Black Hoodie Alchemy

This week on Black Hoodie Alchemy, we’re talking all things Christianity and Paganism from a comparative religious point of view. Along with Buddhist meditation instructor and my colleague Justin Otto (host of the Dharma Junkie podcast and Gulf Coast Dharma) we are finally blessed with the return of Redneck Mystic Extraordinaire Tippy Patson! A man known for leading The League of Extordniary Gents in the Everglades, bathing in his own urine to speak to angels, wrestling Illuminati shape-shifting gators, and so much more – Tippy Patson has some very unique, drug-inspired views and beliefs about Christianity.

A self-proclaimed “true Christian” himself (inspired by his mystical father and grandfather, Tippothy and Tippothia) Tippy is here to explicitly map out the comparative religious motifs that are shared by Paganism and Christianity, with Justin Otto doing his very best to keep Tippy on track in spite of his redneck drug-haze. Unfortunately, if you haven’t picked up on it yet, I was unable to be a part of this conversation on account of some

Interestingly, Tippy gets into many things like: the fertility symbolism of the evergreen tree in Druid spirituality, also the birth, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, St. Nicholas and the dawn of Christmas, creationist theme-parks, Curious George, adrenochrome, and most importantly: Kirk Cameron’s movie “Kirk Cameron Saves Christmas”. Yes, that Kirk Cameron from Growing Pains.

Lastly, if you’re confused as to why there is so much Christmas discussion in this episode – so was Justin. Aside from Christianity and Paganism tying together through Christmas sort of, and aside from Tippy’s fixation on “Santa the Clause”, there seems to be a lot of general misplaced Christmas spirit in this episode that we didn’t know what to do with. But rest assured, Tippy was sure ready to bring it!

I hope you find this conversation as informative as I did.

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

Hevy Drugz - Doc Hammer

The King of Vancouver - Negative Blast

Way it Used to Be - Tribesmen x Arkeologists

Whirl - M.U.T.T.

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Link Tree - with links to my books, website, and everything else!

CG Jung's Answer to Job (the exact copy I'm reading from)

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

Deceiver - Salt

Spare Me - Salt

I Don't Wanna - MUTT

Fire in the Sky - Babylon Warchild

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

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

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

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

I hope you dig it.

My Link Tree

DIVE MANUAL: Empirical Investigations of Mysticism (which I read from this week)

As Within So Without: From UFOs to DMT

Jared Leto's "ironic" cult

Ezra Miller's grooming

World of Warcraft gamer's cult

R Kelly's sex cult

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

Linen - Rothstein

Granite - Rothstein

Way it Used to Be - Arkeologists x Tribesmen

Buyer Beware - Rothstein x Deca

the AI song memes at the end

Plankton sings The Rooster by Alice in Chains

Peter Griffin raps In the End by Linkin Park

Patrick Star sings Thriller by Michael Jackson

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

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

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

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

I hope you dig it.

As Within So Without: From UFOs to DMT (the doc I was featured in recently that you can watch here for free!)

my LINKTREE -- with Youtube, Instagram, and that shit!

Show Notes:

NY Post - Real Life Truman Show

The Eggplant and Everest

Interview with Nasubi

Months of Isolation in Horrifying Reality Show

Web Archive Play-by-Play article

Dystopian Nightmare of Nasubi

Interview with Nasubi & the Gameshow Creator (separately)

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

Brain Dust - Glowing Brain

The Human Curse - Babylon Warchild (feat. Fresh Kils)

Promoterman - Tribesmen x Arkeologists

It'll Just Be a Couple of Weeks - Doc Hammer

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

(If you'd like to see a small video clip of me speaking with Jason, you can watch it right here!)

And don't forget to check out Steve's new podcast Hi, Strangeness anywhere you stream your podcast action!

Somehow, through ways that may or may not involve hash, a schizophrenic break, or perhaps a truly chaos-magickal multiverse adventure of epic proportions -- Jason found himself stumbling through a hole in the wall that served to be a gateway to what can only be described as JRR Tolkien's Middle Earth. Yes, the setting of the Lord of the Rings books among many others. To make matters worse, it would appear that the hole from whence Jason emerged is now gone, and he has spent several months trapped in the strange and tumultuous forests of Middle Earth!

How exactly did he end up there? What was his life like before all this, and how has life been since this tragic desolation? How might we be able to get Jason the hell out of there? And also, why hasn't Steve Berg tried to raise awareness for his so-called-friend's tragic predicament? Way to drop the ball, Steve...

Anyways, after the conversation with Jason, we do feature a very small bit with Steve himself at the end, talking about his time working on the beloved show, 'Drunk History'. And after that we reminisce on some of the greatest bits of Black Hoodie Alchemy 30, when Joe Rupe of Lighting the Void interviewed the legend himself -- Redneck Mystic Tippy Patson! Tippy talks about his upbringing, his current divination practices, his version of the Book of Revelation, and then we hear some more from our beloved League-of-Extordinary-Gentlemen show sponsors!

Lastly, if you'd like to see Tippy P read Revelations in video-form, check this link here!

Or click this link if you'd like to see Tippy describe how Ufologist David Wilcock taught him how to bathe in his own urine to gain telepathic powers!

I hope you dig it.

⁠As Within So Without: From UFOs to DMT full documentary free stream right here!⁠ (this is the philosophical UFO doc I was featured in recently -- winner of the Roswell UFOXPO People's Choice Award 2023!)

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

Boredom - Glowing Brain

Bleed Into - Glowing Brain

Spit the Claw - Doc Hammer

Way it Used to Be - Tribesmen x Arkeologists

New Old School - Cowboy Matt Hopwell

This week on the show, we have special guest Douglas Batchelor joining us! Host of the popular 'What Magic is This?' podcast, Doug is a uniquely exciting person for the program because he is so fully immersed in the study and practice of what we know as "magick." While our conversation spans information that whole careers are spent on, we discuss overviews of magick in history into the modern day, investigating certain historical touchstones along the way -- Carl Jung, Goethe, Austin Osman Spare, Eliphas Levi, Manly P. Hall's "The Secret Teachings of All Ages", Hermeticism and the Order of the Golden Dawn, the New Age, secret societies and "lodge magick", chaos magick, Atlantis and more -- all with equal parts of skepticism to open-mindedness. However, to understand what exactly is meant by these "equal parts", you'll have to tune in to find out!

The 'k' of "magick" generally distinguishing a timeless esoteric tradition from the simple stage act, this study and practice from a scientific perspective represents a trial-and-error grasp towards aspects of physics and psychology that we do not yet understand. Or at least -- that is the core idea. While many are skeptical as ever, more are coming to understand that a true historical magick is something much closer to a calculated butterfly-effect than it is to wands and medieval-fantasy. It is a way of using a combination of physical cues and gestures in order to prime the psyche into a calculated trance state. That much we can fully digest from a scientific perspective today; however, what happens from that point on is still highly debatable.

We've discussed the concept of magick quite a bit on the show, worked to break down some of the core components within the context of practical psychoanalysis, and had magickally-minded guests on the show (see Keats Ross and Eric Millar in episodes 23 and 28 among others) but we haven't been able to sit down with a full-on magician and pick their brain about the full ins and outs of what they feel like they're doing.

"What they feel like they're doing" might sound subjective and skeptical, but let us not forget that there are many different kinds of magick, with feeling and intent being major catalysts from which everything else stems from. There are so many motivations for magick, so many different traditions, and tools and techniques for purifying the self, contacting higher entities, banishing lower ones, or finding any variety of mundane physical comforts, that it comes across both dizzying and wrought with superstitious inaccuracies. But as Doug explains to us, separating the wheat from the chaff in esoterica is all part of the journey and should be embraced!

This is a complex episode that is has a promise of a part two! There is so much to get into, even from a surface-level perspective, that this episode largely covers historical and philosophical context, while the next time Doug joins the show we will be dissecting the practice and application of magick primarily!

I hope you dig it!

As Within So Without: From UFOs to DMT full documentary free stream right here! (this is the philosophical UFO doc I was featured in recently -- winner of the Roswell UFOXPO People's Choice Award 2023!)

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

The System - Babylon Warchild

Talkin Durty to the Godz - Tainted Wisdom x Babylon Warchild

Egghead - Negative Blast

Everyone Higher than Everyone Else - Glowing Brain

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

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

Considering books like Personal Mythology by Dr. David Feinstein and Stanley Krippner (which is very much a work of analytic psychology, the study fostered by Carl Jung and furthered by people like Joseph Campbell among many others) the work of Carl Jung, The Goblin Universe by Ted Holiday (last episode's subject), and my books Dive Manual and Hunt Manual, I attempt to not only lay out the imperative need to investigate your personal mythology, but also the practical scientific merit as well as the merit of the mystical and transcendental. I don't seek to give all the answers here -- nor could I -- but I do shed some light with some source material to look into further!

I hope you dig it.

⁠As Within So Without: From UFOs to DMT full documentary free stream right here!⁠ (this is the philosophical UFO doc I was featured in recently -- winner of the Roswell UFOXPO People's Choice Award 2023!)

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

Talkin Durty to the Godz - Babylon Warchild x Tainted Wisdom

Why Not - Epidemic x Jesse James

Piano Keys - Babylon Warchild (feat. Punchline & Wordsworth)

I Am - Babylon Warchild (feat. Reef the Lost Cauze)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ted Holiday's The Goblin Universe on Amazon

⁠AP Strange's Website⁠

Seriah's ⁠Where Did the Road Go?⁠

⁠my website

⁠As Within So Without: From UFOs to DMT full documentary free stream right here!⁠ (this is the philosophical UFO doc I was featured in recently -- winner of the Roswell UFOXPO People's Choice Award 2023!)⁠

Check out this week's featured music -- and don't forget to support your favorite independent artists!

Drum and Space - I am a UFO

Down Here - Glowing Brain

Echo Planet - Negative Blast

Salt - Salt

Souled Out - Doc Hammer

For a very special episode, comedic actor and writer Steve Berg joins the program! For those that aren't familiar with Steve's name, you're very likely to recognize his face, as he's guested on many popular shows like New Girl, The Goldbergs, Drunk History, Adventure Time, Bob's Burgers and more! He's also played supporting comedic roles in popular movies like TAG, and even a small part in Olivia Wilde's movie, Don't Worry Darling.

All that, and Steve is as warm and genuine as a good friend that you've grown up with! And not only was he easy to get along with, but he was also far more insightful than some people might give a comedian credit for. Alas, I actually spent so much time talking to Steve before hitting record that I was unable to remain for the actual podcast... Luckily, I was able to get my strange acquaintance, codename: Jefferson Tillamookslinger (a "former Illuminati cloning lab manager") on the call with Steve.

Their conversation includes things like: whether or not Steve is in the CIA and/or Illuminati, the humble beginnings of Steve's acting career in Aunt Maybelle Productions, Hollywood Cloning-Couches, Bob's Burgers, Henry Rollins, unexplainable phenomena like UFOs and raining sky-meat, Steve's new show Hi Strangeness and so much more.

And to catch everyone up briefly, Jefferson is indeed a man that claims to be a former Illuminati cloning lab manager that has since defected, so that he could join a redneck named Tippy Patson in the Everglades. He and several other dudes have been sweating it out in the Everglades for several months now, taking heavy doses of all kinds of drugs and attempting to save the world from the alligators around them that they perceive to be the Illuminati shape-shifting reptiles of conspiracy-lore. This is the basic gist -- they are too dumb to be a cult or militia, but too organized to just be average swamp people.

Some of their beliefs and schemes include but are not limited to: deciphering the Book of Revelations through animal scat; bathing in urine to talk to angels; attempting to telepathically communicate with dolphins, gators, and other animals; making poorly-crafted alcohols, tarot decks, instructional VHS tapes, and so much more.

With Tippy Patson as their leader, the codenames of the men in this group are: Jefferson Tillamookslinger, Apex Monsoon, Silverback Commando, Muscle Tornado, and Bayou Jones.

Thanks again to Steve for coming on the show! It was an absolute blast, and I'm glad we could make it happen.

Check out Steve's action right here:

Instagram

Twitter

Hi Strangeness

Steve's Linktree

Check out my action right here:

divemind.net

Dive Manual: Empirical Investigations of Mysticism

Hunt Manual: 21st Century Demonology & Forteana

Instagram

Twitter

This week's featured music! Don't forget support your favorite independent artists!

Suffer Fools - Glowing Brain

Carbon Coby - Negative Blast

Wet $$$ - Doc Hammer

Everyone Higher Than Everyone Else - Glowing Brain

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

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

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

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

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

The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences - Sir Frederick Treves

divemind.net

Don't forget to support that black hoodie rap and all your favorite independent artists!

And check out this week's featured music:

God's Image - Unknown Mizery x Arkeologists

Metempsychosis - Epidemic

Model Citizen - Babylon Warchild