hey everybody welcome back to one dream now where we give you an inside look at some of the shows currently streaming on wandrium I'm rich Burnett and in today's show we'll be discussing secret societies and the Occult so dim the lights light some candles and let's get started [Music] today's guest is Rick Spence Rick is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Idaho and he specializes in all kinds of cool subjects from Espionage to occultism and secret societies to name just a few his latest series called secrets of the occult is now streaming
on wondering let's take a look the term occult tends to conjure up images of robed cultists and midnight sacrifices part of the picture but only a very small one occult simply means hidden it's a whole Hidden World of unknown dimensions a world driven not by good or evil but intent sometimes your intent my name is Richard Spence and I invite you to join me on a Magical Mystery Tour of Illumination exploring 30 000 years of fact myth and speculation over 24 episodes we'll delve into topics such as divination Alchemy Witchcraft and Satanism along with more
surprising subjects like UFOs Santa Claus and quantum physics we'll also explore the role occult beliefs and practices played in historical events such as the Russian Revolution and the Third Reich along with occultism's influence on crime politics popular culture and religion once you know what to look for you'll see that they occult the hidden is all around you and you'll never see the world the same way again Rick thank you for joining us today so your new series is all about the hidden and not so Hidden World of the occult can you start us off by
explaining a bit about what the occult is well it's interesting you use the word hidden because all the occult really means the term means is is hidden specifically hidden from sight there are all kinds of occult things hidden in plain sight the idea is that there's essentially is that there is a greater reality which our senses our natural abilities only allow us to see a part of and apparently there's just all kinds of cool stuff and spooky stuff in this greater reality that we that those who call themselves occultists seek to access because you know
that's for all the real knowledge or some sort of Greater now greater World greater knowledge let's get into a little bit about the actual content of your series um as I was reading through the topics that you cover one thing that I found interesting personally was that you talk about occult rituals quite a bit but one in particular that I wanted to ask you about was some surprising history about Christmas traditions can you tell me a little bit more about that ritual of the Christmas tree occult is something which is a world which is hidden
from View a ritual is actually pretty simple you know most people tend to think you have to have robes and candles I don't know and uh goat or something but that's not really necessary a ritual is simply a series of actions performed in a certain order and almost always with the intention of creating a desired result so let's look at the Christmas tree uh the Christmas tree is a particular type of tree I mean you don't generally go out and get a mulberry tree it's always an evergreen it's usually positioned in some sort of place
of special place where it can be viewed we're going to be seen and then you proceed usually if you keep in mind in a fairly ritualized process of decorating it of adorning the tree and the adorning the tree is is turning it into it's being created for a particular purpose and once the tree is properly adorned often capped with an angel which is kind of interesting then eventually the gifts that are will later be distributed are placed underneath it in this position there are in some ways sort of Sanctified by being placed under the tree
they have to be placed under the tree before you give them to people another thing is is that almost nobody thinks of this is a ritual it's just you know it's a custom it's a habit it's a convenient thing that we do but you know when you're talking about Customs habits just things that we do you're talking about rituals it's just a matter of semantics so a lot of Stories of the occult have mysterious Origins a lot of them feel like they come from far away places um but I know in your course you actually
discuss uh the occult and uh origins of a cult that start in America can you touch on some of those well America has a is a particular place an interesting place in this regard because what you've got are sort of two groups of humanity that separated you know you have the old world you know Eurasia and Africa which all be you know for thousands of years tens of thousands of years mixed and matched Customs back and forth a huge exchange of everything from products to diseases and then you had a migration of people from Northeastern
Asia into the Americas at some point we're not entirely sure but let's say it was 15 to 20 000 years ago and then until you know 1492 they were cut off from the rest of humanity so one of the things which is interesting is for all the differences that you would find between Native American civilizations and cultures and old world as we call them civilizations and cultures after those Millennia of separation well what's the same and one of the things that you find which is the same is that within American cultures within Native American cultures
as in Old World cultures you have the occult you have the concept of magic and spirits and a greater hidden world and you have the same people who try to access that you know Puritans would you know basically looked at Native traditions and argued that ah you know every Idol they have is the devil they're all doing devilish things this is you know there was a great fear of the Wilderness as being the realm of Satan because it was this many ways kind of Untamed natural world but again from the aspect of someone who considered
themselves an occultist all of this is completely familiar it was a common language which cultures separated over thousands and thousands of years could communicate through so you bring up a name um and of course no discussion about the occult would be complete without discussing the biggest Baddie of them all satan so you brought him up I'm curious how does uh the the Devil Himself fit into The Narrative of of the series the earliest Old World Civilization that we really know of the Sumerians they had a whole variety of sort of you know good spirits and
bad spirits good bad good spirit you know good gods and bad gods and one of the things is that even the worst of them in some way were would protect you against others the ancient gods were neither particularly they weren't necessarily good or bad they didn't necess you know they liked certain people they didn't like other ones and so you're always trying to figure out a way in which to Curry their favor on the other hand if you look at the general evolution of Satan you have a a deity which in some ways is rooted
in in these these sort of ancient ambiguous Gods ones that could be hostile but you could probably bring over to your side in some way you know by you know again sacrificing a goat or your children or whatever might be necessary but then you also have one which in more modern times Satanism becomes this kind of well it becomes a flip side of Christianity what do I mean by that well the the key ritual in sort of modern Satanism is something called the black mass who else has a mass well the Roman Catholic Mass the
Eastern Orthodox Mass but that's something which is which is which is specific to Christianity and in particularly in Western Europe to the Roman Catholic church and the black mass is really this just this sort of inversion or parody of it and what that means in a sense is that really what was termed Satanism had no independent existence of its own it was only the inverse of something else and it it then became in some ways a kind of anti-church a kind of anti-christianity something that if you wanted to you know basically defy everything that was
considered to be the proper rules of behavior that's what it was that you would go to you would do the opposite of what you've had before sure okay Rick so we got a few questions from our social media followers about the occult and your series let's start with this one from Emily r on Facebook who asks what is the most real world danger that the occult poses well again the occult is a philosophy and a tool book whether a toolbox of techniques to access this larger world I was discussing and larger world again is full
of all kinds of things so if you venture out into the wilderness without proper equipment and preparation you know you go barefoot without a coat without any kind of fire making it you're going to run into trouble so for instance um you know if an occultist is going to use a ritual to summon something from this world you know the theme sort of spirit well you're at a Great Lengths in order to prepare magic circles talismans the whole ritual has to be carried out in a way this is preparing yourself for a venture into this
world in the same way that you would prepare yourself to go into the wilderness and when you're done you want to send away whatever you're doing this is where you get things like banishing rituals as the saying goes never call up what you cannot put down other words don't get involved with something that you can't deal with so the occult isn't something again which is inherently in and of itself evil or dangerous any more than nature is evil or dangerous but it can be and it has to be approached with preparation and caution so you
actually answered for the most part the next question we had from Ramon L on Twitter who asked is the occult ever linked to good causes or is it by definition nefarious it comes down to your intent what do you intend to do now again if you're going out into the woods if you're going out into nature what is your intention are you going there just to wander among the flowers and appreciate the butterflies or you're going there to hunt for food I mean that's a big difference to whatever it is you're going to encounter on
the whole are you are you know just going on a hike or you're going to go Prospect for gold what do you what do you wish your intention is what guides every other action your intention we'll have a great deal with whatever it is that you attract to you so here's one that um is very specific to a very particular part of the occult Doug M on Instagram asks at what point did a mainstream toy manufacturer decide to align itself with occult rituals I.E the Hasbro Ouija board the Ouija board the modern board goes back
to not tensborough or to Parker Brothers but to a fellow by the name of Charles Canard back in the in I think in 1891 it's when the modern Ouija board comes along and he teamed up with a fellow by the name of William fold who was you know I kind of game and and Novelty manufacturer and they actually got a patent for this and the interesting way to do it if you're going to get a patent for it you have to in some way demonstrate that whatever it is you're trying to patent actually works how
are you going to demonstrate that that actually works well in this case they brought in a medium a Woman by the name of Ellen Peters who use the board and attested to the patent officials there that yes indeed she was contacting spirits and you know they bought it and thus it was born um you then passed into something called the William fold company which manufactured the boards I think they had the exclusive rights up until 1966. uh and then in 1966 Parker Brothers got it and then it went further on why did Parker Brothers or
Hasbro when he would become involved because there was money in it great answers Rick uh we need to take a quick break but can you stick around sure can all right I'd like to take a quick moment to remind you that guests on this show are experts from our family here at one real in addition a series about secret societies you'll also find topics like Science History mental health and even foreign language instruction and personal development there's something for everyone on one dream and now with the recent edition of hundreds of documentaries and how-to series
there's never been a better time to join if you want to binge watch something watch something that's smart by experts on biodiversity my own history physics art streaming is a lot smarter with one dream one dream because I wonder knowledge is now streaming at wandrium so Rick your Illuminati video from your previous series called secret societies which is also streaming on one Dream It's Quickly becoming one of our all-time most viewed lectures that I have posted to our YouTube channel it's captured the imagination of a huge audience it's solicited quite a few I'm going to
say enlightening comments but I want to run some of them by you here in a segment I'd like to call them are you are you ready I'm ready all right so of course we got a lot of great comments such as good narrator's voice heart emoji and I love you guys as well as the fact is this video is great deserve uncountable views those are the good ones um but I also got a lot of comments like this who are the Illuminati not who were they so my question to you is does the Illuminati still
exist so what I deal with in the secret societies course the Illuminati that I'm talking about in that episode is the Bavarian Illuminati that is a thing called the illuminatan Orden in German which is historically recorded it was real it was around not for very long in the late 18th century sort of came and went between about 1776 and you know 1786 and was and was formed and led by a fellow by the name of Adam Vice Hout who indeed had a very you know detailed and rather practical plan for world domination so that's the
one that you can see so that's what I'm dealing with there but here's an interesting thing about the Bavarian Illuminati or a couple of interesting things one they're not the first group that called themselves the Illuminati which is simply Latin for those who are illuminated those who've seen the light in some ways if you go back to the Roman era and you look at early Christian communities you know one sort of hiding out in the catacombs they often would refer to themselves as Illuminati because they had seen the light the truth had been revealed to
them and therefore an early Christian was an illuminatus and there were many other groups that used that term in one form or another and we're not even talking about people who spoke languages other than Latin who had words that also meant those who had seen the light so the Illuminati were everywhere so Adam Vice Health did not invent the term but the second point is that the Bavarian Illuminati because they had an essentially subversive political agenda were discovered and suppressed by the Bavarian Royal government in the 1780s but they weren't destroyed So Adam weishauft was
never arrested or put on trial he simply moved to another German state where the prince was guess what a member of the Illuminati Order and he lived until until the 1830s and continued to correspond with all of his Illuminati buddies and none of them were arrested and killed either I mean there was never any Mass Roundup of the organization it just got chased out of Bavaria and it went elsewhere so the point is is that it was never really destroyed and therefore since the Bavarian Illuminati while they cease to function in Bavaria it continued but
in a much less visible form than it did otherwise which means that it it is indeed historically possible and even plausible that the order continued to function one of the other things that Vice Health told his followers is let our order never be known publicly under its actual name which raises a couple of questions as to what the actual name was which you know is that the order of the Illuminati or was that itself a cover name now those again are all things which are real those are the things that Vice Health said the reality
is the order existed the order was never destroyed and that is I think at the root of many of the comments or much of the subsequent I guess we'll call it mythology that the Illuminati are still around that they're still ruling the world today that in some way you know Beyonce is a member of the Illuminati everybody in the music industry and the movies are influenced by them that's where the idea comes because there's no end to it and so again you're you're dealing with something that could exist but in what form under what name
with what particular agenda in mind right so that's where the legend is there uh and how much truth there is in that well that all depends it is not going away it's not going away so of course when it comes to conspiracy theories you know it's only a matter of time before JFK comes into the discussion so here's a good one um and I apologize if it sounds like I'm stumbling through the words I'm reading it in which it was written JFK's famous speech and he knew who he was dealing with and how these evil
societies grow in their evilness and would take full control they assassinated him so what about it did the Illuminati have JFK assassinated referred to here I think this is a speech that he gave to the American newspaper Publishers Association in 1961. so soon after he was elected and it's a speech that goes into a number of things but one of the things that he was addressing is that you know secrecy is he argues is essentially Un-American and and secret societies you know groups that attempt to secretly influence politics and Society is is an Un-American type
of thing and we have to be opposed to that it's an interesting thing to be talking to newspaper Publishers about but you know did did Kennedy in a public address seem to condemn uh what he viewed as a kind of Nefarious influence of secret societies groups that were attempting to secretly influence politics Society culture whatever it might be he did he also was assassinated a couple of years later all right you've got those two things those are part of the record those are real now the connection between them is is an assumption I'm not saying
that you know the writer that question is right or wrong I'm just saying that what does that mean remember is is was his assassination in some way a consequence of his opposition to secret societies you can believe that you can imagine that you can't prove it just as you can't prove most things but that again is where these ideas these comments arise from so here's a commenter that wants to address how the Illuminati is currently operating um what makes you think that this is in the past it's absolutely huge the influencers so to speak subliminal
or outright they do mind control 100 percent so what do you think Rick our influencers members of the Illuminati that are controlling our minds so one can create a a holy irrational idea that in some way the Bavarian Illuminati mutated and if continued to mutate since the 18th century into something else but you can't show me exactly what that is but you shouldn't be able if they're doing their job right you shouldn't be able to pin that down it comes down to the question are there people trying to to influence us subliminally yeah okay that's
what advertising is all about I mean there there's a constant efforts you know there are people on YouTube on the internet who proudly call themselves influencers you know that's a title that people go after because of the idea that they can influence people you know usually to buy something but if you can influence someone to buy something you can influence them in other directions the way of shaping public opinion so that undoubtedly is there there's a there's a vast industry of people out there who are constantly trying to manipulate and influence all of this I'd
like to if I could step in sorry I didn't mean to step over your answer but I just wanted to make the point that as a quasi host on a YouTube show connected with a s uh I say subscription service that I am officially announcing right now that I am not now or never have been part of the Illuminati so that's out there right you know and and neither have I but you know I'm I'm open to offers so here's one a commenter proposes this what if scenario uh what if they caused kovid that's the
entire comment what if they caused kovid so what are your thoughts would the Illuminati benefit from causing a global pandemic Rick uh well if they own a lot of stock and pharmaceutical companies there you go there you go okay maybe that's it maybe maybe they've become pharmaceutical companies so I'd like to end here with uh one final comment that appears to be from the Illuminati themselves according to their account name the Illuminati would like us to know that we're not only watching you but we're also watching this video so I'd like to say awesome and
I hope that the Illuminati checks out Rick's new course the secrets to the occult yeah and uh you'll get mentioned in there too so Rick thank you so much for joining us today and uh where can people find out more about you and your work or you can go to my page which is still at the University of Idaho u-i-d-a-h-o look under history and there about me and my work and then also they can check out my my uh one dream Professor profile as well thank you so much and I will talk to you soon
all right thank you bye-bye and that'll do it for another episode of one dream now to learn who our upcoming guests are and to ask them questions make sure to keep an eye on our social media feeds you can find links to all of them in the description below we'll be back soon with another great show be sure to subscribe so you don't miss it
