Black Hoodie Alchemy – Details, episodes & analysis

For this episode on Black Hoodie Alchemy, we're celebrating the fall and Halloween aesthetic a bit more with our historical overview of the vampire!

As Carl Jung often said: whether or not God exists, the image of God certainly exists, and has propelled humanity thought throughout history in ways both enlightening and catastrophic. Certainly, one could say this to varying degrees about all symbolic aspects of the psyche, especially the particularly old and familiar ones -- and certainly, this mentality has a lot to do with Jung's overall viewpoint. All that in mind, we apply that the notion of the vampire!

Regardless of whether or not a vampire is real in a physical sense, the image of the vampire has been projected by the human imagination since nearly the beginning of human storytelling. Where did the word and belief come from? Why is it so compelling, and what can it tell us about our own psyches?

Join us as we dive into modern New Orleans vampire lore, the origins of the characters throughout comparative religion and folklore the world over, the modern human "vampire" culture that has sprouted up (especially in places like New Orleans and Buffalo, NY), and some of the many historical underpinnings to the vampire mythology that can be related to early medical misunderstandings.

We even get into pieces of American history like the New England Vampire panic -- something extremely similar to the Salem Witch Trials and just as terrifying! And we take a little bit of time to get into some of the key symbolic takeaways in our favorite works of vampire fiction, like the books I Am Legend and Interview with the Vampire.

Enjoy the start of this Halloween season! Embrace your shadow and enjoy the episode.

RELATED MATERIAL:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠DIVE MANUAL AUDIOBOOK⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HUNT MANUAL⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BHA LINKTREE w books, shorts, and much more⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠BHA YOUTUBE⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Chris on Insta⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Seed on Insta

SHOW NOTES:

Jungian psychology and vampires

The Carter Bro Vampires and DeathPenaltyUSA

Vampires in Briticannica

Vampires NOLA

NOLA Vampires CNN

Casket Girls

Forgotten History of NOLA Vamps

Paranormal French Quarter

PBS on Vampires and Real Disease

New England Vampire Scare

Vampires in Britain

Vampires of Nebraska

The Highgate Vampires of England

This week's music is brought to you by the homies of the Babylon Warchild crew in the Toronto hiphop scene! With bars as enlightening as they are brutal and beats of equal measure, these guys are some of the life-blood of the underground that you're probably sleeping on -- so catch up!

Bloodsmoke Camoflage - LostArtofFactz

Hold the Crown - LostArtofFactz

Turn it Up - Legitimate x Rex Reshunz

Weapons of Mass Deception - Babylon Warchild

This episode of Black Hoodie Alchemy is a seriously wild ride! The un-canonized Latin American 'Saint of Death' aka 'Santa Muerte' is essentially the Grim Reaper or Angel of Death moved to the forefront of Catholic folk magick. Along with other folkloric figures like Jesus Malverde, Santa Muerte is considered a "Narco Saint" and is a spiritual figure that not only helps us process and contextualize the death around us in digestible ways, but they as well will never turn a blind eye to the criminal's plight.

The Narco Saint is not one that judges -- it is one that appeals to the humanity in us all, and in a large sense, the Narco Saints are the saints of impoverished people that, when pushed to the brink have resorted to crime, despite the great shame they might feel for it. In some ways, they are the saints of the second chance, but there's a whole lot more to it than that.

In this episode we take the time to consider the historical contexts that brought about Santa Muerte as the growing and de-centralized folk religion it is today. We analyze some of the practices, philosophies, neighborhoods, and local figures that have become commonplace in this discussion, but unfortunately, these somewhat inspiring and endearing folk religion roots are not where this story ends.

While it is important to remember the wholesome roots that Santa Muerte has come from, it has also branched out and been taken hold of by many, many competing criminal cartels in Mexico for intimidation tactics -- and these tactics are about as violent and horrifying as one could possibly imagine.

These various cartel have become roving gangs of Richard-Ramirez-style murders and drug smugglers that are willing to perform all levels of black magick curses, incantations, and hexes in order to protect their assets and destroy those out to end them. They're even willing to perform human sacrifices, and do so very regularly.

I told you this was going to be a wild ride with a lot of twists and turns! So buckle up.

RELATED MATERIAL:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠DIVE MANUAL AUDIOBOOK⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HUNT MANUAL⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BHA LINKTREE w books, shorts, and much more⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

BHA YOUTUBE

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Chris on Insta⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Seed on Insta

SHOW NOTES:

FBI Analysis of Santa Muerte

Tepito & Santa Muerte

Chicago Santa Muerte Murders

Interview with Edgar Santa Muerte

NY Post on Santa Muerte

DEA Santa Muerte smuggling

Mexico News Daily Santa Muerte

Narco Saints analysis

Dark Tourist

This week's featured music is brought to you some of the very greatest emcees of the underground! Don't forget to support that black hoodie rap and all your favorite independent artists!

The Karma - Babylon Warchild

Dreamz on Reset - Legitimate x Rex Seshunz

Red Hook - Umang x Kickback

The Towers of Babylon (feat. Chief Kamachi & Wordsworth) - Babylon Warchild

This week on Black Hoodie Alchemy, Seedperson1 joins me with a book recommendation. Many years ago, he read a book that really opened his eyes to the practicality of magickal philosophy and metaphysics, a book that got him looking further and asking more questions. This work was Synchronicity: The Art Coincidence, Choice & Unlocking Your Mind by Dr. Kirby Surprise.

Using this book as an opportunity to look further at CG Jung's research and philosophy of the "synchronicity experience", we also find ample opportunity to discuss chaos theory and the magickal philosophies related to it, and really probe the idea of chance and statistics in metaphysics.

This also gives way to secondary topics like JB Rhine's parapsychology program at Duke University (founded in the early 20th century and persisting to this day) and even the CIA and their own declassified studies into parapsychology.

While it's not nearly as cut and dry as smooth-talking cult leaders would lead you to believe, we certainly hold more power in our psyches than modern science has fully understood yet. It's largely a matter of trying to separate the wheat from the chaff in a topic like this.

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

This week's featured music comes from the amazingly talented homies at Zig Mentality with tracks from their latest album drop: LEAD THEM NOT ASTRAY. Don't forget to support all your favorite independent artists!

LEAD THEM NOT ASTRAY - ZIG MENTALITY

TRIGGERED EMOTIONS - ZIG MENTALITY

WALK IT BACK - ZIG MENTALITY

OK - ZIG MENTALITY

Here comes the first appearance (of many to come on this show) of my friend Joe Rupe, host of Lighting the Void and the main brain behind the Fringe FM Radio. He is also a former member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and has a great deal of insight into mysticism, transcendental magick and Jungian psychology. 

In this episode, we warm up with some talk about the destruction of the Georgia Guidestones, and we talk about the state of Jungian psychology today and where different people have taken it. But after that, we get into the meat of the conversation, discussing three infamous serial killers, all of which were severely schizophrenic and having darkly mystical hallucinations.  These men are Joseph Kalinger, Herbert Mullin, and Richard Chase. 

Kalinger was a shoemaker in Philadelphia that was chosen by Yahweh to save humankind by creating the perfect shoe, which ultimately led to torture and murder. Mullin was a man that became convinced Yahweh needed him to kill as many people as the Vietnam War had casualties. See, Mullin needed to provide sacrifices to Yahweh to stop an armageddon-type earthquake. But Richard Chase was dubbed the Vampire of Sacramento because he was obsessed with blood -- even going as far as injecting animal blood into his veins. Eventually he started killing for human blood, and was convinced that Nazi UFOs were following him.  

I tell Joe all these stories and then we analyze them through the lens of Hermeticism and Jungian psychology. It takes us to some very creepy places, but we found the conversation to be thought provoking and we hope you do too. 

This week's featured music! Support that underground, black hoodie rap my homies. 

Birds of Prey - Epidemic  

Chances Are - The Liberators 

my website 

Lighting the Void 

Richard Chase 

Joseph Kalinger 

Herbert Mullin

Get ready to get down to the brass tacks of mysticism, magick, and the religious experience. Firstly, what is the difference between these three, and how do things like dreams, psychedelic drugs, and hypnosis fit into it all? Another way to describe this is as an episode about altered states of consciousness and adaptation. With dreams, we use symbols to quantify emotional values with contexts and scenarios not usually found in our everyday lives. We use them to meet needs otherwise unmet. But through hypnosis and uses of these archetypal symbols meant to trigger and quantify states of consciousness, magick and mysticism might not be as far from the scientific spectrum as the skeptic may think. After all, belief and doubt are not ultimatums -- they are tools to use at will. 

Justin and I also talk a fair amount about addiction therapy and recovery, and how truly mystical this experience can be. With neuroscience, Buddhism, Hermeticism, and historical perspective, we hack through New Age bullshit and cult leader propaganda to discuss what ACTUAL mysticism and magick means in the 21st century.  

Are gods just viruses? What is the difference between placebo and will? How would you know how real a god isn't if you can't even prove how real you currently are? No lording here -- just some well research and perspectives as food for thought! We hope you dig it. 

Support that underground black hoodie rap! 

If It Ain't Real (feat DJ Grasshoppa) - Umang 

The System - Babylon Warchild

Dharma Junkie 

divemind.net

This week is a Part 2 of sorts to last week! This is actually an episode that I recorded as a guest on Alex's show, Natural Born Alchemist, but I'm going ahead and releasing it here as well. Extending out of our last conversation about the Abrahamic religions, Gnosticism, and alchemy, we go deeper into alchemical symbolism and discuss the detailed ins and outs of what plants, gardening, and horticulture have to do with spirituality. We also get into how the use of drugs and getting high plays roles in spirituality, especially alchemy, and what the implications of all this might be. Talking about growing weed, detoxing from Big Pharma prescriptions, taking iboga and ayahuascha in indigenous ceremonies and much more! 

Don't forget to check out  

Alex's podcast here

my website here 

OUTRO SONG:  SQUARED CIRCLE - UMANG

This week's episode is released a bit late on account of me being bedridden with a stomach virus -- it was goddamn terrible. This chat was recorded before it hit me, but not before I had prepared it for release at all, so here it is a couple days late! 

It's a chat with my good friend Alex that started open-ended with some cannabis smoke and led us into a conversation analyzing Christianity, the Gnostic idea of the Abrahamic god as the Demi-Urge, alchemy in Hermeticism and the Abrahamic religions, and shamanic psychedelic rites relating to these religions. 

I'll leave it at that this time around and I hope you tune in next week when I'm back in full health! Cheers.

And don't forget to check out Alex's show, Natural Born Alchemist!

my website

Greetings everyone and thank you for joining me after a longer hiatus than I expected -- almost 2 months! It was a move to a new city, commuting a lot while the move finished up on top of a job-transfer and everything else. Nothing really eventful outside of the norm, but now here I am back in the weekly swing of things! This was a rare extended break for several reasons, and even when any more breaks come from me they won't be nearly this long. I appreciate anyone tuning back in after falling off for a little bit.

In this episode I am joined by my friend Justin Otto -- host of the Dharma Junkie podcast, meditation instructor, and studious Buddhist. It's rare to find a devout Buddhist that reminisces about the times he's drank with famously insensitive (and pretty hilarious) comedian Doug Stanhope, and the dark humor is definitely abundant in this episode. Whether or not you think it's funny, Justin and I are good at egging each other on without really trying and we had a great time. 

We discuss the new four-part documentary series about Teal Swan on Hulu (that's where I watched it at least), entitled 'The Deep End.' If you've never heard her name before, just imagine a woman in her thirties that started as a new age internet guru right as Youtube was really starting to take off as a platform. Eventually her Youtube blows up, leading to massive book sales and lecture tours about self-empowerment -- all of which is either pretty surface-level or highly debatable, until she amassed enough wealth and prestige to strong-arm all her assets into a cult blueprint. 

In the outer circle, she panders to people searching for answers at book signings, but in the inner circle she manipulates and even physically abuses her followers in certain cases, even using experimental hypnotherapy to alter their emotions and memories in disastrous ways that are a direct extension of Satanic Panic hysteria. 

Now, what sets this apart from all other cult research is that this was a documentary allowed by Teal Swan as a PR stunt: they thought that if they let a third party film crew come in and document them, then the world will know that Teal Swan is a chill superhuman and totally not running a cult. But as we will talk about in this episode, this PR stunt severely back-fired and has left Swan's public image in shreds. So aside from the audio tapes of Jonestown life and the video recorded goodbyes of Heaven's Gate followers, this documentary represents an authentic close-up look at the inner circle of an insidious cult. And its filmed in real-time about a group that is still very active and very mad about this exposure. They were just too delusional to see that they would be bringing about their own downfall. But cult leaders like this are often resilient, and we surely haven't heard the last from Teal Swan.

All this and more on this episode of Black Hoodie Alchemy!

Outro song: The Return - Babylon Warchild (feat. Daddy Rose)

support that underground black hoodie rap!

For this edition of Black Hoodie Alchemy, my good friend Martin joins me as my second official guest. We follow up my last conversation with Eric Millar about his book 'The Four Color Grimoire', the history of comic books, the mythologies and philosophies that inspired them, as well as unpacking some of the details of Eric's favorite authors and heroes.

This time, Martin takes what Eric helped us build on the show and adds to it, deconstructing the philosophies of Grant Morrison further and the writer's take on chaos magick and Hermeticism through writing titles like Batman, Justice League, Doom Patrol, Flex Mentallo, and The Invisibles. And we can't help but discuss Alan Moore a bit as well! Simulation theory, sigil magick, archetypes and analytic psychology, Moon Knight and schizophrenia, and a deep look at both DC and Marvel -- you won't wanna miss this if you're a comic head!

outro track: 

The Countown - BABYLON WARCHILD

support that black hoodie rap and your favorite independent artists!

Martin's show 'The Alchemical Mind'

my book Hunt Manual

my book Dive Manual

Eric's book 'Four Color Grimoire'

'Deconstructing Grant Morrison' 

Stan Lee's Superhumans

This week of Black Hoodie Alchemy brings us our first guest: my friend and colleague, Eric Millar! While he's done the cover of my book Hunt Manual and we've talked back and forth for nearly a couple years, this actually marks our first real-time conversation, and we had a helluva time. Eric comes around to have a serious but informal discussion about old school comic books, their culture and content, and what that means to modern philosophy, magick, and mysticism. 

TRUE BELIEVERS, YOU WON'T FIND TALK ABOUT JOSS WHEDON, ZAK SNYDER, OR SEQUEL THEORY BULLSHIT HERE.

IF ANYTHING, ALLOW THIS CONVERSATION TO TRANSPORT YOU BACK TO THAT OLD, DINGY, BACK ROOM OF YOUR FAVORITE '90S COMIC SHOP. SMELL THE OLD PAPER, PULL OUT YOUR TRADING CARDS AND SLEEVED COMIC BOOKS AND DICE AND GET READY.

Eric takes an approach to the analysis of superhero comics and what it means from a Jungian standpoint to be a fanatic and to experience fanaticism. This unique mindstate is something that alchemists have been fascinated with for thousands of years -- and learning to utilize and experiment with this mindset is the greatest reason comic books have always attracted actual magicians and philosophers to their creation teams. We also discuss whether or not you can truly equate comic books to mythology in terms of archetypes -- and if you can, what are the easy pitfalls and important distinctions that we need to make when analyzing comic books in this way?

We talk about Jack Kirby, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Rick Veitch, Frank Miller, Steve Ditko, and we try to take Stan Lee down a peg! 

As for superheroes and their stories, we discuss my boy Spidey, Batman, Superman, Swamp Thing, Justice League, Marvel 2099, and a lot more!

Eric Millar's info:

Outlet Press books and posts

paperback of THE FOUR COLOR GRIMOIRE

Four Color Grimoire 00 post online

my info:

my book Dive Manual

my book Hunt Manual (the cover illustrated by Eric)

my website

outro song:

MAGNETO (feat. Pacewon) - Babylon Warchild

support Independent Music -- especially that black hoodie rap!

additional content from our comic book conversation:

Grant Morrison Disinfo Con

Alan Moore is a wizard

Jack Kirby's 'New Gods'

Rick Veitch's dream-imagery comics

Stan Lee Media scandal

Kirby vs. Lee