said-she-said. The details come from many different angles, and no one seems to be a completely reliable narrator, especially not Iceman himself.

How true is the horrifying Legend of Iceman and Softee? Well, it's certainly not all made up, but we might find certain threads come loose the more we tug! Jump down the true crime rabbit hole with me this week as we investigate the career of The Iceman.

Oh, and PS: for those of you that are keeping up with the life and times of The League of Extordniary Gentlement, you might want to tune into the commercial breaks as well! They will not be, shall we say, "traditional" ad breaks.

This week's featured music:

This week we discuss a man that seems truly mythic in ways both brutally savage and death-defying. This is a man that many have dubbed the Brazilian "Punisher" and "Dexter", and he was known as Killer Petey AKA Pedrinho Matador -- but his real name is Pedro Rodrigues Filho. Born in 1954, he was Brazil's most prolific serial killer and a bit of a YouTuber before he died in early March 2023, and his body count was said to be over 100. With over 70 documented, somewhere between 40 and 50 of those were done in prison over a period of three decades, and that was even with some years spent in solitary confinement.

Pedro's crime spree began at 14 when he murdered his father's boss, a man that had wrongfully accused his father of theft. Fast-forward just a few years later, and 17 year-old Pedro is gunning down the man that murdered his girlfriend and unborn child. He gunned this man down at his own wedding, killing six more people and injuring over a dozen more with some help behind him. Since his first kill, Pedro had stuck by an oddly defined and seemingly strict code of ethics and morality: never harm women and children, murder any sick bastard that crossed his path, and apparently try to be a good Christian, although the extent of his religious beliefs are a bit unclear.

Was this man truly a serial killer that "protected" or "avenged" the innocent? It's quite possible, although there are some heavy moral implications that one must sift through in order to answer that question. Beyond morality and philosophy though, we also have to sift through the Portuguese language barrier, and parse through the telephone-game of data that has already taken hold of so much of Pedro's story. Without any thick, official biography or docu-series, and without any extra-special interest even given by the Brazilian media, we have only so much to go on here. It seems for now that people are satisfied with the broad strokes of Pedrinho's story, but not me! I dig as deep as I possibly can with the data abound and bare all my sources for you here.

Jump down the rabbit hole with me and try to decipher the strange character and story of the Brazilian Punisher.

This week's featured music -- don't forget to support that black hoodie rap and all your favorite independent artists!

This week on the show, we discuss the infamous case of Michael Alig, the 90's NYC club promoter known for his flamboyant pageantry and prankish antics that eventually murdered one of his friends, chopped them up in a bathtub and dumbed them in the Hudson River. Not only that, but it all quickly escalated into a full-on media circus as police failed to investigate, rumors ran rampant in the clubs and newspapers, and Alig himself joked about murdering Angel Melendez in public and in interviews. And this was all while Alig was hanging out with legendary icons like Ru Paul, and other zany characters like "James St. James", "Jenny Talia", and "Waltpaper".

As grisly and flashy as this case simultaneously was, it's little wonder it was turned into a movie released in 2003 entitled "Party Monster", starring Macaulay Culkin and Seth Green (and receiving pretty bad reviews overall.) Dressing up in a punkish, sometimes-androgynous aesthetic in the vein of David Bowie, Boy George, Lady Gaga, or the aforementioned Ru Paul, this brash and artistic youth movement of the "Club Kids" began as a jabby satire of the club scene that artist Andy Warhol had produced, but quickly became its own cliche. What began as a vibrant and mostly-positive NYC club scene of alt-kids -- self-proclaimed "Freaks" that were minorities of all kinds (particularly of the LGBTQ+ variety) -- that weren't even doing drugs, eventually descended into an absolute drug-fueled rampage-of-sorts through the NY club scene that led to murder, hubris, blood-soaked club parties, lots of drugs, and a whole lot of regret for a lot of people.

This story is absolutely bonkers on every level: to the incubation of a unique sub-culture, to the mind of a deeply flawed and troubled misfit murderer, the circus-like club antics, the proto-LGBTQ+ history, and the absolute abject failure of the NYPD to bring proper justice to the situation in due time.

Hopefully you dig it!

This week's featured music: don't forget to support that black hoodie rap and all your favorite independent artists!

This episode is a cannabis-fueled 4/20 celebration! Alas, I was not here to record for it -- but Jefferson Tilamookslinger was thankfully available to fill in and keep the flame alive! For those unaware, Jefferson first appeared in Black Hoodie Alchemy #34 and is a former Illuminati cloning-lab-manager that has since relocated to the Florida Everglades, joining the forces of Tippy Patson's League of Extordiarny Gentlemen! (For the uninitiated, you can listen to it all through episodes #14, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, and 38, and learn about these men that are too stupid to be a cult but too organized to just be hanging out in a swamp.) As I am preparing for a family wedding/reunion and everything that this will entail out-of-state, this will be the last Black Hoodie Alchemy episode until May 8th -- but rest assured the show will come back swingin' as as always!

So, aside from Jefferson smoking dope, we have a friend of the show and fellow alchemist, Martin Ferretti, joining the program to tell us all about the life and philosophy of contemporary philosopher and mystic, George Gurdjieff. Most active during the turn into the 20th century, Gurdjieff was an eccentric figure that aspired to find a path to a practical enlightenment -- i.e. an enlightenment that did not inherently require a monkhood or hermetic nature that eschewed the rest of society. If he hadn't been so genuine and effective, you could potentially see the mechanics of a cult in Gurdjieff's Fourth Way of Enlightenment, and some might still consider it as such! But is there any real merit to this? Who was Gurdjieff anyway? An eccentric mystic, an opportunist, a charlatan, or what?

Listen in as Martin and Jefferson give you a thorough and detailed explanation of these concepts and so much more! Oh, and happy toking -- don't forget to roll up and blow that sacramental ganja to the sky this 4/20 season!

We hope you dig this week's show. See you May 8th.

This week's featured music -- don't forget to support your all your favorite independent artists!

This week is another true-crime rabbit hole, as we discuss the strange and somewhat unexplainable tales of the murderers Gary Heidnik and Harrison Graham -- two men that captured and killed women in their North Philly homes at the same times between 1986-87.

Heidnik was not only some of the "inspiration" for Buffalo Bill in the Silence of the Lambs, but he was also dubbed the "Monster Preacher", owed to the fact that he actually held weekly church sermons at the same house where several women were imprisoned in his basement. There was at least one known congregation member that even helped Heidnik with his tortures.

Graham was a mentally-handicapped drug addict living in the projects of North Philly, around an area that was known for its heavy drug trafficking. The community knew Graham for his childlike and somewhat unpredictable behavior, constantly carrying around a Cookie Monster hand-puppet and talking to the children of the neighborhood among other strange things. This man eventually, through circumstances never well understood, began abducting and murdering women from the neighborhood, in order to keep them in the second bedroom of his apartment as a sort of disturbing mausoleum.

Join me as we discuss the stories of these men further, including their crimes, arrests and states-of-mind. What the hell was going on here in these Philly Houses of Horror? Just pure coincidence? There was absolutely no evidence ever found to even suggest that these two men knew anything about each other, so where does this leave us? Does hate float?

All this and more this week!

This episode, after heavy considerations of mysticism, trance states, dreams, abnormal psychology, possession, and even some true crime, we are jumping full-on into the serial killer rabbit to discuss the killer I grew up with -- well, he was stalking the hiking trails I grew up on and murdered a barista downtown while I was in high school.

This infamous and cowardly murderer is one of two Alaskan serial killers: Israel Keyes (the other one being Robert Hansen) and not only did I grow up in his hunting grounds, my dad actually polygraphed his last victim's boyfriend and father, along with other work done on the case for the Anchorage Police Department. The victim's name was Samantha Koenig, and this was the impulsive kidnap-abduction-murder that would ultimately end with Keyes writing bad poetry and slitting his wrists in a prison cell.

It's believed (though not confirmed) that Keyes murdered eleven people, but police were unequivocally certain of three. Samantha was not only the last victim, but the only victim actually taken by Keyes in Alaska. Although he'd planned for the options of more in the future, for the prior ten murders he'd kept several rules that he'd maintained, including: no kills in his home state, no children, no cell phones, and cash from bank robberies only. He's also know known for his heavy reliance on what are dubbed as "murder kits", which were literally serial-killing-buried-treasure full of all the essentials for his job and kept track of with maps. And if all that wasn't enough, he was a self-proclaimed Satanist as well!

Join me as we summarize Keyes' profile, backstory, and timeline, even getting into some philosophy and esotericism along the way.

This week, we attempt to sift through the beliefs of demonic possession from the psychoanalytic perspectives of CG Jung and others. This will not be an episode based in religious orthodoxy, but that doesn't mean we aren't exploring some potentially unexplainable phenomena all the same. Building off of episode #39, what if calloused, inert phantom limbs of our psyche suddenly could become animated? How do you heal a traumatic reaction to something that isn't there? And why does it appear that our traumas seem to have a mind of their own?

Rather than cast psychology aside here, we use analytic psychology to help us understand the belief systems of demonic possession and consider the variety of mental illnesses involved, but we also take into account the research of Dr. Richard Gallagher, for example.

Gallagher is an esteemed psychiatrist that has maintained his credibility in his regular practice amidst helping the Catholic church vet out the differences between mental illness and something truly unexplainable. Beginning as a skeptic, the priests who first worked with Dr. Gallagher told him that his skepticism was part of what made them appreciate his insight. Over two decades into his work now with the exorcists, he is no longer a skeptic. 

Now, I'm not a Catholic, nor am I particularly advocating Catholicism. But as I understand it, belief is a tool that -- if used correctly -- can help us tap into a variety of different things that we can scarcely comprehend before experiencing them. We even discuss some serial killers here!

Overall, could it be that what some call possession is actually a very extreme psychosomatic response to a combination of traumas? And could it be that in these very extreme cases, some people actually do act inhuman, performing unexplainable feats?

Even if you're a skeptic, it's certainly worth considering -- and that's exactly what we'll be doing this week!

This week, we get back to our roots some more. Considering science, mysticism, and folklore all at once, we dive down the rabbit holes of dream phenomena and the entities people encounter during them, including the shadow people of sleep paralysis and even the classical Greek mythology of the siren. Little known today, the siren was considered a common dream entity thousands of years ago, said to be something like the total opposite of a sleep-paralysis shadow person -- instead of something ghastly and petrifying, the siren was something so sweet and full of promise that no one was to ever question the sentiments that would surely cast them overboard. And unfortunately, the siren song's function is always to lure overboard.

People encounter all sorts of different, even recurring and deeply archetypal characters in their dreams, and more often than not they find that they have no control over these characters to begin with. Traditions around the world have long since considered dreams to be extremely important in varying degrees, some groups stating that these characters are just as real as the people in your everyday life, and some even saying that these dreams are in ways more important than your everyday life! Well what would Carl Jung say about all this? As it turns out, he said quite a bit about these exact sentiments of dreams and sentience, and after all, questions like this are what drive Philip K. Dick's stories like "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" We'll take a look at Jung's thoughts on the subject more throughout the episode.

There is a great deal of science out there describing the structures and functions of sleeping, dreaming, and even things like sleep paralysis, yet despite all this, we still find that dream phenomena is a giant cornerstone in the mindset of modern mysticism, just as it ever was. Even with all our rationalizations and empirical studies that have helped us gain info, we're no closer to resolutely solving the mysteries of the dream world -- and this is what we are here to sift through in this episode! Let's consider the details that modern mainstream science has glossed over, do some empirical digging through the science and the history, and see how much we can get to the bottom of this.

Welcome to the one-year anniversary of Black Hoodie Alchemy! This episode, I'm celebrating with a couple of my good friends: Justin Otto (host of Dharma Junkie) and the man, the myth, the legend himself: Tippy Patson - Redneck Mystic Extraordinaire! 

For those unaware, Tippy P is a mystical long-haul trucker from Defuniak Springs, FL, and he's all about the worship of Henry Ford and American trucker culture throughout time and space. He has sort of a mystical Christian perspective, he considers Mountain Dew and Bud Light to be the philosopher's elixirs, and he's committed to wrestling the gators of the everglades -- which he and his friends believe are illuminati reptilian-aliens that are hanging out in the everglades during their off-time.

Since Tippy's last time on the show, we've had all of his league members on to discuss how they found Tippy, what they were doing beforehand, and what their plans are for the future. You can listen to Martin Ferretti chat with cosmic ghost-pirate Apex Monsoon in #32, dolphin and LSD enthusiast Silverback Commando in #33, former Illuminati cloning lab manager Jefferson Tillamookslinger in #34, pro-wrestling scholar and numerologist Muscle Tornado in #35, and moonshiner mystic Bayou Jones in #35. You can also hear Tippy's other chats on this show in episodes #14 and #30!

Tippy gives us the updates with his special league and their plans, as well as his new Finnish friend that he's come in contact with: Juha Kourhonen. Former bassist for the death metal band Grim Reaper Diapers in Rovaniemi Finland, his wealth of knowledge is immense regarding the harvest of adrenachrome with links to the ancient Egyptian Deity Sobek, the God of Gators, and the primordial Lovecraftian titan that is known only as Santa Clause. Currently, Tippy and The League of Extordniary Gentlemen have built a GoFundMe page to help them get to Finland, in order to meet up with their friend Juha and defeat the Santa Clause.

Join us and have a laugh for this one-year celebration! And a sincere thank you to all the listeners for helping this program make it this far. We couldn't have done it without you.

This week's featured music! Don't forget to support that black hoodie rap and all your favorite independent artists! 

This week features the wrap-up of our introduction to "The League of Extordniary Gentlemen" with two special guests: Muscle Tornado and Bayou Jones. And once again, my colleague Martin Ferretti fills in for me while I'm off solving extraordinary Indiana-Jones-esque ancient mysteries! 

First we Tippy's Patson's recruit, Muscle Tornado -- a " spiritual warrior for Jesus" that loves DMT, numerology, and Hulk Hogan. Not only is pro wrestling a very real sport to him with real consequences, it is literally the war of God and the Devil incarnate. These wrestlers, he argues, are the mortal totems that represent a warfare throughout the ages.

Next we'll meet Bayou Jones -- an old moonshiner mystic, one of Tippy's oldest friends, and a man who was allegedly raised by some kindly alligators. This interview is a bit shorter, on account of Bayou's incoherence from all crack cocaine he smokes during the chat. And if you're not on the Tippy Patson train yet, understand that this is a for sure super duper real group of dummies hanging out in the Florida Everglades, wrestling what they're convinced are shapeshifting Illuminati gators! That's right -- they're too stupid to be a cult but too organized to just be regular swamp people, and they're always a fun time. 

Lastly, with the time to spare I tell a story of some of my elderly step-uncles landing on an episode of Alaska State Troopers. Season 3, Episode 6: Madman Manhunt! Fast forward to the final story of the episode and you'll find them trying to steal scrap metal from the dump after dark, and I give you the details that the state trooper couldn't figure out. It's this and more insanity this week. I hope you dig it!

And don't forget to listen to Black Hoodie Alchemy #14, 30, 32, 33, and 34 for the rest of The League of Extordniary Gentlemen's escapades!

Welcome to a little bit of a listener appreciation edition of Black Hoodie Alchemy! We have a pre-recorded call-in from Chris F, a little bit of featured music from rapper and illustrator Alex Arck, and the rowdy banjo picking of listener Grant Mock under the name Stray Puzzle Piece, who also joins me as a guest in the second portion of the show to discuss the concept of CG Jung's synchronicity.

But before all that, Martin Ferretti of The Alchemical Mind joins me once again to interview yet another member of Redneck Mystic Tippy's Patson's crew of illuminati-gator hunters. This man goes by the codename: Jefferson T, although there are some discrepancies with what his last name actually is. He not only clears this up for us, but also goes into his fifteen-year career as a manager of a franchised Illuminati cloning facility in Newark, New Jersey. 

He as well elaborates on details of the life and operations of cloning lab employees, just who is running these labs, and why he's come to the Florida Everglades to gather with Tippy P and the rest of his crew. A brief interview with a member of Tippy's "League of Extordniary Gentlemen" will not be a part of every episode moving forward, but we are in the middle of a solid stint right now! You can expect one more next week before we move back into more traditional guests for now.

But don't forget: if you want to hear the full chronicles of Tippy's League, check out Black Hoodie Alchemy episodes #14, 30, 32, and 33!

As mentioned, the second half of the show will be a discussion of synchronicity, guided by quotes from Jung's work, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle. This conversation quickly becomes part psychology, part physics, and part mysticism as we try to hash out just what synchronicity is and what its building blocks are. When we see the external world convey "messages" to us in ways that are deeply intuitive and difficult to explain to others, is this purely psychological? How much of it is actual physical, like a manifestation? How much of this might we be able to consider as obsessive-compulsive, and how do we tell when analyzing something like synchronicity has become a detriment? As always on this show, we try to consider the phenomenal with an open-minded and skeptical point of view, and while so much of this stuff has become New Age bullshit, it's truly hard to discount the ultimately unexplainable implications synchronicity. 

This week's featured music! Don't forget to support that black hoodie rap and all your favorite independent artists!

This week we have a two-parter, with both parts revolving around total madness. 

For the first half hour, Martin Ferretti of The Alchemical Mind returns to guest-host for me, interviewing the second member of Redneck Mystic Tippy Patson's crew, "The League of Extordniary Gentlemen." Fighting for the freedom of humanity against the Illuminati alligators deep in the Florida Everglades, Codename: Silverback Commando tells Martin and the audience why he joined Tippy's league in the swamps, and he also tells us about what kind of "research" he is bringing to the table. He fancies himself the "next Dr. John Lilly" and seems to be obsessed with Lilly's NASA-funded studies that involved LSD, dolphins, theoretical telepathy, and eventually, even some dolphin sensuality. Hustler even wrote an article about it, and none of that is a lie. Google it. But Silverback Commando tells us a little bit about his attempts to recreate this "dolphin telepathy," and explains more about his other studies in the Everglades with Tippy. 

Secondly, in this 100% real story that you can google for yourself, Hollywood actor Terrence Howard (famous for Hustle & Flow and Iron Man, among others) sort of retired from acting in 2015. That's why you haven't heard from him much. But do you know why he retired? Explaining in an interview with Rolling Stone first, he explained to the world that he has invented a COMPLETELY NEW MATH, called Terryology, and it revolves around 1x1=2. He's also used this equation to invent a "New Geometry", which he labors over, filling his apartment with enormous pseudo-psychedelic models. Take this quote for example, "I was able to open up the flower of life properly and find the real wave conjugations we've been looking for for 10,000 years. Why would I continue walking on water for tips when I've got an entire generation to teach a whole new world?" And that, folks, is just the beginning. I read a whole lot of quotes here trying to understand the true Kanye-level madness of Terrence Howard. I'm not sure how this man hasn't tried to start a cult yet, but I'm all the more thankful of the fact!

Jump with me down the rabbit hole for a slightly more comedic and extremely preposterous episode!

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For those of that have kept up with the Tippy Patson interviews, my colleague Martin Ferretti and I have a special treat for you! For those that are unaware, Tippy P is a completely and for sure "real" Florida Man that is convinced he has found evidence of American trucker culture throughout time and space, and that the reptilian Illuminati are actually all of the gators that live in the Florida Everglades. Because of this, he and his friend Bayou Jones have set up shop in the Everglades and begun recruiting people to help them save the world from these shapeshifting gators and along the way, Tippy has given us all sorts of strange rabbit holes of consideration. This conversation will be no different! It is the first interview with one of Tippy's recruits in what they are calling "The League of Extordinary Gentlemen," and this member's code-name is Apex Monsoon. This man actually claims to be a "cosmic ghost pirate" that Tippy has trapped within a ship-in-a-bottle. Like a genie. Not sure if this man is mentally ill, too high on drugs, a real cosmic pirate, or maybe all of the above -- but Martin fills in for me to try and get to the bottom of this.

As for the majority of the show, it is dedicated to an informal analysis of the Aum Shinrikyo Japanese death cult. Known for their somewhat successful terrorist attack of a Japanese subway in the late 90's, this MASSIVE cult started out with a man simply pretending he was enlightened, and promising the knowledge of extrasensory powers. By combining Buddhism, apocalyptic Christianity, off-brand Scientological models, leader Shoko Asahara convinced tens of thousands to follow him, and was known by most of Japan as a cheerfully enlightened New Age thinker. Meanwhile, he was literally building off-books chemical weapons factories, equipped with teams of scientists to help him achieve goals that are nothing short of absolute comic-book supervillainy. How did this man convince reasonable and clearly intelligent people to go en-masse down the rabbit hole with him? And how did it culminate in a terrorist attack that rocked the core of Japanese culture and homeland security?

Find out with me this week!

This week's featured music! Don't forget to support that black hoodie rap and all your favorite independent artists:

Welcome back! After a hiatus of over a month, Black Hoodie Alchemy resumes -- and I've got a bone to pick with the notion of enlightenment. While I don't discount that enlightenment is an attainable state of consciousness, and I don't discount that there are altruistic people alive today that claim enlightenment, I've got a real hard time with the idea of enlightenment for several reasons. 

Firstly, isn't it always more impressive when someone does something first? Buddha, Christ, and others might still be impressive, but even if someone is achieving enlightenment today, that doesn't make them Christly. The times have changed quite a bit, and "control methods" for enlightenment are few and far between. Even if steps once worked for some people, does that mean that they are always guaranteed to work for everyone? And why does everyone assume that if you are enlightened, you are automatically a good, altruistic person? Could it be that even terrible, evil people could be enlightened? If enlightenment is a thing, it seems to be something like a neurological hack of your habituated thought patterns (and yes I know this a reductionist view). And if all this is the case, then I don't think there is enough evidence to rule out the dark side of enlightenment.

To me, at this point, someone claiming enlightenment is guilty until proven innocent. I wish it wasn't the case, but the times have changed. In a word full of wannabe cult leaders, scheming politicians, tick tock celebrities and more, I don't trust the people that want to sell their answers. Sell food for thought, but don't sell so-called "fool-proof answers". Enlightenment to me is in the same category today as someone claiming to be specially chosen by God to change the world, or someone being specially chosen by aliens to change the world. Perhaps enlightenment is the most realistic options of those three, but claims of it so often seem to bring about the same results...

In any case, I prefer disillusionment, and my aim is therapy and catharsis, not enlightenment. It is entirely possible and even likely that all these things are on the same continuum of spiritual development, but suffice it to say, it is like Plato himself said: those fit to rule or lead generally do not do so, and those unfit to rule or lead generally tend to do so. I have yet to see this piece of philosophy disproven. 

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Fellow researcher and field-investigator, Chaz of the Dead joins me to talk about some of his strange expeditions across the world, investigation the unexplainable, the psychedelic, and the horrific -- oftentimes all at once. Firstly we discuss Chaz's ground-rules of paranormal investigation, with considerations of Carl Jung, chaos magick, and classical paranormal ghost hunting but without the crosses and holy water. After this, we get into some real wild stories. 

Chaz talks about poltergeists, demonology, reports of vampiric flying serpents in modern day South Africa, and even his field investigations . He's investigated UFO hotspots in Chile (to include possibilities of Nazi hideouts from their post-WWII scramble in South America), he's also investigated the strange paranormal of the haunted mansion and a strange metal sphere near Jacksonville, Florida, that attracted government attention in the 1970s, and he talks about his experiments with LSD and psilocybin while ghost-hunting and playing with ouija boards! Chaz is a very adventurous man to the say the least, and for all the wild topics he's able to talk about, he brings a level of grounded, humorous skepticism to it all that is mostly missing from the rest of the paranormal community. Chaz isn't expecting to find the answers to all his questions, but that won't stop him from trying!

So what about psychedelics and the paranormal anyway? Would it help a ouija board to work better if you were peaking on mushrooms? Would it make you more receptive to the paranormal while walking around a haunted mansion at night on LSD? Or is it just a really wild experiment with some fun stories? The food for thought you find in here might be more concrete than you would expect. 

Hear about all this and more! We hope you dig it.

Welcome back, folks! This week on the show, my friend Martin Ferretti joins me to analyze psychoanalyst, Carl Jung's legendary self-therapy journals: The Red and Black Books. Both released after his death, The Red Book represents a sizable portion of the Black Books' contents. Large, leather-bound, and full of beautifully haunting paintings and calligraphy of his innermost spiritual turmoil, Jung's Red Book is truly something like a magical tome written by a modern man of science.  

The Black Books were the rough journals he kept of nearly twenty years of therapeutic investigation into his dreams, meditations, and trance states. Like a mythological hero speaking to gods and goddesses, angels, even some demons and ghosts, Jung would work himself into an active trance and communicate with his hypnotic archetypes in order to discover epic journeys, tribulations, lessons, and triumphs that actively played roles in his daily life. The story today is almost something like a hard-nosed, disciplined man of science allowing himself to go on one of the truest NeverEnding Stories of all time.  

And not only do we discuss Jung's journey of this nature, we also bring up the likes of JRR Tolkien, Dante Alighieri, Wolfgang Goethe, and Manly P Hall, showing how the investigations of our imaginal constructs through art and magick are sometimes the only way to highlight and grab hold of some of our innermost undiscovered drives, instincts, aspirations, and downfalls. Without our dreams, our art, and plans and projects, we would implode under the weight of our un-mined potential. Truly, this is the physics of the situation -- ignore it and see what happens. 

People like Jung and Tolkien didn't shoulder the weight of an existential crisis because they thought it might be fun, they did so because they found themselves at a place in their lives where it had become unavoidable. So, rather than avoid it at all costs, they strapped up and dove headfirst into the abyss so that they might tame it!  

As Jung himself once wrote, borrowing from Goethe, “This is the fund of unconscious images which fatally confuse the mental patient. But it is also the matrix of a mythopoeic imagination which has vanished from our rational age. Though such imagination is present everywhere, it is both tabooed and dreaded... It is considered the path of error, of equivocation and misunderstanding. I am reminded of Goethe’s words; ‘Now let me dare to open wide the gate/ Past which men’s steps have ever flinching trod.’ …Unpopular, ambiguous, and dangerous, it is a voyage of discovery to the other pole of the world.”  Come with me if us want to dive. 

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This week Miguel Conner and his cohort ol' Moondog join me from Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio! These guys are veterans of the game -- life, esoteric study and practice, even broadcast -- and I am always eager to have a conversation with them. And while this episode is being released on Halloween, and the holiday will be mentioned here and there, don't be discouraged to listen to this any time of year! The three of us have done some sort of Halloween Special for the last two years and we couldn't help but make our own trilogy with this addition!

Throughout the conversation, Miguel and Vance help me understand some of the finer points of Gnostic history and philosophy. Where does Gnostic history start, what do the Mysteries of Antiquity have to do with it, what is the significance of apocryphal Biblical gospels, and what does this all mean for us in today's era? What did the Gnostics exactly believe and why were they so focused on Yahweh, the Abrahamic god, being a tormentor? Did they just think that he was incompetent as a god, or did they think he was sincerely evil? And what does that mean for Lucifer? Historically speaking, it's easy to see why the Catholic church had a deep distaste for the spiritual skepticism of the Gnostics, but it is for this very reason that Gnostic philosophy thrives today. In a way that is historically unique and poignant, the Gnostics tackled the idea of cosmic and existential terror head-on, attempting to truly grab the bull by the horns in their own ways. To the Gnostic mindset, it would appear that every day is an existential test equivalent to the Buddha sitting under the bodhi, tempted by Mara. And who's to say that it isn't? 

After all, what's more terrifying than the prospect of a flawed higher power?

The featured music this week! As always, support that underground black hoodie rap and all your favorite indie artists out there:

This time around, Keats Ross of the PragMagick podcast is here to get our fingers deep in the dark recesses of our unconscious minds, doing some kinds of ghost-busting that you've probably never considered before! Yes, we'll be celebrating the Halloween season a little bit -- and for most you that are listening to this outside of October, don't be discouraged! The content is applicable to any season, but it's just so fitting right now. Yes, it's gonna be a form of hungry-ghost-busting! Keats talks to us about his multi-media work that he's entitled "Haunt Manual" discussing the aspects of our characters, our egos, our minds, and our lives that haunt us. 

We talk quite a bit about both eastern and western esotericism, discussing ritual and ceremony in drug rehabilitation and other forms of therapy, the archetypes of hungry ghosts and demons and angels, and the alchemical process of rooting around in our own minds in order to purify and renew what we've thrown away through trauma and misunderstanding.

We also talk a little bit about Keats' history growing up with his father, a man who hosted a show very similar to the ones Keats and I host! Through his father, Keats met as a child prominent names such as Robert Anton Wilson and even Timothy Leary, which helped to inspire his own pursuits to this day.

Pull the cosmic trigger: search back through the stories and art that inspired you as a child, forgive yourself for your mistakes, stop letting nostalgia and regret torment you, and dig deep into your psyches to forgive and renew the aspects that haunt you.

Happy Halloween season to ya!

Check out all of Keats' material here: 

After a two-week break, this next episode picks up right where the last left off: discussing and investigating the outer limits of strangeness! Joined by my friend, Fortean investigator Bob Antone, we discuss some of the stranger and creepier stories he's encountered throughout his life in North Bend, Washington with his wife Laura. 

Laura is a native of the First Nations Dene people, and having both been raised in the area, Bob and his wife have been heavily steeped in the native shamanic and folkloric customs and traditions. Bob is the kind of guy that knows so much about these things, he has to at times be careful about the way he speaks, so as not to damage sanctity and sacredness of these lesser known native beliefs. In other words: he can't tell us everything, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have plenty to say! 

We warm up with a little bit of talk about paranormal encounters and Sasquatch --including some of Bob's personal stories-- and we bring up serial killers of the Pacific Northwest like Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgeway, and Israel Keyes. If we're careful not to sensationalize, and we're careful not to fall for silly legal defenses, isn't there a possibility that some of these serial killers might be influenced by some sort of ominous metaphysical influences? We're not trying to draw any dangerous conclusions here, but we do discuss this a bit, even bringing up known accounts of Ted Bundy's childhood home in Tacoma being haunted!

Lastly, we hash out some of the details of what exactly a skinwalker is, and what genuine "black magick" or "dark arts" are. Not pointing to one specific deity and saying, "bad", but considering the real archetypal underpinnings of using metaphysical mindsets for nefarious things. 

We hope you enjoy a chat we tried to make exceptionally creepy for the Halloween season -- but don't be discouraged to listen to this episode any time of year either!

The music used in this week's episode is from Bob and Laura's folk-blues band, Tinkham Road! The versions played in the show are the acoustics, but I also strongly encourage you to check out the studio sessions linked here in the show notes!

This time around, the show gets pretty X-Files-ish with my colleague, AP Strange -- a writer, researcher, investigator, and collector of Forteana. Strange gives us a brief history of Charles Fort and the ideas of "Fortean" investigation and phenomena, which essentially encompasses anything unexplainable with some shades of specificity that we'll get into. 

Armed with an impressive Fortean library, AP Strange knows well about eclectic researchers and their strange obsessions throughout the years, whether it be UFOs, cryptids, or poltergeists, and this man can easily be considered a walking Fortean library himself. Additionally, he's had his own wild Fortean experiences that he tells us about, and he recommends further topics of research that you may not have ever heard of. 

Phantom clowns abducting children? Silent black helicopters and an outbreak of cattle mutilations? Poltergeists, Loch Ness, and spontaneous combustion? What about UFOs and abductions and Men in Black? We've got it all in this episode as well discuss the unexplainable, the surreal, and where to draw the line with your own mental health. Being fascinated with these things is all a part of the human experience -- we love folklore and mythology and trying to figure things out for ourselves -- but we must be careful to not slip headfirst down the rabbit hole, losing ourselves in paranoia and the foolish quest for the ultimate truth. Where do these things come from? Is it all in our heads, or something more? What about both options?

For one of the most esoteric episodes I've done so far, Joe Rupe joins me again and we talk about magick, alchemy, Hermeticism, and the Order of the Golden Dawn. We go through many different areas of discussion here, like: why Hermeticism isn't a religion, where it came from historically, why alchemists were trying to turn lead into gold, what the most recommended reading is, and what exactly the Golden Dawn is all about. Boasting some scholarly esoteric names like Aleister Crowley, Israel Rigarde, and Oscar Wilde, Joe is also a member of the Order and helps shed light on this mysterious secret society, its workings, and its practices. Is it Illuminati-official, are they sacrificing babies in the name of Satan, or is it yet just another human philosophy out there aimed at transcendentalism? And what does all this mean in the modern era?

This week's featured music -- support that underground black hoodie rap and your favorite independent artists!

This week's episode will be more personal than usual, as I talk about why the culture of the conspiracy theory has been on the strong rise over the last several years. For 3 years, around 2014 to 2017, I was one of the three main writers behind the non-partisan news website The Last American Vagabond, where I immersed myself in so many conspiracy theories in an attempt to find what was real and what wasn't. I haven't kept up with the headlines or the people associated with the Vagabond for quite some time now, but I've got no hard feelings or anything ill to say about them in particular. And let it be known very loudly and clearly that I am not anti-conspiracy theory as a wholesale statement! Many conspiracy theories are conspiracy facts, and the idea of "conspiracy" is just a part of human culture that exists in the bottom of the hierarchy, the top, and everywhere in between. 

But how do we really separate fact from hysteria? As example: the Jeffrey Epstein scandal was very real and full of evidence, yet people still focus on MCU-style conspiracy theory cross-overs that connect everything together and would probably make a fun comic book or movie, but they also make for a very fucking sad and unhealthy real life. Over the last few years we've seen a rise in conspiracy-theory-culture interventions as family try to talk people down from a paranoid proverbial ledge, and we've seen people completely throwing friends and family away because these people "can't see the truth."

Epstein, Q Anon, Pizzagate, 9/11, the Illuminati, Annunaki and various Reptilian or otherwise alien overlords, and a whole lot more in this episode!

Then, to top it all off, I tell the very real story of my Iraqi Refugee friend that I made in Anchorage, Alaska in 2015. Nicknamed "Sam", he was brought to the US by the United Nations Witness Protection Program. Having worked as an interpreter for US forces for years in Iraq as a teenager, the Taliban had finally started targeting him and his family, forcing Sam to flee the country. Find out more of the details of his story on this week's episode! Sam's story was a final straw for me to show that conspiracy theories missed so many details from their far removed arm-chair researcher perspective. 

All this and more on Black Hoodie Alchemy

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Interested in the psychology, symbolism, and existential potential of the UFO, but tired of the insane new age space gurus, government insiders, and half-baked philosophies? Then this will be an episode for you. 

UFOs won't be a main focus on this podcast series, and this will likely be one of the few episodes I ever do on the subject. They will surely be mentioned from time to time with varying degrees of focus, but the majority of connotations associated with Ufology and the types of investigations it provokes aren't my main focuses of interest. Some people interested in Ufology say they are interested in the stars and the potential for cosmic life, but what it seems they are most interested in is paranoia, mania, and the rush of uncovering esoteric secrets. Another rendition of the age-old archetypal hero's-journey with a whooole lot of weeds to get lost in on this trek! 

So let's talk about why Ufology is so full of holes in its traditional lore, but why the psychology and existential "image" of the UFO has truly been seen throughout history and has its own presence within the human experience. But how physical are these things? Do they come from other planets? What kind of primal questions about existence in the cosmos does the image of the UFO stir within us all? None of it is exactly straightforward, but I certainly don't agree with the most traditional explanations, nor do I buy the tales of government insiders or story-sellers. 

And to top it all off, I get into the basic nuts and bolts of my UFO sightings outside of Anchorage, Alaska! I lived there for many years and saw more than a couple very clear and confusing UFOs. No aliens, no abductions, not even any real climaxes, but they were ace-in-the-hole sightings that have left me with my own questions and considerations. You don't have to believe me either. I'm not a ufologist, I don't have a stake in any of these claims, I'm just sharing my experiences. Government-based, existentially metaphysical, a psychedelic-esque vision, or extra-terrestrials from another planet, we all know someone that has seen unexplainable phenomena in the sky, and we see it throughout our historical records. So let's not ignore it, and let's not look to "officials" for a narrative. Let's investigate for ourselves.

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This week's episode is all about the "Ancient Mysteries of Antiquity" as scholars have put it, and what they psychologically represent for us today. Part historical fact and part philosophical supposition, the Mysteries are the loose name for the overarching metaphysical studies found within the cultures of the Egyptian, the Hebrew, the Greeks, Romans, Mesopotamians, Sumerians, Persians, Chinese, Vedic, and other traditions more. Some part of the mystery here is how exactly so many global and ancient cultures communicated their philosophies with one another, and how much of it is archetypal psychology. In other words: how much of this comes from old trading routes, how much of this is purely the collective consciousness, and how much of this is just the confirmation biases of New Agers and staunch esotericists. 

The deeper mystery here is what all the priestly studies of so many cultures were seeking to shed light on. What sciences did they pass down to one another, what secrets did they keep under penalty of death, and how were altered states of consciousness involved? Ancient priests from so many cultures maintained a continuity and fraternity of ancient metaphysical study, something that even inspired the Freemasons among so many other secret societies, and all of them had key-points and takeaways that we can consider today through historical evidence. Were they studying the meaning of life, or is it something more alchemical and to the point? Furthermore, what is the psychology behind this all? Why do humans feel the need to understand the secrets of the cosmos? What is there to gain in the end and what does this archetypal quest truly represent? 

Ultimately, I try to pinpoint what the historical perspective of the Mysteries are, and I aim to drive home just how and why they have shaped general philosophy, occultism, mysticism, and religion as we know it today.

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This week, I'm not saying that 'evil' as a concept is completely nonexistent, but I'll be taking the time to demonstrate how the arch-devil of Christianity is entirely a "straw-man argument" that not even the source texts backed up until a certain point in history. Like it is with so many other things, this multi-thousand year telephone game brought us all a mix of many different characters like Set, Pan, Lucifer, Lilith, Prometheus and more. And while some of these characters have archetypal similarities to each other, some of these are just entirely different mythological personas that were amalgamated to make a character seemingly worth demonizing. 

I also take the time to talk a bit about the Qabalistic Trees of Life and Death and how they relate to Dante's Divine Comedy and its levels of heaven and hell. This in turn brings us further into a conversation about dynamic forces of nature that we attempt to humanize as gods or devils with our spiritual traditions. 

This isn't moral relativism and this isn't devil worship either, but it would be safe to say that orthodox Christians are going to want to sit this episode out unless they're fairly open-minded about ancient history and their cultures!

I hope you dig it.

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