Tag: occult

The astonishing story of the last British woman jailed for witchcraft – just 80 years ago

It’s November 25 1941, and off the Egyptian coast, HMS Barham explodes after a U-boat torpedo strike. Jets of steam, smoke and iron fragments are thrown into the sky; the ship sinks within minutes; over 800 Navy men are killed almost simultaneously. All news of the sinking is censored. Yet, in Barham’s home port, Portsmouth, the sailors’ families soon hear rumours; and visitors to the séances of Helen Duncan, a spiritualist medium, apparently witness a miracle. Helen – known as Nellie – speaks with the ghost of a Barham sailor, and reveals the ship’s loss. She makes it public long before the official announcement of the sinking.

How did Duncan know Barham had sunk? Or was her revelation just a guess, a fraud in which she charged the bereaved to listen to nothing better than gossip? In 1944, prosecutors would judge her magical knowledge to be fake, and the Barham story would be told at the end of her trial for defrauding her customers. Even so, however, instead of facing straightforward allegations of deception and theft, Duncan had been charged under the 1735 Witchcraft Act. The British public was gripped by a modern witch-trial, shocked that a 200-year-old law had been revived. In what way, people asked, could Nellie Duncan be a witch?

Duncan had flirted with the supernatural her whole life. She was born in Callander, near Stirling, in 1897, and as a child claimed the magical ability called “second sight”. On becoming an unmarried mother at 17, she was disowned by her parents, and found dusty, dangerous work in a jute mill. More hopefully, in 1916 she married a cabinetmaker, Henry Duncan – but, trapped by poverty and overwork, the couple fell chronically ill. Soon they had eight children – contraception was considered sinful – and a mountain of debt. 

Nellie Duncan took in washing as well as labouring in a bleaching plant, and in spite of all their troubles, she claimed joyful contact with God and the afterlife. As she fell into apparent trances, ghostly spirits would speak through her lips. She and Henry set up a darkened séance room where white gloop – “ectoplasm” – appeared before paying visitors, flowing out of Nellie’s mouth and nose to manifest spirits’ bodies. It looked awfully like muslin cloth, but her customers loved it.

In 1930, Duncan went to Edinburgh and London for appointments with psychic investigators. They tested her mediumship, strip-searching, photographing and X-raying her. Some observers confirmed her claims, although celebrity investigator Harry Price accused her of regurgitating muslin to fake materialisations. Nonetheless, her efforts paid off. Being accepted by the London Spiritualists’ Alliance meant the opportunity to go on séance tours of Britain, bringing fame and wealth.

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How Occultism Was a Catalyst for Avant-Garde Art

Twenty-first-century art has seen a proliferation of tendencies that can be collectively referred to as ‘the esoteric turn’. The manifestations of this proclivity show no signs of waning in the 2020s, discerned in the work of legions of contemporary artists, the recuperation of once-dismissed oeuvres, in academic research projects that reveal how occultism was a catalyst for the avant-garde and innumerable thematic institutional exhibitions. Swedish Ecstasy amalgamates all these symptoms, bringing historical figures together with living artists, all of whom originate from Sweden (or in the case of Carsten Höller, reside there). The exhibition’s opening gallery is devoted to a substantial extract from Hilma af Klint’s renowned 193-piece opus Paintings for the Temple (1906–15); this is the first time af Klint has been exhibited in Belgium, but it’s just one of several major European institutional exhibits featuring her work this year. The extent to which af Klint’s legacy has (rightfully) been validated and revived over the past two decades is remarkable, and a similar process of restitution is now taking place in response to the work of Anna Cassel, who collaborated with af Klint both in the studio and in séances as part of a small Christian Spiritualist group known as The Five. Here Cassel is represented by a suite of diagrammatic paintings – all produced over consecutive days in April 1913 – that are built upon Anthroposophical and Rosicrucian symbolism.

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White Lotus Day celebrates the ‘founding mother of occult in America,’ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

Every May 8, thousands of people celebrate White Lotus Day, commemorating a remarkable and controversial Russian American woman: spiritual leader Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who died in 1891.

HPB, as followers affectionately call her, is remembered as a co-founder of the Theosophical Society. Aiming to create a universal brotherhood of humanity, theosophy claimed that its tenets came from spiritual masters in the Himalayas.

Today, the movement has over 25,000 official members, with more than 1,000 lodges and centers around the world. Other theosophical organizations, like United Lodge of Theosophists, also boast a robust official and unofficial membership that is harder to estimate.

Theosophy’s strongest influence, however, was on the esoteric spiritual revival that took Europe and the United States by storm in the late 19th century, with Blavatsky herself sometimes called “the mother of modern spirituality.” Her descriptions of Hinduism and Buddhism were often romanticized and inaccurate but fueled Western interest in Asian religions and gave rise to dozens of spiritual movements.

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Writer Rachel Pollack, who reimagined the practice of tarot, dies at 77

Science fiction and comic book writer Rachel Pollack, who died April 7 at age 77, transformed tarot – from a practice once dismissed as an esoteric parlor trick, into a means of connection that felt personal, political and rooted in community. “We were trying to break the tarot free from what it had been, and open up a whole new way of being,” Pollack said in a 2019 interview with Masters of the Tarot.

Her 1980 book Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom was named for the number of cards in a tarot deck. In it, Pollack explored archetypes that hadn’t been updated much since their creation in the 1400s. Based on rigid gender and class stereotypes, traditional tarot left little space for reinterpretation. Pollack reimagined it through the lens of feminism, and saw it as a path to the divine. She wrote a book exploring Salvador Dali’s tarot and even created a deck of her own called the Shining Tribe tarot.

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Was Freud Afraid of the Occult?

During a visit to Vienna in 1909, Jung had a conversation with Freud about the new study of parapsychology. Freud dismissed the whole subject as nonsense, something Jung, who had had ample experience of it, could not accept. As the conversation grew heated, Jung, who wanted to keep relations with Freud cordial, found it difficult to hold back his feelings. After all, he had been chosen by Freud to inherit his throne, and he had great respect, even love for his mentor. But Jung also had his own genius and ambitions and found it difficult to toe the party line. Now, as he looked at Freud he felt his diaphragm glow, as if it was becoming red-hot. Suddenly a loud bang exploded in Freud’s bookcase, and both men jumped up, afraid it would fall on them. Jung said to Freud “There, that is an example of a so-called catalytic exteriorisation phenomenon,” Jung’s long-winded circumlocution for a poltergeist or “noisy spirit.” Freud retorted “Bosh!” Jung shook his head and predicted that another bang would soon follow. When it did, Freud looked at Jung “aghast,” and from that moment on was mistrustful of him. Jung said the way Freud looked at him it was “as if I had done something against him.”

Not long after this, again in Vienna, Jung again visited Freud, and he later recalled a peculiar conversation they had, during which Freud asked Jung to promise that he would never abandon the sexual theory of the origin of neurosis. Freud told Jung that they must make “a dogma of it, an unshakeable bulwark.” Jung said that Freud spoke in the tones in which a father would ask his son to promise that he would go to church every Sunday. When Jung asked Freud why they had to affirm the sexual theory so vigorously, and against what they had to make it a bulwark, Freud replied “against the black tide of mud of occultism.” By this time Jung knew that he could never assert the sexual theory with the same finality as Freud did. He already had reservations about it but had kept them to himself. This request to collaborate with him on erecting a dogma was a sign that these reservations would soon have to come out. As we know, they did.

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Sympathy For The Devil: The True Story of The Process Church of the Final Judgment

“Google ‘The Process Church of the Final Judgement’ and you’ll discover a long list of conspiracy theories. Only now, former members reveal the truth about the misunderstood group once dubbed ‘One of the most dangerous Satanic cults in America.'”

Georgia ‘witch doctor’ accused of raping woman who paid for ‘cleansing’ ritual, police believe he targeted illegal aliens

A man calling himself a “witch doctor” is accused of raping a woman who had paid him for a cleansing ritual, and police believe that he targeted illegal aliens because he could threaten to report them to immigration officials.

Police say that 44-year-old Hassan Shalgheen took an appointment from a woman seeking a cleansing ritual and invited her to his apartment in Duluth, a small suburban town near Atlanta, Georgia, on Sunday evening.

She said she found out about Shalgheen through WhatsApp, a social media platform.

Police said that Shalgheen took her clothes off for the ritual and then forced himself on her and sexually assaulted her.

She called police from his apartment at about 11 p.m.

Shalgheen was arrested and charged with two counts of rape. He was also charged with false imprisonment, theft, and sexual battery.

Video of the arrest was obtained by WANF-TV and showed police telling Shalgheen that they had a warrant for his DNA.

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North Carolina Couple Arrested After Allegedly Performing Exorcism On Child Who Later Died

North Carolina court records allege a 4-year-old child died after suffering from severe abuse from his adoptive parents which included the young boy being subject to amateur exorcisms.

Joe Paul Wilson and Jodi Ann Wilson, the adoptive parents of four-year-old Skyler Wilson, allegedly restricted food to Skyler and performed an amateur exorcism on him and his brother.

Both are now facing murder charges for Skyler’s death.

After police conducted search warrants on the Wilson’s phones, they discovered a message Joseph Wilson sent to his wife that said he had a problem with “swaddling.”

The correspondence also revealed Joseph reportedly sent a picture of Skyler wrapped up tightly in a blanket and duct taped to the floor.

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SHE LIED! Church Says NO EXORCISM Took Place at Pelosi Home – FOX News Morning Host DROPS A REALITY CHECK

On Saturday Pelosi spawn, Alexandra Pelosi, claimed the Paul Pelosi scandal prompted her mother to perform an exorcism on their home in San Francisco.

The New York Times reported:

“I think that weighed really heavy on her soul. I think she felt really guilty. I think that really broke her. Over Thanksgiving, she had priests coming, trying to have an exorcism of the house and having prayer services,” Alexandra told the publication.

This raised some eyebrows and had people asking, “Wouldn’t an exorcism on the Pelosi home result in a massive cyclone bomb inferno?”

Now we know the truth.

According to FOX and Friends Weekend on Sunday morning, THERE WAS NO EXORCISM at the Pelosi home. The local Catholic Church confirmed the news.

FOX and Friends Weekend host Rachel Campos-Duffy then added this reality check to the story, “Well, her radical anti-Life position should weigh more heavily on her soul. And she is not allowed to receive Communion in San Francisco.”

Truth.

Pete Hegseth’s reaction is gold.

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Nancy Pelosi held EXORCISM at her San Francisco mansion to try and banish ‘evil spirits’ after husband Paul was attached by a hammer-wielding intruder

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi cannot get Communion in San Francisco anymore, but that didn’t stop her from contacting men of the cloth in an attempt to rid her home of evil spirits. 

According to her daughter, Alexandra, ‘Over Thanksgiving, [Pelosi] had priests coming, trying to have an exorcism of the house and having prayer services.’ 

The Democrat‘s daughter was discussing the attack on her father Paul Pelosi, 82, during an interview with the New York Times, when she mentioned the Catholic ritual for ridding demons from specific persons and spaces. 

In October, conspiracy theorist David DePape, 42, broke into the Pelosi’s Bay Area home, authorities said. The suspect severely beat Paul Pelosi with a hammer in an attack that shocked the political world. 

Paul Pelosi was knocked unconscious and woke up in a pool of his own blood. He later underwent surgery to repair a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hands. He has since appeared in public wearing a hat and a glove that covered his wounds. 

Alexandra continued: ‘It’s a miracle that this kind of thing never happened sooner. We were always worried. It’s like your worse fear coming to life.’ 

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