Black Hoodie Alchemy

This week, we're talking about history's wildest alchemists, and we have ourselves a real-life wild alchemist to help navigate! The friendly curmudgeon Alex (host of Natural Born Alchemist) joins the program as guest once again, and this is a man that has immersed himself in the practice and study of traditional alchemy for many years.

We bring up names like Count of St. Germain, Zosimos of Panopolis, Goethe, John Dee and Edward Kelley, and the great Paracelsus, as well as alchemy-adjacent names such as Aleister Crowley, Helena Blavatsky, voodoo priestess Marie Laveau, and even the infamous Gille de Raise - a nobleman who once protected Joan of Arc, only to pursue alchemy, black magick, and human sacrifice after her death. We even bring into the conversation names like Rasputin and da Vinci (although either are not technically considered alchemists in any degree).

Join us as we weave our way through the histories of these characters, their stories, and their philosophies! This episode has no shortage of the miraculous, unexplainable, horrific and folkloric.

Check out my website divemind.net for more.

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

Advice - Bobby Balkan x Arkeologists

Rats - Salt

Hevy Drugz - Doc Hammer

Human Curse - Babylon Warchild x Fresh Kils

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

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

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

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

⁠Cut Your Teeth - Salt⁠

⁠Four Your Wounds - Salt (FULL EP)⁠

This week's show sources:

Steiner on Goethean Science

Dana Pauly's Paper on Goethean Science

Goethe's Biography

Dante's Divine Comedy

Skepticism for Rupert Sheldrake

Steiner and Biodynamics

Steiner and the 'Jewish Question'

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

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

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

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

PD Newman on Twitter

Angels in Vermillion: From John Dee to DMT

Alchemically Stoned: The Psychedelic Secret of Freemasonry

This week's featured hip-hop and drum-n-bass are all courtesy of our guest, PD Newman himself! With his good friend, they once formed the production duo I AM A UFO, and even worked with names that some underground hip-hop heads might know well, like Moka Only.

Quit Stallin - I AM A UFO (feat. Moka Only)

Drum and Space (Joe Meek Shall Inherit the Earth) - I AM A UFO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This week's featured music:

Rosemary's Baby - Babylon Warchild

The Towers of Babylon - Babylon Warchild

The Way it Used to Be - Arkeologists x Tribesmen

Shut up, Richard - Doc Hammer

Sources for this episode

Swallowing the Camel - Kuklinksi a Liar (this is where Prongray's alleged son can be seen throughout the comments section)

Chicago Tribune - Kuklinski's Story

New York Times - Kuklinksi Dies

Crime Library - Robert Prongay

We are the Mighty - Kulkinski Learns to Kill from an Army Vet

Murderpedia on Kuklinksi

Sword and Scale - The Only Friend He Didn't Kill

And don't forget to check out all three of Kuklinksi's HBO interviews from prison, as well as the books by Philip Carlo and Anthony Bruno!

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

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

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

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

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

The Gates of Babylon - Babylon Warchild

Better off Dead - Silent on Fifth Street

Galaxies - Silent on Fifth Street

my sources this week in no particular order

1. The System Monster - Ricardo Mendonca

2. Pedrinho Matador is Killed - Globo.com

3. Pedrinho Matador Confesses

4. Police Maintain Secrecy about Where Pedrinho Matador is Held - Wayback Machine

5. The Serial Killer That Only Killed Criminals - Thought Catalog

6. Meet Pedro - All That's Interesting

7. Brazil's Biggest Serial Killer Dies in Shootout - Le Monde

8. Brazil's Bloodiest Killer Murdered 'For Pleasure' - Toronto Sun

9. The Serial Killer That is Now a Youtuber - The Grunge

10. Serial Killer Opens Up - Daily Star

11. Pedrinho Matador - Globo.com

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

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

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

Hopefully you dig it!

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

Red Tops - Rothstein

Another Saturday Night - M.U.T.T.

No Trust - Negative Blast

It'll Just Be a Couple Weeks - Doc Hammer

my website

Dive Manual

Hunt Manual

Black Hoodie Alchemy is currently on a small, two-week hiatus but here is my most recent appearance on Joe Rupe's live show, Lighting the Void on The Fringe FM. Joe invited me on to bump some of my favorite music from the artists that I have collaborated with to play on my show including: DOC HAMMER, BABYLON WARCHILD, NEGATIVE BLAST, and M.U.T.T. We also get into some true crime conversation including stories like Killdozer and much more! I hope you dig this content and I'll see you May 8th for a fresh episode!

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

Souled Out - Doc Hammer

The Return - Babylon Warchild

Night Moves - M.U.T.T.

Egghead - Negative Blast

Magneto - Babylon Warchild (feat. Pacewon)

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

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

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

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

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

Shore Leave - Doc Hammer

Ganja Dub - Chris Fiato

Phantasmagoria Blues - Cowboy Matt Hopewell

Gurdjieff's link in the Encyclopedia Brittanica

Martin Ferretti's The Alchemical Mind

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

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

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

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

All this and more this week!

my website

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

Travelling North - Legitimate x Rex Seshuns

The Injustice - Babylon Warchild

No Time - Babylon Warchild

Souled Out - Doc Hammer

some show notes on Heidnik

NY Times

All That's Interesting

Fox News

Oxygen

Penn Live

some show notes on Graham

NY Times

Psychology Today

AP News

Murderpedia

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

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

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

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

my website

Dive Manual

Hunt Manual

Israel Keyes links to quotes I read:

NY Post

Oxygen

The Brag

Biography

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

The Karma - Babylon Warchild

Cold Days - Umang

Starcrusher - Doc Hammer