January 10, 2022 • 60 mins
Why have rumors of dark arts so often dogged musicians? Have any of the rock stars of yesteryear ever actually believed they contacted the underworld? Join Ben, Noel and Matt as they explore the murky relationship between music and the occult.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now, this episode is one that I think we were
all excited about when we originally were doing this a
number of years ago. As you know, we're all big
fans of music here and in we said, well, what's
the big deal with music and the occult? You guys
(00:20):
remember this one. It's a question I've been asking since
time immemorial. Um, It's just one of these things. They
seem kind of like intrinsically bound, you know, music, backwards masking,
the idea of Marilyn Manson somehow causing children to go
on school shooting spreeze and devil worship and all that stuff. Um,
they really are just kind of two p's in a pot,
(00:40):
a lot of that. It turns out totally overblown and
not a thing, but also backwards masking kind of a thing,
but maybe not on the way you might think. I
honestly can't remember if I'm on this one or not.
This is still in the realm of right after my
son was born. Names on the meta, so I don't know.
I think you. I think you probably are. This is
the episode that made us a friend, our buddy Murray
(01:04):
at Away from Guadalcanal Diary, UM, who wrote us specifically
referring to backwards masking that we talked about in this episode.
So Hey Murray, Hey Mury, Sorry miss you the last
time there was a hang. But I'm looking forward to
joining forces in person, assuming that Big Music doesn't get
(01:24):
us for exposing the truth about rock stars and the occult.
Kitty Uh. We bring back classic episodes from our catalog
sometimes when the mood strikes us, sometimes when we want
to go on vacation, but we still want to share
something really valuable. And we'd love to hear your stories
(01:45):
about music and the occult, especially no spoilers, but especially
if you have proof of any of these allegations. Yeah, mar,
what have you been doing out there? Here? He goes
from UFOs to goists and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
(02:05):
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. And
ladies and gentlemen, you know what that music means. Welcome
to the show. I'm Ben and I'm Nol the necro
goat slaughterer Brown. Oh, that is good. We should do
some We should do some black metal nicknames. You know,
(02:28):
I feel like I'm haugging the nickname giving duties so
often do you have a black metal nickname for menal Man?
It was everything I could do to come up with
that one. It was kind of redundant. That's a necro
goat slaughterer. So is it is it itself? Does it
only slaughter necro goats? Or is it a necro goat
that's slaughters right? Not clear? But you know what, a
(02:49):
little ambiguity in uh in black metal is probably just fine. Ben.
I'm gonna call you. I'm gonna take a cue from
the Swedish black metal band hell Hammer, and I'm gonna
call you Ben satanic slaughter Bolan. You know, I'll deal
with I like the nested alliteration hell Hammer was it
(03:10):
was a member of a band, right, a member of
a band, but also a a Swedish black metal band
maybe active now they're active in the early eighties. Um,
And we'll get to that part of the story very
soon as a way of seguang into what today's topic is,
which is music and the occult. That's right, and ladies
(03:32):
and gentlemen, we're here. Most importantly you're here. It's what
we call the most wonderful time of the year over
at Conspiracy stuff. That is the countdown to Halloween. We're
in the month of October, and uh, we stay tuned
for the end because we have a little bit of
administrative business to cover. But first we're going to delve
(03:53):
into something that a lot of people have asked us about. No,
this was this was an idea that you came to
us with, right, Yeah, and I just think it's there's
a lot of there to unpack, and there's a lot
of opportunity, you know, to dig into some pretty interesting
stuff when it comes to music in the occult um,
not only with things like black metal and satanism, but
(04:14):
just numerology and Illuminati symbology embedded in different works and
um um you know, popular culture references throughout the history
of rock music. Yes, and he goes past rock music,
which is something we're going to discover. So here, let's
let's just paint the background a little bit, right. Uh,
(04:34):
First things first, the music industry is, uh, surprise, a
huge business. Gargantelin global recorded music sales totaled fifteen billion
dollars in two and that's even with you know, the
the fall of paid media, more people just finding songs
you'd rather listen to for free on a streaming service.
(04:56):
Right either way you cut it. It's a Leviathan business
whi as And that's because music is one of the
few things that unites all human beings, regardless of backgrounds.
One of my favorite writers, Vladimir uh Novolkov. Navolkov is
one of the only people I ever heard of who
(05:17):
just categorically didn't like music. He had synesthesia and he
didn't get music. He said, it was just this collection
of noises to him. So, other than one author who
passed away a long time ago, pretty much everybody dig
some sort of music. It occupies a unique niche and
the human experience, and it appears, fun fact, to predate
(05:39):
the written word, making the practice of music literally older
than recorded history. So today we're gonna talk about music.
But you know what sort of show this is, folks
and h you know, our favorite holiday is coming up,
So we're not just going to talk about the music
industry or a few instances of conspiracy. No, when we
(06:00):
explore the entire concept of the relationship between music and
the cult, there's one place we always have to start,
right absolutely, and that is with the devil Satan old
scratch like that one, yeah, old scratch? How about the
Devil went down to Georgia. Do you remember that song? Yeah,
(06:23):
devil went down to Georgia. He was looking for soul
to steel. Yeah, and I know he played a golden
fiddle and he gets into a fiddle off with Johnny
is it Johnny Georgia and the Yeah, and if you
if you win, you get this shiny fiddle made a goal.
(06:45):
But if you lose the definitely a call back to
one of the early rock myths with with the Satan,
which is the Robert Johnson story. You want to talk
about that, Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's like a let's like
a little bit about this. This is something that you
and I were talking about off air, because you found
(07:06):
a fantastic source for some of this, right did. It's
a book called Season of the which How the Occult
Saved Rock and Roll by a guy named Peter Barba
Gal like that. Um and it basically just is like
kind of an oral history of as far back um
as like the Blues and Elvis and things like that,
(07:26):
about how just the connections between um this idea of
like selling your soul to the devil at the crossroads,
you know, in order to gain the ability to write
amazing songs and perform amazing music and back to the
whole devil went down to Georgia theme. That is definitely
where this comes from, which is the story of Robert Johnson,
who was a very very well regarded blues singer and
(07:49):
guitarist largely credited um for inventing many of these sounds
and um you know, constructs that went on to be
very important for much of popular music, especially you know,
things like rock music, right yeah, and and had relatively
few recorded songs. But he did also have a song
(08:12):
about going to the crossroads. He actually has a song
about it. But this is also tropes or themes or
versions of another story, you know, that one would go
to the crossroads or through certain arcane preparations, strike a
deal with dark powers. It's like that Faust story, the
(08:33):
Faust exactly, you know, as as they say, you know,
you're basically exchanging your humanity for some boon that the devil,
you know, which ultimately serves as a stand in for
any any number of other malevolent dark forces them from
whether it's voodoo culture or paganism or anything like that. Um,
(08:55):
It's it's certainly a part of a trope in all
of those um, you know, mythologies that you could call them, right, Yeah, yeah,
we've talked about this on the show before. The idea
of religious syncretism, that one religion or another will attempt
to meld together to win over the people. So the
idea that you mentioned there is brilliant and old. The satan,
(09:17):
that Abramaic satan is a stand in often for older
gods or spirits in these stories. Trafficking with supernatural creatures
for material gain is is a very it's a very
old idea, and you know, we often see that. We
talked about that in our other video Five Things you
Didn't Know about Satan listeners. Of course, if you're checking
(09:41):
out this show right now, then you already know that
the trident and the goat legs are examples of this
kind of religious syncretism trying to vilify pre existing gods.
But here's an interesting thing. In Abramaic tradition, Lucifer was
known as the angel of music before he fell from
God's grace, or that's what you'll hear a lot of
(10:04):
people say. And so this devil, this Promethean figure has
been associated with music and musicians in a number of ways.
There's there's another there's another case of someone who was
alleged to sell their soul to the devil, and that
was Niccolo Paganini. Uh this, this guy violinist right by
(10:27):
all accounts, just the best there ever was at the time.
You know, just incredibly fast, incredibly proficient, just insane technique.
Actually grew up playing violin. So m was aware of
him and kind of the shadow that he cast on
the on the history of performing so um, it's it
makes sense that that he would have gotten cast as
(10:50):
one of these figures that made some sort of Baustian
bargain in order to get those mad violent skills. So
yet he sold his soul, he made a pact with
the level. And for those of you who are interested,
I will say, uh, I guess I wouldn't recommend trying
some kind of nefarious magic, but if you're looking for
(11:16):
a way to do it, you can find things like
the Lesser Key of Solomon. That's a that's a grim wall,
or the Malice Malefic Harum, which talks about some anecdotal
ideas of pacts with Satan. So it gets pretty complex
pretty quickly, because you know, calling the big one up
(11:37):
is not necessarily recommended you get there are other lesser
people you could work with, you know, so apparently there
is a specific month or day of the weaker hour
to call these other demons and invoke some sort of pact.
So inspires market if you want to sell your soul,
I'm sure you are just several fascinating Google searches away
(11:59):
from getting on the trail. But because of I think,
because of this pre linguistic mystical nature of music and
the human experience, that it makes sense for us to
see it associated with this idea of a magical thing. Well,
(12:20):
I mean it actually brought to mind something that you've
said to me yesterday we were hanging out off air UM.
A friend of yours, you said, who was into practicing magic.
UM had a really interesting way of describing what magic was.
I think he used the phrase weaponized psychology. Is that yeah,
And I feel like music has some of that to
it as well, because it's it's this whole package that
(12:44):
combines something like a melody, which can invoke uh certain
responses emotionally just by nature of what the melody sounds like,
with a lyrical content which can invoke many different things,
whether it be nostalgia, whether it be some sort of
longing or or some kind of you know, emotional response.
And to me, that is a form of, you know,
(13:05):
if you look at it this way, weaponized psychology, where
you are eliciting a certain response from someone by combining
these elements, and it is the sort of ritualistic thing,
whether it's putting on a record or going to a concert.
You know, you are participating in this invocation. Let's say, Yeah,
there's there's a there is a certain strange thing to it, right,
(13:28):
like why do minor chords make people feel sad? Yes?
And with that in mind, we're going to go to
the next part of our show, Ladies and gentlemen. We're
going to discuss some conspiracies, both theories and facts surrounding
music and the occult. In other words, here's where it
(13:50):
gets crazy. One of the first connections here we'd like
to discuss is the connection between metal heavy mount in
satan uh as far back as as you know, Black
Sabbath for example. You know, just the name Black Sabbath
carries this weight of demonic you know, worship of some
(14:11):
kind is the idea of taking a holy day and
making it, you know, shrouding it in darkness of some company,
which is weird because I didn't Black Sabbath begin as
a blues band. I'm not sure it would make sense.
They definitely have some blues qualities in their music as
far as the riffs and and again, you know, a
(14:32):
lot of metal is based in this idea of of
guitar riffs and playing these little motives that kind of repeat.
And obviously you can get into different genres that that
take that in various different directions, but UM, at its heart,
metal is a guitar driven UM you know genre of music. UM.
(14:54):
So one of the most infamous genres of metal uh
that has come out of that scene is something called
black metal, which you have black metal UM. And I
remember first hearing about black metal when I was much younger.
There was I had a subscription to Spin magazine and
there was an issue that had all of these different
(15:15):
figures from Norwegian black metal UM in this uh this
profile or whatever. And I can't remember their names, but
they were all fantastic. I'll give you just some example.
The names like Emperor exactly that the names of the
bands sure like Emperor, but the individuals individuals who were
in the bands UM I'll have this is what this
is from a band we were talking about earlier, the
band hell Hammer, which again not the same hell Hammer
(15:36):
as one of the characters were about to discuss it
in this story, but names like Uh Satanic Slaughter, which
is the nickname I gave Ben Slade Necros. These are
members of the band Satanic Slaughter was the guitarist and
lead vocalist, Uh Slade Necros bass and packing vocals, Denial
Fiend on drums, Uh Savage Damage on basin vocal Evoked
(16:01):
Damnator on bass, Grim Decapitator on basse and these are
all previous members and Dell Infernali on guitar. Do you
think any of them are listening to the show hoped on?
You don't? You don't want them to be. I'd be scarred,
really yeah. And my point is, though, when I saw
this profile and spin, I remember there was one guy
who talked about carrying around a decapitated raven's head in
(16:21):
a satchel that he sniffs, you know, like before he
went on stage to get the sense of death in
his nostrils. And you know, anyway, so I'm getting ahead
of myself, but that was my first exposure to this
black metal, and I think there's there's definitely different camps,
but the main ones that we think about are the
ones from Norway and the ones from Sweden. Right. So
(16:42):
the the interesting thing here is that so much of
entertainment is is just shoha showmanship exactly. So we're all
familiar perhaps with UH with different organizations that will put
on a spell particle but then go home, have a
nice cup of earl gray and then UH, I don't know,
(17:06):
asked the kids about their day before going to sleep
at sharp. So there's a there's an important distinction to
make between what what is smoke and mirror and what
is actually happening. I despise We're going to talk about
this in a little more detail in second but I
despise the UH, I guess, the the laziness or the
(17:30):
lack of critical thinking when people paint with such a
broad brush and say, oh, all black metal, all people
involved in black metal, or these lunatic cannibal necro goat
slaughterers right to use your nickname, because it's is simply
not true. But there is something we can talk about
(17:52):
which was seen as an occult link by many opponents,
and that is the prevalence of church burnings in the
Norwegian black metal scene alone. There were over fifty arsons
of Christian churches from two to nineties six. So what
this shows us is that it was at least in
(18:12):
vogue for people who believed that members of the black
metal scene in Norway were practicing Satanists or something. This
was considered the smoking gun, or not to be crassed,
but the smoking church. And the problem with that is
that people who were doing that, or people who we're
(18:35):
not opposed to it, would say, this is not about Satanism,
this is about the opposition of Christian religion. Still you're
burning buildings. Yeah. This sort of comes back to this
idea that we were beginning to touch on appearance versus actions.
So for example, like Ozzy Osborne, yes he may have
snorted a line of ants in the heyday of his
(18:55):
drug Hayes, but it certainly wasn't antribute to the dark Lord,
you know. And I mean maybe they're they dabbled, you know,
Black Sabbath dabbled in some ideas of occult teachings, but
they certainly are not thought to have been a Satanic
band so to speak. Whereas or like Another example is
like Alice Cooper, you know, a lot of a lot
(19:16):
of costumes, a lot of set pieces, you know, a
lot of kind of horror Grand Guignon kind of showmanship.
And you could say the same about even kiss for instance,
kiss yeah, to a much lesser degree. I mean, kissed
to me has always just been absurd and there's not
really anything scary about what they're doing. Um, But like
Alice Cooper or even a Marilyn Manson, you know, and
(19:38):
I mean Manson Manson did it profess to be a
follower of Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan and
things like that. But I think a lot of that
was just sort of like a way to rebel against
some of what we're talking about, like these Judaeo Christian
kind of beliefs or an Anton LaVey or the philosophy
of the Church of Satan is not necessarily the deistic
(20:02):
Satanism that people might think of if they are it's
a symbol or less a rebellion and of what does
it do with thou wilst you know, kind of like
just basically don't follow anyone's rules but your own. It's
it's a very kind of hedonistic Um ultimately kind of
a selfish way of life, which they would say is
not really problematic. I would say it's ironic though, if
(20:25):
if you're reading, like any religion, it says do what
you want whenever you do what you want, and here
are the rules for how you do what you want,
because is that what you want to do. There's just
a cognitive distance. But anyhow, I'm not knocking the Church
(20:46):
of Satan. I am pointing out that a lot of
people probably misinterpret its philosophy. But while we're here with
Maryland Manson, let's let's follow this. Let's go a little
bit down the rabbit hole. Because the group, which I
guess began as Merrily Manson and the Spooky Kids, had
the idea of taking the name of a famous beauty
(21:10):
queen or actress right, some sort of Hollywood icon, right,
and combining it with the surname of a serial killer.
So we have things like what we have Merrilyn Manson,
Twiggy Ramirez, Twiggy Ramira. There was Gidget Gain, which was
ed Gain the surname, and gidget Um, as far as
(21:32):
I can tell, is is the reference to a film
from nine from Glumbia Pictures. Starring Sandra d Cliff Robertson
and James Darren sort of like a you know, it
looks like a very quintessentially Hollywood type film from the time, right,
and then there's uh, there's Daisy berg Awitz, these these names.
You see the pattern. But let's focus on Marilyn Manson's
(21:55):
name in specific, because that's Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson.
M hm. So Charles Manson is himself Manson Manson family
are at the crux of several other interconnecting theories, right.
And he was in the musical underground of California for
(22:17):
a while too. I think he was way underground, Yeah,
I think, yeah, he had. He seemed to. He was
a very charismatic dude and was able to kind of
curry favor and like kind of become friends and get
into the inside circle with some relatively famous musicians, like,
for example, like he kind of knew forget which beach
boy he spent time with, but there was definitely one
(22:38):
of them, um, and he was trying to kind of,
you know, cheat his way into the music industry. More
or less. He was not a particularly talented songwriter. Actually,
at one point years ago had a a copy of
just a compilation of all of the songs, and they're
they're very bad. It's not it's it's not. There's nothing
particularly engaging or commercial. There's nothing particularly sellable about any
(23:01):
of this music. And it's it's borderline unlistenable unless you
are able to just do it kind of as an
artifact of here's what Charles Manson sounds like plan acoustic guitar,
as like a historical lobbity. But so okay this, you know,
it's interesting that you say that, because let's let's explore
some of the other aspects of Manson's rise and fall.
(23:23):
While he was incarcerated, as he was for most of
his life, I think the technically now the majority of
his life he has been locked away one place or another.
He was exposed to some of the principles and techniques
of something called dianetics, which would become later scientology as
(23:44):
a precursor for that. He also had his own brand
of cult creation, and we studied him fairly extensively. When
we were looking at the we did a video man
I did a video about how cults work and how,
(24:04):
you know, how one erases the ego, removes the ability
to think critically or proactively, you know, and turns people
really into limbs of a larger body rather than their
own their own person. And one thing that's strange about
this is that this ties into what are often considered
(24:28):
a cult techniques and the word occult just to be
just to be clear, is often treated with a magical
context here in the States in our modern day. But
um it also the base of it really means hidden,
you know. So I would say that the techniques Manson
(24:51):
was thought of using, right, or people who believe that
he was exercising something like mesmerism or hypnosis, which he was,
that would be seen as a hidden skill and accult approach.
And it worked. Yet people brainwashed had a mountain the desert,
convinced that there was gonna be a race war that
(25:12):
would take over the entire world. They were going to
live in a secret cave ultra skelter, Yes, sir, helter skelter, uh,
culminating of course in some murders. Yeah, and this, you know,
I know, we're kind of jumping all over the place
with this, but this is just it's it's fascinating and
it's easy to there's a lot of rabbit holes to
go down. So you'll have to forgive us if we
go a little bit out of order on some of
this stuff. UM. But yeah, So there was a series
(25:35):
of murders that the Manson family perpetrated. And then there's
there's another connection with some of these back to some
of the other things we're talking about. Um. The first
set was the Sharon Tate house. That was Roman Polanski,
the director who did Rosemary's Baby. Um, he did Chinatowns,
one of my favorites, and more recently, UM, he did
like the Pianist in the Ninth Gate with Johnny Depp,
(25:55):
and he continues to work. Very controversial figure in his
own right. But that's for another day. So the Manson
and his followers, who I believe we're mostly women. Um,
they broke into this house and they murdered Tate and
her entourage. I guess she had I she was having
a party or had some friends over the time. Polanski
was not there, he was out of town. Um. It's
(26:16):
actually a really excellent sort of a side topic. UM.
A book by an author named Jersey Kazinski. I'm called
Blind Date. UM, and Jersey Kazinski wrote the book Being There,
which is a Fan was made into a fantastic film
starring Peter Sellers. But in Blind Date Um he actually
was friends with Roman Polanski and was supposed to be
at this house when these murders happened, and he writes
(26:39):
sort of a fictionalized account of how he um managed
to not be there and when it up happening, and
sort of the aftermath of it, But he doesn't really
write it like as a first person, like from his
own perspectives. It's very interesting if you want to learn
more about it, that's a good good place to start.
So the next night Um Manson felt like the they
had not done the best job at the at how
(27:00):
so they wanted to give it another go, I guess,
so they went to the home of a supermarket executive
named Leno La Bianca where he and his wife Rosemary,
who owned a dress shop, lives. It was in the
Los Fillies neighborhood of Los Angeles, and it was during
this uh kind of killing spree that Manson and his
(27:20):
followers would cover the walls in different phrases that later
became iconic, like Helter Skelter and Death to the Pigs,
and um this idea of him trying to start a
race war. Rise held Skelter is obviously a reference to
the Beatles song Helter Skelter off of the White album Right,
and there's another connection. Two interesting side notes before we
(27:43):
go on. There are more suspected murders on part of
Manson and the Manson family out there in the desert,
and people aren't sure who else got caught, who was
killed in Los Angeles and just not associated with it.
Helter Skelter could have been much worse. In fact, one
(28:04):
of the reasons it wasn't it's because a guy of
a guy who doesn't get enough credit in the story,
a fellow named Paul Crockett, retired prospector who had also
studied oddly enough scientology and apparently began to d program
some of the people Paul's some of the people in
(28:25):
the Manson family. Paul Crockett's story is mysterious to me.
I invite you listeners to look it up and let
me know what you think. We covered it briefly in
one of our earlier videos, but there's there's a lot
more to that story that remains untold, And uh, you know,
I feel like we're we might be getting closer to
(28:45):
falling into a Charles Manson podcast. You know, it's really
interesting stuff there for sure. Um. One a little side
note and kind of bringing it back to the music thing,
we definitely went down at a little bit of rabbit hole. Um.
The La Bianca Mansion, actually the Tape Mansion was was demolished.
I'm not quite sure how long ago, but it's been
some years. The La Bianca Mansion still stands and has
(29:08):
had some renovations done. But Um, Trent Resner from nine
Inch Nails actually rented that mansion in order to make
their iconic record, The Downward Spiral Um. And he was
fascinated by you know, the Manson mythology and all of
that as well. Um. And so I mean it just
kind of comes back to this connection with music and
(29:28):
the occults and you know, true believers versus you know,
showman and um, you know, I think there is some
shock value and being sort of like a fringe like
sort of a dark musician, a dark artist, kind of
like like Ninch Nails kind of has like a sort
(29:49):
of a sinister, kind of a creepy vibe to it,
and like saying we made our record in the house
where the Manson murders happened. And you know what this
reminds me of is a story that inspired part of
this podcast, which you had told me originally off air,
and I had no idea about this. Yeah, I mean,
I think one of the reasons that I wanted to
(30:11):
explore this Manson connection. What this made me think of
as this story about one of my favorite artists musicians
of all times, David Bowie. And in the mid seventies,
Bowie was deep in his thin white duke phase, and
anyone who knows about Bowie would recognize the look of
(30:31):
David Bowie during this period easily super thin, very pale,
and a lot of that had to do with the
fact that he was just off the rails on cocaine
at the time. But during this period he actually lived
in a mansion that was just down the road from
the La Bianca House, which is where that second set,
(30:54):
arguably the more grizzly set of of Manson murders took
place and during ing this period, and a lot of
this is this is from the book that I mentioned earlier,
which is called Um How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll?
Definitely worth checking out. You can get as an e
book on Amazon. Um. During this period, he had just
completely lost himself to this cocaine addiction. And I mean,
(31:17):
you're David Bowie. He was just obscenely famous at this point.
You know, he should get wherever he wanted. He had
this mansion, he was probably not leaving very often, just
getting piles of cocaine delivered to him. And he started
worrying about things like the like Nazi conspiracies, the Manson murders. Um,
(31:37):
you know, his own bodily essences and bodily fluids and
what that meant, you know, like sort of like that
character in UM Dr Strange Love who's always talking about
his precious, precious bodily fluids. Definitely a lot of paranoia
going on there, UM. And he became convinced that because
of the proximity to the La Bianca house, there were
(32:00):
levolent spirits that were invading his world, whether it was
his his home, his psyche, you know, all over the place.
So he decided, um to seek the help of what
we would refer to as a white witch, a follower
of the Right hand path exactly. So the house that
(32:21):
Bowie was renting belonged to a guy named Glenn Hughes,
who was the basis for the band Deep Purple, Smoke
on the Water and things like that. And this is
a quote from a guy named Mark Spitz who wrote
a Bowie biography. Um, I don't know if it was
particularly sanctioned, but it definitely exists. Was or he was
around during these days, and the author of Season of
(32:43):
the Witch did use him as a as a source
in several occasions. So here's a quote from him describing, um,
what Hughes thought about David's David by situation line quote,
He felt inclined to go on very bizarre tangents about
Alistair Crowley, or the Nazis or numerals a lot. He
was fleetly wired, maniacally wired. I could not keep up
with him. He was on the edge all the time
(33:05):
of paranoia and also going on about things I had
no freaking idea of what he was talking about. He'd
go into a rap on it and I wouldn't know
what he was talking about. And then, as Bowie himself
remembered in this up in this from this book, my
other fascination was with the Nazis and their search for
the Holy Grail. I paid with the worst manic depression
of my life. My psyche went through the roof. It
(33:25):
just fractured into pieces. I was hallucinating twenty four hours
a day. I felt like I'd fallen into the bowels
of the earth. So it was during this period for
David Bowie that he reached out to someone named Cherry Vanilla,
who was one of a former employee of Bowie's management
company who had been around and witnessed much of his
(33:47):
debauchery and paranoia, and she was the one who put
him in touch with this white witch named Wally elm Lark.
And the idea was that elm Lark would come into
this mansion in LUs Veleas and exercise the place, um,
whether it was you know, saging it and just kind
(34:07):
of like performing some rituals to clear it of evil
spirits and sage. And it would be when you burn
sage around different areas of a place, right exactly. So, Noel,
I have to ask something that's probably on the mind
of at least a few listeners here. Do you think
there were evil spirits on the premises? Well? Uh, to
(34:29):
quote Dave Chappelle doing Rick James, Cocaine's a hell of
a drug. That's yeah, that's what I I to quote
Rick James doing Rick James, yea, Cocaine's a hell of
a drug apparently. Yeah, And I mean it does sound
like Bowie was just out of his mind with paranoia,
and um, you know, when you get that way and
(34:49):
you feel like you can't trust anybody, you see devils
at every turn, you know. Um, you know there is
an account just to wrap this this little story up,
which I think is is fun. Um this I don't know,
not fun. I mean, definitely, the guy was in in
a very very dark place. He was in a very
dark place, and for someone to be able to offer
him some sort of help, whether it was BS or not,
I can't really fault him too much. He's okay, No,
(35:13):
he's definitely okay. Shockingly okay, look at the guy. He
looks like he's twenty years old. It's bizarre. Um. So
you know, this Wally elm Lark character did end up
coming into the house and she, uh you know, apparently,
according to those present, successfully exercised the swimming pool. That
was the first thing she wanted to do. That he
(35:34):
was exercise of the swimming pool. And um, this is
a quote from uh backstage passes Life on the wild
Side with David Bowie, which is a memoir by Angie Bowie,
who was David's wife during this period, and she says,
quote at a certain point in the ritual, the pool
began to bubble. It bubbled vigorously, perhaps thrashed as a
better term, in a manner inconsistent with any explanation involving
(35:58):
filters and the like. And then Mark Spitz from earlier
from this unauthorized Bowie uh memoir, I guess Um wrote,
quote Elmlark wrote a series of spells and incantations out
for Bowie in case the demons returned for a dip,
and remained on call for Bowie as he continued to
wrestle with the forces of darkness. Wow, I'm gonna say
(36:22):
cocaine if I had to to choose one. Not to
be too skeptical about it. But we see, okay, so
we see this, We see this edge of madness intersecting
with some of the the appearance of madness which is
good for marketing, right, versus just this strange the strange
(36:46):
situations you get into when you catapult to this unprecedented
level of fame and success. But but madness aside, let's
take a closer look at the people who, regardless of
drug use or anything like that, sincerely believe that they
(37:07):
are part of an occult movement or part of a
magical working. We know, the allegations of some sort of
demonic worship are pretty old, you know, the predate Bowie
of course, the in popular music and rock music, especially
(37:27):
for instance, the Rolling Stones have been accused of this,
and even like led Zeppelin, the idea backwards masking and
um messages hidden that were like embedded in the inner
ring of an help he um for example, things like that,
right exactly, and this, you know, this goes into something
interesting that we can explore, the idea of the moral panic, right,
(37:50):
the satanic panic. But before we do that, uh, there,
there are a couple other things we should talk about. There.
There is evidence, as you've said, of real occult conspiracies
in music, one of the biggest ones of course, being
that members of the black metal scene in some Scandinavian
(38:14):
countries did conspire to burn churches. Now, as for the
motivation of that, it probably isn't the same motivation behind
every single church burning, because they're different groups doing it, right,
And we mentioned this earlier, the idea that it was
in large part um at active rebellion against you know,
the the idea of sort of what they might perceive
(38:35):
as an oppressive puritanical um you know, not government exactly,
but just sort of like our hierarchy, I guess, the
dogma exactly. So there's certainly that um aspect of it.
But uh, there's also this idea of being like it's
almost like a gang mentality where you have to do
these initiations in order to show that you're completely behind
(38:58):
what the gang is about. Is very similar with some
of these black metal groups where they're you know, burning
the churches to show their commitment, to demonstrate their commitment
to these ideals. Um, and why don't you talk a
little bit about what some of those ideals might be
and what some of these other initiations might have been. Okay,
these other ideals, these other initiations in this I think
(39:21):
initiation is a perfect word. One thing would be the
assumption of a different name. In magical orders, it's common
for someone who is initiated to take upon a new name, right,
a name that is used within the order and that
also becomes a new identity for other rituals that one
(39:45):
would one would take to show allegiance to a dark force.
Of course, there are things that are you know, there
are agreements, actual written down agreements, for instance. And this
goes back we mentioned Faust of Eustis is based on
real person, a guy named Dr Johann George Fauss, and
(40:06):
in the Tail Dr Faust which is of course um
inspired by the actual Faust. Uh. Dr Faustus sells his
soul via a document for seven years of earthly pleasures
I believe, at the end of which he's his soul
is forfeit. And during the witch hunts in Europe there
(40:29):
were quite a few people who were accused of signing
packs with the devils, sometimes no even with papers provided,
and like the signature of the devil, which not to
you know. Far be it from me to cast a
shadow on their methodology and the inquisition. But that sounds
a little convenient. But when we talk about rituals and
(40:54):
initiations brings us to something that is probably a story
for a different time. Murders, suicides. There there are several
very strange cases in the world of metal. But maybe
metal deserves its own episode. Yeah, I think it really does.
There's a whole lot going on there. But we mentioned
the band, or maybe we didn't, but Mayhem UM was
(41:16):
a very popular Norwegian black metal band UM that ultimately
it's members ended up sort of being on different ideological
sides more or less, and two of them UM got
into a serious altercation that involved two of members, Uronymous
and a guy by the name of barg Erknus bar
(41:38):
Verkness who also has YouTube chair also if you want to,
if you're interested. He went to prison for a long time,
but I believe he is out now. Um murdered. Uh,
this guy Uronymous whould kind of taken him under his
wing in what some would argue was simply, uh, you know,
an altercation between two um folks that that maybe didn't
see eye to eye on some things. But this isn't
(42:00):
occasion that ultimately ended in uh Eronymous receiving twenty three
stab wounds, two to the head, five to the neck,
and sixteen to the back. So I mean, as far
as ritualistic murders go, you know, if it was just
a beef between two dudes, probably could have just stopped
with the one, you know what I mean, certainly, Um,
(42:24):
but this also goes back to my by my previous
point about this having kind of like a gang mentality
or like a cult, which brings us to UH in
a lot of ways. Of the next point on our list, Yes,
ain't that fresh and everyone wants to get down like that?
Our next our next topic here is hip hop and
(42:46):
the Illuminati. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, if you're listening to show,
then the odds are that you may well be one
of the people over the years who have requested that
we talk about the Illuminati and tip hop, that we
explore it. So what's the gist of this snel? So
(43:06):
this idea that successful hip hop stars are ultimately tools
of the Illuminati, which is a shadowy group controlling the
world through various financial, political, military, and cultural means allegedly. Right,
we have a we have a three part YouTube series
on it. We've talked at length about Adam Bioshops and
the founders, the various contradictory stories about what may or
(43:32):
may not be the Illuminati, the different groups who consider
themselves the Illuminati instead of other groups. And so you know,
back to alleged things. Um, the alleged evidence of this
connection UH is well, you know you don't have to
look far. You can just get on YouTube, for example,
and and find just tons of these examples that show
(43:53):
various musicians using symbols like the all seeing I which covering.
You'll see clips of one person covering one eye, and
then whomever uploaded the video will say proof illuminati, which
life is probably a little bit of a strong term,
strong term. It's interesting. There's definitely a collection this stuff,
some more ideas um for a lot of folks. This belief,
(44:15):
uh proves that the shadowy connections, rather than luck or talent,
beside the success of an entertainer. Yeah, but there's a
fair counterpoint here. Nor if this stuff is supposed to
be so secret, then why would somebody show these symbols,
these arcane you know, a secret handshakes or gestures on
globally broadcasted videos. And it goes back to a lot
(44:41):
of the stuff we were talking about earlier with the
history of rock and using some of these symbols and
backwards masking, and you know, the belief versus the showmanship
of it. You know, I think there's a lot to
be said of planting intriguing arcane images and symbols and
your work it's just it's it's neat, it's it's fascinating.
(45:01):
You know, people are intrigued by all kinds of things
without necessarily having to be fully on board with every
ideological you know, um idea right with the philosophy behind something. Yeah,
it's it's absolutely true. Jay Z in some interviews it
makes me chuckled because I'm a fan of jay Z.
He's regularly said he's not part of the illuminati, and
(45:24):
he feels like has to say a references and verses
and stuff. And I don't know, maybe we have some
listeners who believe that they're legitimately is something to this.
I don't deny that there is a power behind the curtain,
behind the throne, behind the scenes of the music industry
in probably by genre, in country and and and it's
(45:46):
probably like some unseen mob boss type figure in Mariotti music,
you know, so hip hop's different. So my my question then,
is is it more likely that these entertainers are to
Knowl's point, seeking to capitalize on beliefs to stay edging
in the public eye, or is there something there is there,
(46:07):
some nefarious group of ultimately devil worshippers behind the scenes
Because in the eighties and the nineties, America thought so well.
I mean, you know, they say the love of money,
you know, is the root of all evil. And to
me and a lot of these entertainment scenarios, money is
the is the devil you don't see, you know that
like is driving all of these things. And I mean
(46:29):
that's that's where the tastemakers come from. The folks that
that hold all the all the chips are the ones
that choose who you know, gets the hits ultimately. And
I mean there's certainly something to be said of public
opinion and people going viral and things like that, but
at the end of the day, Uh, largely it's a
numbers game. You know, it's like who's getting the resources,
who's who's getting all of the pr and who's who's
(46:50):
like actually, you know, commanding that kind of power. And
I'd like to I'd like to take a look at
this this thing, the Satanic panic that swept the us.
Some of you may be a little too young, but
some of you may be old enough to remember this. Uh.
(47:10):
The the Satanic panic is something that came about. It's
considered a moral panic comparable to witch hunts. For instance,
in Europe or the Red Scare with McCarthy ism, and
the idea was that there was a vast, overarching conspiracy
(47:34):
on the part of everyone from rock musicians to heavy
metal musicians, to blues musicians to racy singers, to poison
the minds and souls of children, taking them into the
abyssal plane of hell for their time. They are that
they are kind of a low hanging fruit. Honestly, they
are very suggestible. I'm kidding. It started in right, it's
(48:00):
the it's people who have mental issues brought on by
their advanced age. So it's pretty much preschools and nursing homes.
It's where he is where he really tried to sell
that heavy metal right totally. But anyhow, this so this
starts in the nineteen seventies. Uh, and it's this idea
that there's this vast underground network of Satanists controlling everything. Uh.
(48:23):
It rose and peaked in the eighties and nineties, but
it's pretty much gone today. The first part of it
that really launched this was a book called The Satan
Seller by a guy named Mike Warnkey in nineteen seventy two.
He was referenced as an authority on Satanism for a
long or in nineteen seventy two published it and he
(48:44):
was referenced as an authority until nineteen ninety two when
he was exposed as a fraud. So he uh and
then other people came in again named John's Hodd said
that he started speaking in churches saying that which is
druids and the illuminate AUTI we're controlling world politics, media
and even gasp, most churches, churches churches. UH. This lad
(49:09):
to worries about backward masking. Like Nol mentioned earlier, worries
that Dungeons and Dragons was a portal to this parallel
occult world, the idea that there was satanic ritual abuse
occurring in um in in the like in the studios
(49:30):
of musicians, and we will see that there, you know,
there is proof that there were abusive situations and ritualized.
There is not proof that we could find that in
the case of musicians. Notice I say in the case
of musicians, not Hollywood overall. In the case of musicians,
we don't find evidence of a vast network of abusive behavior.
(49:55):
In the case of musicians, we don't. So the the
thing that happens with this is that you you start
to see politicians pick this up because it's it's since
essentially free votes. Right, it's red meat. And uh it
goes the in Tipper Gore and some other people, some
(50:17):
other associated this whole advisory thing, right, Yeah, the Parents
Music Resource Center. Uh, they wanted to they wanted to
force the government to label records that were threatening to
the hearts, minds, morals or souls of American youth. So
they had um, uh succession of offensive materials, stuff like
(50:40):
We're not gonna take it, but twist his sister. Yeah,
sort of bad attitude. Yeah, it's it's very strange. And
then Geraldo Rivera did a documentary or a Rivera piece
I guess called devil Worship, exposing Satan's underground. And then
of course Judas Priest went to try ale from making
a backwards message, which, um, let's see there was a
(51:07):
line in the song better by you better than Me
when played backwards, reportedly commanded the listener to do it,
which is such a rorshack ink blot, you know, an
audio version of it. Not only that, if you've ever
messed around with flipping things backwards, I mean that you
know the way words sound and reverse are always a
(51:30):
little bit off, and I just I could picture that
that was not even intentional almost you know, I'm I'm
I'm sure because what you know, here's the thing, long
story short, what did they find in these investigations? Ultimately
they didn't find a damn thing. Uh. We can talk
a little bit about mental health versus music, for okay.
(51:51):
For instance, there's the question when someone perpetrates an act
of violence, right, and people attempt to blame it on
a video game that person played, or a song that
they heard, right, or you know, just a book they read,
(52:11):
then it's always seemed very shortsighted to me. Right, even
if that was the trigger, the likelihood is that it
was no more than a proverbial straw on the camel's back.
You know, they could have been replaced by any number
of things. It could have been any number body looking
at them funny at the grocery store. I mean, you know, honestly,
(52:33):
I just think it's more than opportunistic. It's more than
convenient two blame a single thing on something like that.
I think it's offensive. It's offensive to the people who
survived those kind of tragedies. It's efensive to the families
of the victims, and not to mention the por Schmucks
had just put out an album. You know, So we
(52:57):
do know that there are you know, this has been
a long episode, but we do know that there are
some true, im proven corruption and cover ups in music.
There's the concept of paola, which which you can probably
speak to pretty well. I'm not actually intimately familiar with it.
I mean, I know it has to do with UM.
It's like the idea of the equivalent of like a lobbyist,
(53:19):
you know, giving uh gifts or taking a you know,
a lawmaker out for fancy dinners and exchange or not
necessarily exchange, but in the hopes that they will support
their piece of legislation that benefits the lobbying group, the
group they represent. It's it's an example of something like
that where executives I believe, pay DJs UM and rent
(53:40):
and radio station UM managers to play their songs, right
and and it's illegal, right, it's legal, and the FCC, uh,
the FCC specifically bands it. However, it is it's pretty common, right. Uh.
The part where it becomes legal is when the radio
(54:01):
station plays a specific song but doesn't disclose that they're
playing it for money, you're supposed to be transparent about it.
So that's something that really occurs, and it is kind
of a cover up. Then, you know, the exploitation of gosh,
especially the exploitation of up and coming talent in the
music industry and something for itself. Uh. I want to
(54:24):
close out though, when we're talking about behind the scenes
things in music in the occult. Okay, there is an
article in the Atlantic which can read online for free,
called hit Charade or sharade or fancy Listeners. And here's
the thing, guys, The vast majority of pop songs that
are in the top of the charts right now are
(54:46):
written by about six people. And guess where they're from.
They're from Scandinavia. There in Norwegian, there from Stockholm. There
is one lady who was from Oklahoma, but she uh
now she works with these other guys. Uh. They have
(55:06):
names like esther Dean, Mick Alarics and tore Hermanson Stargate,
Dr Luke. Uh. These these folks have written songs like
bad Blood, Hey Mama Worth, It Can't Feel My Face,
the Night is Still Young, and so on. The main guy, though,
you know, the main guy is this guy, Max Martin.
I mean, it's not just him because I'm sorry if
(55:28):
I'm if I'm stealing this from you. But this the way.
There's a great episode of On Point with Tom Ashbrook
and NPR from a few days ago where they talk
about the process of this whole thing, and I was
not aware of this. They basically do this stuff by committee,
where like they have like the guy that does the hooks,
they have the guy that does you know, the beat,
they have the I mean, but but more so than
just like collaborative thing, it's literally like they pass it
(55:50):
down the line and the idea is to stuff it
with so many hooks that capitalize on that I think
fifteen seconds, that's something that listens to the change the
second before they changed the station. Anyway, probably not necessarily conspiracy.
They're pretty open about it, but it's certainly some of
the record industry kind of tried to keep under wraps.
I think for a long time it was literally stuff
(56:11):
they don't want you to know. And no, not necessarily
any occult occult issues going on there, but it's it's
pretty fascinating stuff for sure. Wait, I hear that sound cute?
Do you hear that? I do. I know what that means.
I know what it means. It means that it's time
for me to apologize to Pope Francis for real. You guys.
(56:34):
We recorded last week's episode a few days before the
story dropped. The Vatican finally UM issued a statement regarding
Pope Francis is supposedly secret one on one meeting with
Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk UM who was denying UM
marriage licenses to gay couples, and UM. You know, there
(56:57):
was a lot to not being made of the fact
that the Pope had the secret meeting, and I expressed
my personal disappointment because I just was so fascinated by
this pope and his more progressive ways of doing things
and very even handed way of speaking about speaking about
issues that popes don't typically handle. And as it turns out,
this was entirely spun by Kim Davis's people. UM, what
(57:22):
was really going on was the Pope was meeting with
a group of people for very quick little handshake and
a kind of a meet and Greek kind of situation.
At this this Vatican embassy essentially in d C, and
UM the the only people that he actually was aware
we're going to be there. And I don't remember their name,
(57:43):
but it was a student of his from I believe
he taught at a Catholic institution in Argentina, isn't that
where he's from? And this was a same sex couple
um that he knew were going to be there, and
he specific the expressed to his old friend or his
student that he was excited to see him and wanted
(58:05):
to give him a hug. And that was literally the
only person that the Pope was there that he was
aware was going to be there. So Kim Davis was
one of about fifteen or twenty or more folks that
were just kind of there waiting for the Pope to
pass through and hopefully have a little handshake and a
you know, a personal blessing. So I apologize your holiness.
(58:28):
You're a man of principle. It sounds like you're a
little bit bothered. I bothered that I was so quick
to jump on the bandwagon. I felt really bad about
it after the fact. I even considered adding an addendum
to the episode, but I just I figured this would
be the better way to do it, you know, come clean. Well,
as you know, the Pope being a big fan of
(58:51):
the show was pretty upset. Yeah, and remember I mentioned
the snapchats that we sent, Yeah, and he uh, he
sent some pretty um some some pretty sad emoticons. So yeah,
so you know, that's how it is. Uh, Sometimes you
just get caught up in in the heat of the moment,
(59:14):
the fear of the internet, right, the pitchforks come out,
and that's Uh, that's interesting because that's similar to what
happened in the Satanic Panic. You guys, We've got to go.
But there's so much other stuff I wanted to get
to here. There's so many other specific stories. I'm going
to ask for your help. Specifically, let me know what
(59:37):
links you see between the world of music and the
world of the occult. Uh, tell me if you think
it's absolute bunk, it's just bologna made up. But also
tell me if you think there is clear consistent proof
of you know, some sort of hip hop and Illuminati thing.
I'd love to see, just because at this point, at
(59:58):
this point, what I can say probably happens is that
there are groups running different things behind the scenes, right
we We've said this in our Illuminati episode. There are
a lot of people that want to control the world.
But there there's no one at this point who controls
the whole thing, not even international bankers, and they would
be one of the draft picks, right. And that's the
(01:00:21):
end of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts
or questions about this episode, you can get into contact
with us in a number of different ways. One of
the best is to give us a call. Our number
is one eight three three std w y t K.
If you don't want to do that, you can send
us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at
(01:00:41):
i heeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you
to know is a production of I Heart Radio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Now, this episode is one that I think we were
all excited about when we originally were doing this a
number of years ago. As you know, we're all big
fans of music here and in we said, well, what's
the big deal with music and the occult? You guys
(00:20):
remember this one. It's a question I've been asking since
time immemorial. Um, It's just one of these things. They
seem kind of like intrinsically bound, you know, music, backwards masking,
the idea of Marilyn Manson somehow causing children to go
on school shooting spreeze and devil worship and all that stuff. Um,
they really are just kind of two p's in a pot,
(00:40):
a lot of that. It turns out totally overblown and
not a thing, but also backwards masking kind of a thing,
but maybe not on the way you might think. I
honestly can't remember if I'm on this one or not.
This is still in the realm of right after my
son was born. Names on the meta, so I don't know.
I think you. I think you probably are. This is
the episode that made us a friend, our buddy Murray
(01:04):
at Away from Guadalcanal Diary, UM, who wrote us specifically
referring to backwards masking that we talked about in this episode.
So Hey Murray, Hey Mury, Sorry miss you the last
time there was a hang. But I'm looking forward to
joining forces in person, assuming that Big Music doesn't get
(01:24):
us for exposing the truth about rock stars and the occult.
Kitty Uh. We bring back classic episodes from our catalog
sometimes when the mood strikes us, sometimes when we want
to go on vacation, but we still want to share
something really valuable. And we'd love to hear your stories
(01:45):
about music and the occult, especially no spoilers, but especially
if you have proof of any of these allegations. Yeah, mar,
what have you been doing out there? Here? He goes
from UFOs to goists and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
(02:05):
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. And
ladies and gentlemen, you know what that music means. Welcome
to the show. I'm Ben and I'm Nol the necro
goat slaughterer Brown. Oh, that is good. We should do
some We should do some black metal nicknames. You know,
(02:28):
I feel like I'm haugging the nickname giving duties so
often do you have a black metal nickname for menal Man?
It was everything I could do to come up with
that one. It was kind of redundant. That's a necro
goat slaughterer. So is it is it itself? Does it
only slaughter necro goats? Or is it a necro goat
that's slaughters right? Not clear? But you know what, a
(02:49):
little ambiguity in uh in black metal is probably just fine. Ben.
I'm gonna call you. I'm gonna take a cue from
the Swedish black metal band hell Hammer, and I'm gonna
call you Ben satanic slaughter Bolan. You know, I'll deal
with I like the nested alliteration hell Hammer was it
(03:10):
was a member of a band, right, a member of
a band, but also a a Swedish black metal band
maybe active now they're active in the early eighties. Um,
And we'll get to that part of the story very
soon as a way of seguang into what today's topic is,
which is music and the occult. That's right, and ladies
(03:32):
and gentlemen, we're here. Most importantly you're here. It's what
we call the most wonderful time of the year over
at Conspiracy stuff. That is the countdown to Halloween. We're
in the month of October, and uh, we stay tuned
for the end because we have a little bit of
administrative business to cover. But first we're going to delve
(03:53):
into something that a lot of people have asked us about. No,
this was this was an idea that you came to
us with, right, Yeah, and I just think it's there's
a lot of there to unpack, and there's a lot
of opportunity, you know, to dig into some pretty interesting
stuff when it comes to music in the occult um,
not only with things like black metal and satanism, but
(04:14):
just numerology and Illuminati symbology embedded in different works and
um um you know, popular culture references throughout the history
of rock music. Yes, and he goes past rock music,
which is something we're going to discover. So here, let's
let's just paint the background a little bit, right. Uh,
(04:34):
First things first, the music industry is, uh, surprise, a
huge business. Gargantelin global recorded music sales totaled fifteen billion
dollars in two and that's even with you know, the
the fall of paid media, more people just finding songs
you'd rather listen to for free on a streaming service.
(04:56):
Right either way you cut it. It's a Leviathan business
whi as And that's because music is one of the
few things that unites all human beings, regardless of backgrounds.
One of my favorite writers, Vladimir uh Novolkov. Navolkov is
one of the only people I ever heard of who
(05:17):
just categorically didn't like music. He had synesthesia and he
didn't get music. He said, it was just this collection
of noises to him. So, other than one author who
passed away a long time ago, pretty much everybody dig
some sort of music. It occupies a unique niche and
the human experience, and it appears, fun fact, to predate
(05:39):
the written word, making the practice of music literally older
than recorded history. So today we're gonna talk about music.
But you know what sort of show this is, folks
and h you know, our favorite holiday is coming up,
So we're not just going to talk about the music
industry or a few instances of conspiracy. No, when we
(06:00):
explore the entire concept of the relationship between music and
the cult, there's one place we always have to start,
right absolutely, and that is with the devil Satan old
scratch like that one, yeah, old scratch? How about the
Devil went down to Georgia. Do you remember that song? Yeah,
(06:23):
devil went down to Georgia. He was looking for soul
to steel. Yeah, and I know he played a golden
fiddle and he gets into a fiddle off with Johnny
is it Johnny Georgia and the Yeah, and if you
if you win, you get this shiny fiddle made a goal.
(06:45):
But if you lose the definitely a call back to
one of the early rock myths with with the Satan,
which is the Robert Johnson story. You want to talk
about that, Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's like a let's like
a little bit about this. This is something that you
and I were talking about off air, because you found
(07:06):
a fantastic source for some of this, right did. It's
a book called Season of the which How the Occult
Saved Rock and Roll by a guy named Peter Barba
Gal like that. Um and it basically just is like
kind of an oral history of as far back um
as like the Blues and Elvis and things like that,
(07:26):
about how just the connections between um this idea of
like selling your soul to the devil at the crossroads,
you know, in order to gain the ability to write
amazing songs and perform amazing music and back to the
whole devil went down to Georgia theme. That is definitely
where this comes from, which is the story of Robert Johnson,
who was a very very well regarded blues singer and
(07:49):
guitarist largely credited um for inventing many of these sounds
and um you know, constructs that went on to be
very important for much of popular music, especially you know,
things like rock music, right yeah, and and had relatively
few recorded songs. But he did also have a song
(08:12):
about going to the crossroads. He actually has a song
about it. But this is also tropes or themes or
versions of another story, you know, that one would go
to the crossroads or through certain arcane preparations, strike a
deal with dark powers. It's like that Faust story, the
(08:33):
Faust exactly, you know, as as they say, you know,
you're basically exchanging your humanity for some boon that the devil,
you know, which ultimately serves as a stand in for
any any number of other malevolent dark forces them from
whether it's voodoo culture or paganism or anything like that. Um,
(08:55):
It's it's certainly a part of a trope in all
of those um, you know, mythologies that you could call them, right, Yeah, yeah,
we've talked about this on the show before. The idea
of religious syncretism, that one religion or another will attempt
to meld together to win over the people. So the
idea that you mentioned there is brilliant and old. The satan,
(09:17):
that Abramaic satan is a stand in often for older
gods or spirits in these stories. Trafficking with supernatural creatures
for material gain is is a very it's a very
old idea, and you know, we often see that. We
talked about that in our other video Five Things you
Didn't Know about Satan listeners. Of course, if you're checking
(09:41):
out this show right now, then you already know that
the trident and the goat legs are examples of this
kind of religious syncretism trying to vilify pre existing gods.
But here's an interesting thing. In Abramaic tradition, Lucifer was
known as the angel of music before he fell from
God's grace, or that's what you'll hear a lot of
(10:04):
people say. And so this devil, this Promethean figure has
been associated with music and musicians in a number of ways.
There's there's another there's another case of someone who was
alleged to sell their soul to the devil, and that
was Niccolo Paganini. Uh this, this guy violinist right by
(10:27):
all accounts, just the best there ever was at the time.
You know, just incredibly fast, incredibly proficient, just insane technique.
Actually grew up playing violin. So m was aware of
him and kind of the shadow that he cast on
the on the history of performing so um, it's it
makes sense that that he would have gotten cast as
(10:50):
one of these figures that made some sort of Baustian
bargain in order to get those mad violent skills. So
yet he sold his soul, he made a pact with
the level. And for those of you who are interested,
I will say, uh, I guess I wouldn't recommend trying
some kind of nefarious magic, but if you're looking for
(11:16):
a way to do it, you can find things like
the Lesser Key of Solomon. That's a that's a grim wall,
or the Malice Malefic Harum, which talks about some anecdotal
ideas of pacts with Satan. So it gets pretty complex
pretty quickly, because you know, calling the big one up
(11:37):
is not necessarily recommended you get there are other lesser
people you could work with, you know, so apparently there
is a specific month or day of the weaker hour
to call these other demons and invoke some sort of pact.
So inspires market if you want to sell your soul,
I'm sure you are just several fascinating Google searches away
(11:59):
from getting on the trail. But because of I think,
because of this pre linguistic mystical nature of music and
the human experience, that it makes sense for us to
see it associated with this idea of a magical thing. Well,
(12:20):
I mean it actually brought to mind something that you've
said to me yesterday we were hanging out off air UM.
A friend of yours, you said, who was into practicing magic.
UM had a really interesting way of describing what magic was.
I think he used the phrase weaponized psychology. Is that yeah,
And I feel like music has some of that to
it as well, because it's it's this whole package that
(12:44):
combines something like a melody, which can invoke uh certain
responses emotionally just by nature of what the melody sounds like,
with a lyrical content which can invoke many different things,
whether it be nostalgia, whether it be some sort of
longing or or some kind of you know, emotional response.
And to me, that is a form of, you know,
(13:05):
if you look at it this way, weaponized psychology, where
you are eliciting a certain response from someone by combining
these elements, and it is the sort of ritualistic thing,
whether it's putting on a record or going to a concert.
You know, you are participating in this invocation. Let's say, Yeah,
there's there's a there is a certain strange thing to it, right,
(13:28):
like why do minor chords make people feel sad? Yes?
And with that in mind, we're going to go to
the next part of our show, Ladies and gentlemen. We're
going to discuss some conspiracies, both theories and facts surrounding
music and the occult. In other words, here's where it
(13:50):
gets crazy. One of the first connections here we'd like
to discuss is the connection between metal heavy mount in
satan uh as far back as as you know, Black
Sabbath for example. You know, just the name Black Sabbath
carries this weight of demonic you know, worship of some
(14:11):
kind is the idea of taking a holy day and
making it, you know, shrouding it in darkness of some company,
which is weird because I didn't Black Sabbath begin as
a blues band. I'm not sure it would make sense.
They definitely have some blues qualities in their music as
far as the riffs and and again, you know, a
(14:32):
lot of metal is based in this idea of of
guitar riffs and playing these little motives that kind of repeat.
And obviously you can get into different genres that that
take that in various different directions, but UM, at its heart,
metal is a guitar driven UM you know genre of music. UM.
(14:54):
So one of the most infamous genres of metal uh
that has come out of that scene is something called
black metal, which you have black metal UM. And I
remember first hearing about black metal when I was much younger.
There was I had a subscription to Spin magazine and
there was an issue that had all of these different
(15:15):
figures from Norwegian black metal UM in this uh this
profile or whatever. And I can't remember their names, but
they were all fantastic. I'll give you just some example.
The names like Emperor exactly that the names of the
bands sure like Emperor, but the individuals individuals who were
in the bands UM I'll have this is what this
is from a band we were talking about earlier, the
band hell Hammer, which again not the same hell Hammer
(15:36):
as one of the characters were about to discuss it
in this story, but names like Uh Satanic Slaughter, which
is the nickname I gave Ben Slade Necros. These are
members of the band Satanic Slaughter was the guitarist and
lead vocalist, Uh Slade Necros bass and packing vocals, Denial
Fiend on drums, Uh Savage Damage on basin vocal Evoked
(16:01):
Damnator on bass, Grim Decapitator on basse and these are
all previous members and Dell Infernali on guitar. Do you
think any of them are listening to the show hoped on?
You don't? You don't want them to be. I'd be scarred,
really yeah. And my point is, though, when I saw
this profile and spin, I remember there was one guy
who talked about carrying around a decapitated raven's head in
(16:21):
a satchel that he sniffs, you know, like before he
went on stage to get the sense of death in
his nostrils. And you know, anyway, so I'm getting ahead
of myself, but that was my first exposure to this
black metal, and I think there's there's definitely different camps,
but the main ones that we think about are the
ones from Norway and the ones from Sweden. Right. So
(16:42):
the the interesting thing here is that so much of
entertainment is is just shoha showmanship exactly. So we're all
familiar perhaps with UH with different organizations that will put
on a spell particle but then go home, have a
nice cup of earl gray and then UH, I don't know,
(17:06):
asked the kids about their day before going to sleep
at sharp. So there's a there's an important distinction to
make between what what is smoke and mirror and what
is actually happening. I despise We're going to talk about
this in a little more detail in second but I
despise the UH, I guess, the the laziness or the
(17:30):
lack of critical thinking when people paint with such a
broad brush and say, oh, all black metal, all people
involved in black metal, or these lunatic cannibal necro goat
slaughterers right to use your nickname, because it's is simply
not true. But there is something we can talk about
(17:52):
which was seen as an occult link by many opponents,
and that is the prevalence of church burnings in the
Norwegian black metal scene alone. There were over fifty arsons
of Christian churches from two to nineties six. So what
this shows us is that it was at least in
(18:12):
vogue for people who believed that members of the black
metal scene in Norway were practicing Satanists or something. This
was considered the smoking gun, or not to be crassed,
but the smoking church. And the problem with that is
that people who were doing that, or people who we're
(18:35):
not opposed to it, would say, this is not about Satanism,
this is about the opposition of Christian religion. Still you're
burning buildings. Yeah. This sort of comes back to this
idea that we were beginning to touch on appearance versus actions.
So for example, like Ozzy Osborne, yes he may have
snorted a line of ants in the heyday of his
(18:55):
drug Hayes, but it certainly wasn't antribute to the dark Lord,
you know. And I mean maybe they're they dabbled, you know,
Black Sabbath dabbled in some ideas of occult teachings, but
they certainly are not thought to have been a Satanic
band so to speak. Whereas or like Another example is
like Alice Cooper, you know, a lot of a lot
(19:16):
of costumes, a lot of set pieces, you know, a
lot of kind of horror Grand Guignon kind of showmanship.
And you could say the same about even kiss for instance,
kiss yeah, to a much lesser degree. I mean, kissed
to me has always just been absurd and there's not
really anything scary about what they're doing. Um, But like
Alice Cooper or even a Marilyn Manson, you know, and
(19:38):
I mean Manson Manson did it profess to be a
follower of Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan and
things like that. But I think a lot of that
was just sort of like a way to rebel against
some of what we're talking about, like these Judaeo Christian
kind of beliefs or an Anton LaVey or the philosophy
of the Church of Satan is not necessarily the deistic
(20:02):
Satanism that people might think of if they are it's
a symbol or less a rebellion and of what does
it do with thou wilst you know, kind of like
just basically don't follow anyone's rules but your own. It's
it's a very kind of hedonistic Um ultimately kind of
a selfish way of life, which they would say is
not really problematic. I would say it's ironic though, if
(20:25):
if you're reading, like any religion, it says do what
you want whenever you do what you want, and here
are the rules for how you do what you want,
because is that what you want to do. There's just
a cognitive distance. But anyhow, I'm not knocking the Church
(20:46):
of Satan. I am pointing out that a lot of
people probably misinterpret its philosophy. But while we're here with
Maryland Manson, let's let's follow this. Let's go a little
bit down the rabbit hole. Because the group, which I
guess began as Merrily Manson and the Spooky Kids, had
the idea of taking the name of a famous beauty
(21:10):
queen or actress right, some sort of Hollywood icon, right,
and combining it with the surname of a serial killer.
So we have things like what we have Merrilyn Manson,
Twiggy Ramirez, Twiggy Ramira. There was Gidget Gain, which was
ed Gain the surname, and gidget Um, as far as
(21:32):
I can tell, is is the reference to a film
from nine from Glumbia Pictures. Starring Sandra d Cliff Robertson
and James Darren sort of like a you know, it
looks like a very quintessentially Hollywood type film from the time, right,
and then there's uh, there's Daisy berg Awitz, these these names.
You see the pattern. But let's focus on Marilyn Manson's
(21:55):
name in specific, because that's Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson.
M hm. So Charles Manson is himself Manson Manson family
are at the crux of several other interconnecting theories, right.
And he was in the musical underground of California for
(22:17):
a while too. I think he was way underground, Yeah,
I think, yeah, he had. He seemed to. He was
a very charismatic dude and was able to kind of
curry favor and like kind of become friends and get
into the inside circle with some relatively famous musicians, like,
for example, like he kind of knew forget which beach
boy he spent time with, but there was definitely one
(22:38):
of them, um, and he was trying to kind of,
you know, cheat his way into the music industry. More
or less. He was not a particularly talented songwriter. Actually,
at one point years ago had a a copy of
just a compilation of all of the songs, and they're
they're very bad. It's not it's it's not. There's nothing
particularly engaging or commercial. There's nothing particularly sellable about any
(23:01):
of this music. And it's it's borderline unlistenable unless you
are able to just do it kind of as an
artifact of here's what Charles Manson sounds like plan acoustic guitar,
as like a historical lobbity. But so okay this, you know,
it's interesting that you say that, because let's let's explore
some of the other aspects of Manson's rise and fall.
(23:23):
While he was incarcerated, as he was for most of
his life, I think the technically now the majority of
his life he has been locked away one place or another.
He was exposed to some of the principles and techniques
of something called dianetics, which would become later scientology as
(23:44):
a precursor for that. He also had his own brand
of cult creation, and we studied him fairly extensively. When
we were looking at the we did a video man
I did a video about how cults work and how,
(24:04):
you know, how one erases the ego, removes the ability
to think critically or proactively, you know, and turns people
really into limbs of a larger body rather than their
own their own person. And one thing that's strange about
this is that this ties into what are often considered
(24:28):
a cult techniques and the word occult just to be
just to be clear, is often treated with a magical
context here in the States in our modern day. But
um it also the base of it really means hidden,
you know. So I would say that the techniques Manson
(24:51):
was thought of using, right, or people who believe that
he was exercising something like mesmerism or hypnosis, which he was,
that would be seen as a hidden skill and accult approach.
And it worked. Yet people brainwashed had a mountain the desert,
convinced that there was gonna be a race war that
(25:12):
would take over the entire world. They were going to
live in a secret cave ultra skelter, Yes, sir, helter skelter, uh,
culminating of course in some murders. Yeah, and this, you know,
I know, we're kind of jumping all over the place
with this, but this is just it's it's fascinating and
it's easy to there's a lot of rabbit holes to
go down. So you'll have to forgive us if we
go a little bit out of order on some of
this stuff. UM. But yeah, So there was a series
(25:35):
of murders that the Manson family perpetrated. And then there's
there's another connection with some of these back to some
of the other things we're talking about. Um. The first
set was the Sharon Tate house. That was Roman Polanski,
the director who did Rosemary's Baby. Um, he did Chinatowns,
one of my favorites, and more recently, UM, he did
like the Pianist in the Ninth Gate with Johnny Depp,
(25:55):
and he continues to work. Very controversial figure in his
own right. But that's for another day. So the Manson
and his followers, who I believe we're mostly women. Um,
they broke into this house and they murdered Tate and
her entourage. I guess she had I she was having
a party or had some friends over the time. Polanski
was not there, he was out of town. Um. It's
(26:16):
actually a really excellent sort of a side topic. UM.
A book by an author named Jersey Kazinski. I'm called
Blind Date. UM, and Jersey Kazinski wrote the book Being There,
which is a Fan was made into a fantastic film
starring Peter Sellers. But in Blind Date Um he actually
was friends with Roman Polanski and was supposed to be
at this house when these murders happened, and he writes
(26:39):
sort of a fictionalized account of how he um managed
to not be there and when it up happening, and
sort of the aftermath of it, But he doesn't really
write it like as a first person, like from his
own perspectives. It's very interesting if you want to learn
more about it, that's a good good place to start.
So the next night Um Manson felt like the they
had not done the best job at the at how
(27:00):
so they wanted to give it another go, I guess,
so they went to the home of a supermarket executive
named Leno La Bianca where he and his wife Rosemary,
who owned a dress shop, lives. It was in the
Los Fillies neighborhood of Los Angeles, and it was during
this uh kind of killing spree that Manson and his
(27:20):
followers would cover the walls in different phrases that later
became iconic, like Helter Skelter and Death to the Pigs,
and um this idea of him trying to start a
race war. Rise held Skelter is obviously a reference to
the Beatles song Helter Skelter off of the White album Right,
and there's another connection. Two interesting side notes before we
(27:43):
go on. There are more suspected murders on part of
Manson and the Manson family out there in the desert,
and people aren't sure who else got caught, who was
killed in Los Angeles and just not associated with it.
Helter Skelter could have been much worse. In fact, one
(28:04):
of the reasons it wasn't it's because a guy of
a guy who doesn't get enough credit in the story,
a fellow named Paul Crockett, retired prospector who had also
studied oddly enough scientology and apparently began to d program
some of the people Paul's some of the people in
(28:25):
the Manson family. Paul Crockett's story is mysterious to me.
I invite you listeners to look it up and let
me know what you think. We covered it briefly in
one of our earlier videos, but there's there's a lot
more to that story that remains untold, And uh, you know,
I feel like we're we might be getting closer to
(28:45):
falling into a Charles Manson podcast. You know, it's really
interesting stuff there for sure. Um. One a little side
note and kind of bringing it back to the music thing,
we definitely went down at a little bit of rabbit hole. Um.
The La Bianca Mansion, actually the Tape Mansion was was demolished.
I'm not quite sure how long ago, but it's been
some years. The La Bianca Mansion still stands and has
(29:08):
had some renovations done. But Um, Trent Resner from nine
Inch Nails actually rented that mansion in order to make
their iconic record, The Downward Spiral Um. And he was
fascinated by you know, the Manson mythology and all of
that as well. Um. And so I mean it just
kind of comes back to this connection with music and
(29:28):
the occults and you know, true believers versus you know,
showman and um, you know, I think there is some
shock value and being sort of like a fringe like
sort of a dark musician, a dark artist, kind of
like like Ninch Nails kind of has like a sort
(29:49):
of a sinister, kind of a creepy vibe to it,
and like saying we made our record in the house
where the Manson murders happened. And you know what this
reminds me of is a story that inspired part of
this podcast, which you had told me originally off air,
and I had no idea about this. Yeah, I mean,
I think one of the reasons that I wanted to
(30:11):
explore this Manson connection. What this made me think of
as this story about one of my favorite artists musicians
of all times, David Bowie. And in the mid seventies,
Bowie was deep in his thin white duke phase, and
anyone who knows about Bowie would recognize the look of
(30:31):
David Bowie during this period easily super thin, very pale,
and a lot of that had to do with the
fact that he was just off the rails on cocaine
at the time. But during this period he actually lived
in a mansion that was just down the road from
the La Bianca House, which is where that second set,
(30:54):
arguably the more grizzly set of of Manson murders took
place and during ing this period, and a lot of
this is this is from the book that I mentioned earlier,
which is called Um How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll?
Definitely worth checking out. You can get as an e
book on Amazon. Um. During this period, he had just
completely lost himself to this cocaine addiction. And I mean,
(31:17):
you're David Bowie. He was just obscenely famous at this point.
You know, he should get wherever he wanted. He had
this mansion, he was probably not leaving very often, just
getting piles of cocaine delivered to him. And he started
worrying about things like the like Nazi conspiracies, the Manson murders. Um,
(31:37):
you know, his own bodily essences and bodily fluids and
what that meant, you know, like sort of like that
character in UM Dr Strange Love who's always talking about
his precious, precious bodily fluids. Definitely a lot of paranoia
going on there, UM. And he became convinced that because
of the proximity to the La Bianca house, there were
(32:00):
levolent spirits that were invading his world, whether it was
his his home, his psyche, you know, all over the place.
So he decided, um to seek the help of what
we would refer to as a white witch, a follower
of the Right hand path exactly. So the house that
(32:21):
Bowie was renting belonged to a guy named Glenn Hughes,
who was the basis for the band Deep Purple, Smoke
on the Water and things like that. And this is
a quote from a guy named Mark Spitz who wrote
a Bowie biography. Um, I don't know if it was
particularly sanctioned, but it definitely exists. Was or he was
around during these days, and the author of Season of
(32:43):
the Witch did use him as a as a source
in several occasions. So here's a quote from him describing, um,
what Hughes thought about David's David by situation line quote,
He felt inclined to go on very bizarre tangents about
Alistair Crowley, or the Nazis or numerals a lot. He
was fleetly wired, maniacally wired. I could not keep up
with him. He was on the edge all the time
(33:05):
of paranoia and also going on about things I had
no freaking idea of what he was talking about. He'd
go into a rap on it and I wouldn't know
what he was talking about. And then, as Bowie himself
remembered in this up in this from this book, my
other fascination was with the Nazis and their search for
the Holy Grail. I paid with the worst manic depression
of my life. My psyche went through the roof. It
(33:25):
just fractured into pieces. I was hallucinating twenty four hours
a day. I felt like I'd fallen into the bowels
of the earth. So it was during this period for
David Bowie that he reached out to someone named Cherry Vanilla,
who was one of a former employee of Bowie's management
company who had been around and witnessed much of his
(33:47):
debauchery and paranoia, and she was the one who put
him in touch with this white witch named Wally elm Lark.
And the idea was that elm Lark would come into
this mansion in LUs Veleas and exercise the place, um,
whether it was you know, saging it and just kind
(34:07):
of like performing some rituals to clear it of evil
spirits and sage. And it would be when you burn
sage around different areas of a place, right exactly. So, Noel,
I have to ask something that's probably on the mind
of at least a few listeners here. Do you think
there were evil spirits on the premises? Well? Uh, to
(34:29):
quote Dave Chappelle doing Rick James, Cocaine's a hell of
a drug. That's yeah, that's what I I to quote
Rick James doing Rick James, yea, Cocaine's a hell of
a drug apparently. Yeah, And I mean it does sound
like Bowie was just out of his mind with paranoia,
and um, you know, when you get that way and
(34:49):
you feel like you can't trust anybody, you see devils
at every turn, you know. Um, you know there is
an account just to wrap this this little story up,
which I think is is fun. Um this I don't know,
not fun. I mean, definitely, the guy was in in
a very very dark place. He was in a very
dark place, and for someone to be able to offer
him some sort of help, whether it was BS or not,
I can't really fault him too much. He's okay, No,
(35:13):
he's definitely okay. Shockingly okay, look at the guy. He
looks like he's twenty years old. It's bizarre. Um. So
you know, this Wally elm Lark character did end up
coming into the house and she, uh you know, apparently,
according to those present, successfully exercised the swimming pool. That
was the first thing she wanted to do. That he
(35:34):
was exercise of the swimming pool. And um, this is
a quote from uh backstage passes Life on the wild
Side with David Bowie, which is a memoir by Angie Bowie,
who was David's wife during this period, and she says,
quote at a certain point in the ritual, the pool
began to bubble. It bubbled vigorously, perhaps thrashed as a
better term, in a manner inconsistent with any explanation involving
(35:58):
filters and the like. And then Mark Spitz from earlier
from this unauthorized Bowie uh memoir, I guess Um wrote,
quote Elmlark wrote a series of spells and incantations out
for Bowie in case the demons returned for a dip,
and remained on call for Bowie as he continued to
wrestle with the forces of darkness. Wow, I'm gonna say
(36:22):
cocaine if I had to to choose one. Not to
be too skeptical about it. But we see, okay, so
we see this, We see this edge of madness intersecting
with some of the the appearance of madness which is
good for marketing, right, versus just this strange the strange
(36:46):
situations you get into when you catapult to this unprecedented
level of fame and success. But but madness aside, let's
take a closer look at the people who, regardless of
drug use or anything like that, sincerely believe that they
(37:07):
are part of an occult movement or part of a
magical working. We know, the allegations of some sort of
demonic worship are pretty old, you know, the predate Bowie
of course, the in popular music and rock music, especially
(37:27):
for instance, the Rolling Stones have been accused of this,
and even like led Zeppelin, the idea backwards masking and
um messages hidden that were like embedded in the inner
ring of an help he um for example, things like that,
right exactly, and this, you know, this goes into something
interesting that we can explore, the idea of the moral panic, right,
(37:50):
the satanic panic. But before we do that, uh, there,
there are a couple other things we should talk about. There.
There is evidence, as you've said, of real occult conspiracies
in music, one of the biggest ones of course, being
that members of the black metal scene in some Scandinavian
(38:14):
countries did conspire to burn churches. Now, as for the
motivation of that, it probably isn't the same motivation behind
every single church burning, because they're different groups doing it, right,
And we mentioned this earlier, the idea that it was
in large part um at active rebellion against you know,
the the idea of sort of what they might perceive
(38:35):
as an oppressive puritanical um you know, not government exactly,
but just sort of like our hierarchy, I guess, the
dogma exactly. So there's certainly that um aspect of it.
But uh, there's also this idea of being like it's
almost like a gang mentality where you have to do
these initiations in order to show that you're completely behind
(38:58):
what the gang is about. Is very similar with some
of these black metal groups where they're you know, burning
the churches to show their commitment, to demonstrate their commitment
to these ideals. Um, and why don't you talk a
little bit about what some of those ideals might be
and what some of these other initiations might have been. Okay,
these other ideals, these other initiations in this I think
(39:21):
initiation is a perfect word. One thing would be the
assumption of a different name. In magical orders, it's common
for someone who is initiated to take upon a new name, right,
a name that is used within the order and that
also becomes a new identity for other rituals that one
(39:45):
would one would take to show allegiance to a dark force.
Of course, there are things that are you know, there
are agreements, actual written down agreements, for instance. And this
goes back we mentioned Faust of Eustis is based on
real person, a guy named Dr Johann George Fauss, and
(40:06):
in the Tail Dr Faust which is of course um
inspired by the actual Faust. Uh. Dr Faustus sells his
soul via a document for seven years of earthly pleasures
I believe, at the end of which he's his soul
is forfeit. And during the witch hunts in Europe there
(40:29):
were quite a few people who were accused of signing
packs with the devils, sometimes no even with papers provided,
and like the signature of the devil, which not to
you know. Far be it from me to cast a
shadow on their methodology and the inquisition. But that sounds
a little convenient. But when we talk about rituals and
(40:54):
initiations brings us to something that is probably a story
for a different time. Murders, suicides. There there are several
very strange cases in the world of metal. But maybe
metal deserves its own episode. Yeah, I think it really does.
There's a whole lot going on there. But we mentioned
the band, or maybe we didn't, but Mayhem UM was
(41:16):
a very popular Norwegian black metal band UM that ultimately
it's members ended up sort of being on different ideological
sides more or less, and two of them UM got
into a serious altercation that involved two of members, Uronymous
and a guy by the name of barg Erknus bar
(41:38):
Verkness who also has YouTube chair also if you want to,
if you're interested. He went to prison for a long time,
but I believe he is out now. Um murdered. Uh,
this guy Uronymous whould kind of taken him under his
wing in what some would argue was simply, uh, you know,
an altercation between two um folks that that maybe didn't
see eye to eye on some things. But this isn't
(42:00):
occasion that ultimately ended in uh Eronymous receiving twenty three
stab wounds, two to the head, five to the neck,
and sixteen to the back. So I mean, as far
as ritualistic murders go, you know, if it was just
a beef between two dudes, probably could have just stopped
with the one, you know what I mean, certainly, Um,
(42:24):
but this also goes back to my by my previous
point about this having kind of like a gang mentality
or like a cult, which brings us to UH in
a lot of ways. Of the next point on our list, Yes,
ain't that fresh and everyone wants to get down like that?
Our next our next topic here is hip hop and
(42:46):
the Illuminati. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, if you're listening to show,
then the odds are that you may well be one
of the people over the years who have requested that
we talk about the Illuminati and tip hop, that we
explore it. So what's the gist of this snel? So
(43:06):
this idea that successful hip hop stars are ultimately tools
of the Illuminati, which is a shadowy group controlling the
world through various financial, political, military, and cultural means allegedly. Right,
we have a we have a three part YouTube series
on it. We've talked at length about Adam Bioshops and
the founders, the various contradictory stories about what may or
(43:32):
may not be the Illuminati, the different groups who consider
themselves the Illuminati instead of other groups. And so you know,
back to alleged things. Um, the alleged evidence of this
connection UH is well, you know you don't have to
look far. You can just get on YouTube, for example,
and and find just tons of these examples that show
(43:53):
various musicians using symbols like the all seeing I which covering.
You'll see clips of one person covering one eye, and
then whomever uploaded the video will say proof illuminati, which
life is probably a little bit of a strong term,
strong term. It's interesting. There's definitely a collection this stuff,
some more ideas um for a lot of folks. This belief,
(44:15):
uh proves that the shadowy connections, rather than luck or talent,
beside the success of an entertainer. Yeah, but there's a
fair counterpoint here. Nor if this stuff is supposed to
be so secret, then why would somebody show these symbols,
these arcane you know, a secret handshakes or gestures on
globally broadcasted videos. And it goes back to a lot
(44:41):
of the stuff we were talking about earlier with the
history of rock and using some of these symbols and
backwards masking, and you know, the belief versus the showmanship
of it. You know, I think there's a lot to
be said of planting intriguing arcane images and symbols and
your work it's just it's it's neat, it's it's fascinating.
(45:01):
You know, people are intrigued by all kinds of things
without necessarily having to be fully on board with every
ideological you know, um idea right with the philosophy behind something. Yeah,
it's it's absolutely true. Jay Z in some interviews it
makes me chuckled because I'm a fan of jay Z.
He's regularly said he's not part of the illuminati, and
(45:24):
he feels like has to say a references and verses
and stuff. And I don't know, maybe we have some
listeners who believe that they're legitimately is something to this.
I don't deny that there is a power behind the curtain,
behind the throne, behind the scenes of the music industry
in probably by genre, in country and and and it's
(45:46):
probably like some unseen mob boss type figure in Mariotti music,
you know, so hip hop's different. So my my question then,
is is it more likely that these entertainers are to
Knowl's point, seeking to capitalize on beliefs to stay edging
in the public eye, or is there something there is there,
(46:07):
some nefarious group of ultimately devil worshippers behind the scenes
Because in the eighties and the nineties, America thought so well.
I mean, you know, they say the love of money,
you know, is the root of all evil. And to
me and a lot of these entertainment scenarios, money is
the is the devil you don't see, you know that
like is driving all of these things. And I mean
(46:29):
that's that's where the tastemakers come from. The folks that
that hold all the all the chips are the ones
that choose who you know, gets the hits ultimately. And
I mean there's certainly something to be said of public
opinion and people going viral and things like that, but
at the end of the day, Uh, largely it's a
numbers game. You know, it's like who's getting the resources,
who's who's getting all of the pr and who's who's
(46:50):
like actually, you know, commanding that kind of power. And
I'd like to I'd like to take a look at
this this thing, the Satanic panic that swept the us.
Some of you may be a little too young, but
some of you may be old enough to remember this. Uh.
(47:10):
The the Satanic panic is something that came about. It's
considered a moral panic comparable to witch hunts. For instance,
in Europe or the Red Scare with McCarthy ism, and
the idea was that there was a vast, overarching conspiracy
(47:34):
on the part of everyone from rock musicians to heavy
metal musicians, to blues musicians to racy singers, to poison
the minds and souls of children, taking them into the
abyssal plane of hell for their time. They are that
they are kind of a low hanging fruit. Honestly, they
are very suggestible. I'm kidding. It started in right, it's
(48:00):
the it's people who have mental issues brought on by
their advanced age. So it's pretty much preschools and nursing homes.
It's where he is where he really tried to sell
that heavy metal right totally. But anyhow, this so this
starts in the nineteen seventies. Uh, and it's this idea
that there's this vast underground network of Satanists controlling everything. Uh.
(48:23):
It rose and peaked in the eighties and nineties, but
it's pretty much gone today. The first part of it
that really launched this was a book called The Satan
Seller by a guy named Mike Warnkey in nineteen seventy two.
He was referenced as an authority on Satanism for a
long or in nineteen seventy two published it and he
(48:44):
was referenced as an authority until nineteen ninety two when
he was exposed as a fraud. So he uh and
then other people came in again named John's Hodd said
that he started speaking in churches saying that which is
druids and the illuminate AUTI we're controlling world politics, media
and even gasp, most churches, churches churches. UH. This lad
(49:09):
to worries about backward masking. Like Nol mentioned earlier, worries
that Dungeons and Dragons was a portal to this parallel
occult world, the idea that there was satanic ritual abuse
occurring in um in in the like in the studios
(49:30):
of musicians, and we will see that there, you know,
there is proof that there were abusive situations and ritualized.
There is not proof that we could find that in
the case of musicians. Notice I say in the case
of musicians, not Hollywood overall. In the case of musicians,
we don't find evidence of a vast network of abusive behavior.
(49:55):
In the case of musicians, we don't. So the the
thing that happens with this is that you you start
to see politicians pick this up because it's it's since
essentially free votes. Right, it's red meat. And uh it
goes the in Tipper Gore and some other people, some
(50:17):
other associated this whole advisory thing, right, Yeah, the Parents
Music Resource Center. Uh, they wanted to they wanted to
force the government to label records that were threatening to
the hearts, minds, morals or souls of American youth. So
they had um, uh succession of offensive materials, stuff like
(50:40):
We're not gonna take it, but twist his sister. Yeah,
sort of bad attitude. Yeah, it's it's very strange. And
then Geraldo Rivera did a documentary or a Rivera piece
I guess called devil Worship, exposing Satan's underground. And then
of course Judas Priest went to try ale from making
a backwards message, which, um, let's see there was a
(51:07):
line in the song better by you better than Me
when played backwards, reportedly commanded the listener to do it,
which is such a rorshack ink blot, you know, an
audio version of it. Not only that, if you've ever
messed around with flipping things backwards, I mean that you
know the way words sound and reverse are always a
(51:30):
little bit off, and I just I could picture that
that was not even intentional almost you know, I'm I'm
I'm sure because what you know, here's the thing, long
story short, what did they find in these investigations? Ultimately
they didn't find a damn thing. Uh. We can talk
a little bit about mental health versus music, for okay.
(51:51):
For instance, there's the question when someone perpetrates an act
of violence, right, and people attempt to blame it on
a video game that person played, or a song that
they heard, right, or you know, just a book they read,
(52:11):
then it's always seemed very shortsighted to me. Right, even
if that was the trigger, the likelihood is that it
was no more than a proverbial straw on the camel's back.
You know, they could have been replaced by any number
of things. It could have been any number body looking
at them funny at the grocery store. I mean, you know, honestly,
(52:33):
I just think it's more than opportunistic. It's more than
convenient two blame a single thing on something like that.
I think it's offensive. It's offensive to the people who
survived those kind of tragedies. It's efensive to the families
of the victims, and not to mention the por Schmucks
had just put out an album. You know, So we
(52:57):
do know that there are you know, this has been
a long episode, but we do know that there are
some true, im proven corruption and cover ups in music.
There's the concept of paola, which which you can probably
speak to pretty well. I'm not actually intimately familiar with it.
I mean, I know it has to do with UM.
It's like the idea of the equivalent of like a lobbyist,
(53:19):
you know, giving uh gifts or taking a you know,
a lawmaker out for fancy dinners and exchange or not
necessarily exchange, but in the hopes that they will support
their piece of legislation that benefits the lobbying group, the
group they represent. It's it's an example of something like
that where executives I believe, pay DJs UM and rent
(53:40):
and radio station UM managers to play their songs, right
and and it's illegal, right, it's legal, and the FCC, uh,
the FCC specifically bands it. However, it is it's pretty common, right. Uh.
The part where it becomes legal is when the radio
(54:01):
station plays a specific song but doesn't disclose that they're
playing it for money, you're supposed to be transparent about it.
So that's something that really occurs, and it is kind
of a cover up. Then, you know, the exploitation of gosh,
especially the exploitation of up and coming talent in the
music industry and something for itself. Uh. I want to
(54:24):
close out though, when we're talking about behind the scenes
things in music in the occult. Okay, there is an
article in the Atlantic which can read online for free,
called hit Charade or sharade or fancy Listeners. And here's
the thing, guys, The vast majority of pop songs that
are in the top of the charts right now are
(54:46):
written by about six people. And guess where they're from.
They're from Scandinavia. There in Norwegian, there from Stockholm. There
is one lady who was from Oklahoma, but she uh
now she works with these other guys. Uh. They have
(55:06):
names like esther Dean, Mick Alarics and tore Hermanson Stargate,
Dr Luke. Uh. These these folks have written songs like
bad Blood, Hey Mama Worth, It Can't Feel My Face,
the Night is Still Young, and so on. The main guy, though,
you know, the main guy is this guy, Max Martin.
I mean, it's not just him because I'm sorry if
(55:28):
I'm if I'm stealing this from you. But this the way.
There's a great episode of On Point with Tom Ashbrook
and NPR from a few days ago where they talk
about the process of this whole thing, and I was
not aware of this. They basically do this stuff by committee,
where like they have like the guy that does the hooks,
they have the guy that does you know, the beat,
they have the I mean, but but more so than
just like collaborative thing, it's literally like they pass it
(55:50):
down the line and the idea is to stuff it
with so many hooks that capitalize on that I think
fifteen seconds, that's something that listens to the change the
second before they changed the station. Anyway, probably not necessarily conspiracy.
They're pretty open about it, but it's certainly some of
the record industry kind of tried to keep under wraps.
I think for a long time it was literally stuff
(56:11):
they don't want you to know. And no, not necessarily
any occult occult issues going on there, but it's it's
pretty fascinating stuff for sure. Wait, I hear that sound cute?
Do you hear that? I do. I know what that means.
I know what it means. It means that it's time
for me to apologize to Pope Francis for real. You guys.
(56:34):
We recorded last week's episode a few days before the
story dropped. The Vatican finally UM issued a statement regarding
Pope Francis is supposedly secret one on one meeting with
Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk UM who was denying UM
marriage licenses to gay couples, and UM. You know, there
(56:57):
was a lot to not being made of the fact
that the Pope had the secret meeting, and I expressed
my personal disappointment because I just was so fascinated by
this pope and his more progressive ways of doing things
and very even handed way of speaking about speaking about
issues that popes don't typically handle. And as it turns out,
this was entirely spun by Kim Davis's people. UM, what
(57:22):
was really going on was the Pope was meeting with
a group of people for very quick little handshake and
a kind of a meet and Greek kind of situation.
At this this Vatican embassy essentially in d C, and
UM the the only people that he actually was aware
we're going to be there. And I don't remember their name,
(57:43):
but it was a student of his from I believe
he taught at a Catholic institution in Argentina, isn't that
where he's from? And this was a same sex couple
um that he knew were going to be there, and
he specific the expressed to his old friend or his
student that he was excited to see him and wanted
(58:05):
to give him a hug. And that was literally the
only person that the Pope was there that he was
aware was going to be there. So Kim Davis was
one of about fifteen or twenty or more folks that
were just kind of there waiting for the Pope to
pass through and hopefully have a little handshake and a
you know, a personal blessing. So I apologize your holiness.
(58:28):
You're a man of principle. It sounds like you're a
little bit bothered. I bothered that I was so quick
to jump on the bandwagon. I felt really bad about
it after the fact. I even considered adding an addendum
to the episode, but I just I figured this would
be the better way to do it, you know, come clean. Well,
as you know, the Pope being a big fan of
(58:51):
the show was pretty upset. Yeah, and remember I mentioned
the snapchats that we sent, Yeah, and he uh, he
sent some pretty um some some pretty sad emoticons. So yeah,
so you know, that's how it is. Uh, Sometimes you
just get caught up in in the heat of the moment,
(59:14):
the fear of the internet, right, the pitchforks come out,
and that's Uh, that's interesting because that's similar to what
happened in the Satanic Panic. You guys, We've got to go.
But there's so much other stuff I wanted to get
to here. There's so many other specific stories. I'm going
to ask for your help. Specifically, let me know what
(59:37):
links you see between the world of music and the
world of the occult. Uh, tell me if you think
it's absolute bunk, it's just bologna made up. But also
tell me if you think there is clear consistent proof
of you know, some sort of hip hop and Illuminati thing.
I'd love to see, just because at this point, at
(59:58):
this point, what I can say probably happens is that
there are groups running different things behind the scenes, right
we We've said this in our Illuminati episode. There are
a lot of people that want to control the world.
But there there's no one at this point who controls
the whole thing, not even international bankers, and they would
be one of the draft picks, right. And that's the
(01:00:21):
end of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts
or questions about this episode, you can get into contact
with us in a number of different ways. One of
the best is to give us a call. Our number
is one eight three three std w y t K.
If you don't want to do that, you can send
us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at
(01:00:41):
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