00:00:28.800and you'll see why but first this is just for the guys who don't see this because I think that guys
00:00:34.860are mostly precluded from the occult and witch talk and all of this stuff this is a very very
00:00:40.940big industry and genre among women especially chronically online women in terms of interest
00:00:48.300in in just psychic and tarot readings as as an industry that is a 2.3 billion dollar industry
00:00:54.740just in america and it's even all over celebrity gossip like this it came up in my feed this
00:01:00.820morning i i just had to click on it it was this video called the succession ritual why kim
00:01:06.080kardashian wears the dead and i'm like wait what what are you talking about and it's amazing let
00:01:14.180me show you just a little clip of this so you can slim kardashian wears the dead yeah yeah kim0.86
00:01:20.840kardashian why she wears the dead okay kim kardashian is an apex predator of the collective1.00
00:01:27.960unconscious an aura harvester she is a high-powered technician of the occult0.99
00:01:34.680turning a simple exit into a ritual altar high-powered energy of every lens and every eye
00:01:41.720storing that power into the fabric she's a witch this is a glamour witch
00:01:48.120at the height of her influence casting a spell of total saturation before she ever reaches for0.97
00:01:54.380the velox of the day oh my god but look so here's here's we're talking about
00:01:58.600so and and the witches are now converting to christianity yeah actually look so even in the
00:02:05.640beginning of this what is she pointing to here in her video orthodox stuff yeah look at this is
00:02:10.560these are these are crowns these are saints all right they're converting to orthodoxism by the
00:02:15.960way that's the form of christianity yeah we're gonna talk about this this episode but you're
00:02:19.460gonna see what she just says about makes sense kim kardashian here i'm just gonna start playing
00:02:24.940here look this but for some it has migrated from the temple to the auction house and kim kardashian
00:02:31.760is one of the highest bidders not to curate history but to harvest it she takes marilyn
00:02:37.920monroe's presidential silk and stretches the seams over her own ribs she clasps the weight0.77
00:02:43.740of Elizabeth Taylor's diamonds around her neck and wrist. She hangs Princess Diana's Amethyst
00:02:49.440Cross, a heavy purple relic of royal tragedy, against her bare pulse. She even fits Michael
00:02:56.520Jackson's fedora, still stained with the makeup of a deceased man's face, onto her child. She does
00:03:03.140not archive these pieces behind museum glass. She doesn't lock them away. Instead, she wears them as
00:03:09.340skin she steps into the literal fabric of the past she occupies the space left by these icons
00:03:16.740forcing their history to work for her own image is this real so she does this well yes she does
00:03:26.520do these are literal you weren't there when she wore marilyn monroe's happy birthday mr president
00:03:32.140dress to the met gala and everyone just collectively had a big aneurysm because she
00:03:36.620stretched out the dress and all the costume historians were like war crime um and everyone
00:03:42.180got but she and yeah she she did buy all those things and she does wear them and it's uh but0.85
00:03:47.420you know this group of people are like witchcraft and look even in the um in the aztec episode that
00:03:53.040i talked about i was talking about how like oh and there's this other thing they're not just
00:03:56.460worshiping these women these these these these with these tiktok live streamers aren't just
00:04:00.460worshiping la santa muerte now when they get shot on their live streams everyone thinks that their
00:04:05.340best friends are destiny swapping with them well guess who else has been accused of destiny0.65
00:04:10.440swapping oh it's the glamour witch kim kardashian they believe that kim kardashian has destiny
00:04:15.720swapped with paris hilton you see because witchcraft is everywhere and i can't get away
00:04:19.780beginnings sort of her life now looks like yeah the idea is that no destiny swapping is where
00:04:26.000like you want their their destiny and so you try to steal it and so the idea was well you know
00:04:30.740paris hilton did the sex tape paris hilton was famous and kim kardashian wanted to be famous0.75
00:04:35.180and then she did the sex tape and then she just slipped her way into paris hilton's life although
00:04:40.220paris hilton is doing great i'm so happy for her and i'm happy for kim kardashian whatever i'm happy
00:04:43.820for all of them i just want them to be okay um really you're equally happy i'm sorry uh paris
00:04:49.260hilton has always seemed like a pretty cool person to me kim kardashian kim kardashian is not awesome
00:04:54.280kim kardashian seems fine too to me she seems fine like like tolerable to be around and a little bit
00:05:01.620concerned about her daughter her oldest daughter but anyway this is an interesting daughter is the
00:05:06.880one that she took from her husband and is dressing up in all those crazy outfits yeah that is really
00:05:13.020concerning yeah i i'm i'm worried but also like who knows what's going on with the shared custody
00:05:17.600i'm not going to judge other people's lives people judge our lives and make all sorts of things up
00:05:21.660okay i'm just gonna whatever the here's the wholesome part of all this right so everywhere
00:05:26.160i look witches witches it's all the spells and the witches and the occult and everyone's using
00:05:30.300tarot cards. But what's happening when these people who get super into the occult actually
00:05:36.500start doing some introspecting? They're converting to Christianity just like we are. And then their
00:05:43.200followers and everyone else who just loved their content, they're freaking out. So one of the top
00:05:49.320influencers, Alexandra Ashcroft, who went by Alex Reads Tarot, aka at your fire sign bestie,
00:05:57.160uh worked as a full-time professional tarot reader she had nearly a million tiktok followers
00:06:03.120she got tens of millions of likes she was even named drop in this hayley williams aka paramore
00:06:08.960song um the song is called love me different and this was from her 2025 release called uh ego death
00:06:16.560at a bachelorette perthy which is a pretty good it's a pretty good name and the lyric is alex
00:06:22.400reads tarot reads the shit out of me which is a direct reference to her it's it's her whole tag
00:06:29.520like her her handle um so she she built literally pun intended a cult following um and her signature1.00
00:06:39.100move was actually pretty soft core in terms of the whole occult witchcraft thing it was just to draw1.00
00:06:44.820a daily tarot card and then invite her followers to set an intention or focus for the day but then
00:06:50.260in late June of this year, everything stopped. She posted an announcement video and then nuked
00:06:56.400all of her content saying, I don't know exactly what comes next for me, but what I do know is
00:07:01.920that Jesus Christ has saved my life and I can no longer ignore that reality. And she walked away
00:07:08.500from a six figure, probably high six figure income stream. It could have been bigger. And0.79
00:07:14.600the weirdest thing is that she's not the only one who's done so. And I wanted to explore that
00:07:19.640in this episode because it's it's the kind of wholesome part of all this but i also want to say
00:07:24.880this is not a political thing and one of my favorite things that i discovered when i went
00:07:29.100down this rabbit hole is that one actually just this morning i was watching another video about
00:07:34.140christian um christian riches we're actually going to talk about christian which is a little
00:07:38.780bit later when we talk about conversions away from from okay okay but there are conservative
00:07:44.560witches and this includes maga witches and i just have to show you because the maga witches are um
00:07:52.340just as conservative people are super into ai the one thing that really distinguishes
00:07:57.840the conservative witches is that they love ai and you're about to see why
00:08:03.180under the buck full moon we invoke power a tremendous power the best the buck full moon
00:08:08.860rises take america back we will win so much winning so much winning the buck full moon is
00:08:15.140high it's time incredible what are you going to do i call upon the power of the buck moon
00:08:20.520wow amazing the spell is complete look at that buck full moon it's magical it's huge the biggest
00:08:28.020and best moon they say it brings good fortune with you it already has oh they're like they're
00:08:35.880like flirting. Like what is, what was this? I love it. I like this. This is just hilarious.
00:08:45.480I absolutely. If you're going to be a witch, just go all the way with it. Have a relationship with0.97
00:08:52.260the president. I know. I 100% agree. So I just wanted to make it clear. This is not a political
00:08:59.540thing this is a religion thing and and the big theme here that i find to be so wholesome
00:09:05.040is these people who are very well-meaning who get into witchcraft you know alex reads tarot
00:09:10.200being her thing she's just trying to help people set intentions to get what they want done right
00:09:13.540and she thinks tarot cards will help her and she wants to help people through tarot and then she
00:09:18.260discovers you know what actually this isn't this isn't the solution i thought it was and so she
00:09:24.760leaves and that that is and she's not alone we're gonna go we're gonna start with her example though
00:09:28.260so her whole thing was tarot and astrology and energy work and and then she deleted her entire
00:09:34.320catalog and the the grieving that resulted was super interesting i'm just going to go with
00:09:38.760someone's reaction to what to what she did because it was here so here's someone commenting on on her
00:09:46.320most prominent spiritual creators alex reeds tarot has just announced that she is giving up
00:09:51.160tarot and her account to follow religion alex announced this news in a tiktok today and has
00:09:56.900actually wiped her entire account almost 1 million followers with the exception of this video this
00:10:03.220will be my final post i am not going to be offering any more readings or sessions i'm not going to be
00:10:11.140creating any more tarot content and once this account is gone i will not be returning i don't
00:10:18.420know exactly what comes next for me but what i do know is that jesus christ has saved my life
00:10:25.560it was a lot of people's favorite tarot card reader on tiktok so people are really sad to see
00:10:30.280this there's lots of talk about how this is the second or third major tarot card reader
00:10:35.400to find religion and leave their tarot card reading behind there are also some people that
00:10:40.440speculate maybe she got involved with a boyfriend who was really religious yeah a lot of a lot of
00:10:45.320people try to try to cope with that i don't think she did from what i have seen yeah from what you've
00:10:51.000you've seen what i thought was was even more telling about kind of what's unsustainable
00:10:57.020about the practice that people are playing in um was this one reaction of a follower and the way
00:11:03.780she describes why she can't quit her witchcraft essentially i think it's bad today for those who
00:11:11.520saw that alex reads tarot is no longer reading tarot i have a couple of things to say first and
00:11:15.660foremost i met alex briefly when she came on my podcast and she was so sweet so kind i think she
00:11:20.320is a phenomenal person she's given so much to her community over the past few years as a reader and
00:11:25.400i totally respect her decision to go off and follow whatever path she deems relevant for her
00:11:30.380and i think that she was super respectful and kind and nice in the way that she went about doing it
00:11:35.240for those of you that might be old enough to remember there was a oracle deck creator named
00:11:39.040dorian virtue now she was everywhere okay this was before there were tons of tarot and oracle decks
00:11:43.460and this woman was popping okay you could not go anywhere without seeing an oracle deck from dorian
00:11:47.660virtue and one day this woman came online and basically said y'all are going to hell y'all are
00:11:52.380communing with the devil and i'm never touching these decks again she fully joined a religion and
00:11:58.680made everybody feel awful about it okay and at the time i was new to spirituality when doreen came
00:12:04.400out guns blazing i actually felt really nervous i was like am i doing something wrong should i be
00:12:09.600listening to what she's saying if i use these cards if i felt this way using her stuff was it
00:12:13.840bad. I worried that I was doing something wrong and I felt super uncertain and really uneasy and
00:12:18.960it made me feel kind of sick inside. I was like looking up online trying to see what am I supposed
00:12:22.620to do? What's going on? There was this one woman and she said, listen, just because Doreen wants
00:12:26.240to go on her own path and I'll say this to you now, just because Alex wants to go on her own path
00:12:30.460doesn't mean that you are doing anything wrong by believing in witchcraft or spirituality, okay?
00:12:35.300Just because somebody is uncomfortable on the path of witchcraft and tarot and spirituality,
00:12:40.980a path that is not defined. It's not clear. It doesn't have organization. It doesn't have
00:12:45.240leaders. You're really on your own. You're judged. You are constantly feeling at odds with people
00:12:50.460that are religious. I make up what I believe is true. You're constantly being judged on the path1.00
00:12:55.680of spirituality. And it is challenging to live in alignment with that, knowing that you're
00:13:00.440constantly being judged and that people think really awful things about you. Even though you
00:13:04.780know, as somebody that reads tarot or gets tarot readings, you know that what you're doing is not
00:13:08.960harming anybody. You're doing something that is providing a real true level of introspection and
00:13:14.380self-awareness. And I know for so many people, hundreds and hundreds of people that I've read
00:13:18.920for in my life as a tarot reader, it has changed lives. It makes people better people. It makes
00:13:23.700people happier. It makes them more aligned with their soul's purpose. And for anybody to say that
00:13:29.020by engaging in those practices, you are doing something negative. You're doing something that
00:13:33.060God, source, spirit, the universe, Jesus Christ, whoever would be judgmental of, would smite you
00:13:37.600for would condemn you for i promise you they are wrong people that believe that are wrong and
00:13:43.760they're either lying to themselves or they're lying to you or a little bit of both because in
00:13:47.180no world would you be condemned for doing something to make yourself a better person and
00:13:51.940that is also not harming anyone else so although it may be uncomfortable to see someone you loved
00:13:56.440and looked up to and really supported for many years decide that this is no longer the path for
00:14:00.620them it doesn't mean that this doesn't have to be the path for you it doesn't mean that you have to
00:14:04.760feel like you've done something wrong or that you have to make a decision like Alex has. I've been
00:14:08.540seeking. I've gone to religious institutions. I've spoken to people. I have prayed. I have worshipped.
00:14:13.580I have done so many things. And I still come back to witchcraft. I still come back to spirituality0.81
00:14:18.400because it is the only thing that allows me the autonomy and the power that I need and that I
00:14:22.940crave and that I know that I'm deserving of as a human being. It is the only spirituality that I
00:14:27.080have found that shows just as much reverence regardless of gender and identity and sexual
00:14:31.720orientation and that is something that is important to me and i know that is something
00:14:35.100that is important to most of you who are also on this path and i just want to remind you you're
00:14:39.360doing nothing wrong and it's okay that alex wants to step back it sucks she will be missed and she
00:14:43.980will always be welcome back if she ever wants to come back to read tarot cards at any point in her
00:14:48.020life and if not that's perfectly okay too we wish her the best and we will still be here reading our
00:14:52.400tarot cards 24 7 baby look i consume it gives me the power and autonomy yeah i crave no if you just
00:15:00.600replaced this with like some vice any vice um gambling some sort of illicit drug use you know
00:15:06.820it just it gives me the power i crave you know it feels good but yeah i think that that's that
00:15:11.880she sums up i think very well people's reaction is one oh it's nice that this time when someone
00:15:17.440rejected us they were respectful about it and they didn't attack us for it but also but i i love the
00:15:23.460lack of introspection as to whether or not it is actually harmful to her life because in my
00:15:29.800experience that the people who engage in this stuff typically don't have their lives together
00:15:34.220whereas when i look at people of our generation i i will say the boomer generation had a lot
00:15:41.540of religious people who just did not have their lives together we're not actually practicing
00:15:47.880religious right but when i look at the religious people in our generation right um generally they
00:15:53.840seem to have their lives together at a much higher rate right yeah yeah um and of course it makes
00:15:58.960sense. If what you believe is whatever I want to think is true, whatever moral set I want to go
00:16:03.860with. Yeah. You're probably not going to get too far with anything that's hard. And as I keep
00:16:08.120trying to teach our children, all the stuff that is good, you have to work really, really hard for
00:16:13.920it. Like you're not going to get very far. We just went over an episode on C.S. Lewis's arguments for
00:16:19.100why you should believe in God. And I was going through why they were not just bad, but like the
00:16:23.720origin of woke ideology or what allowed it to so easily infiltrate churches and normalization of
00:16:29.160these ideas and i think you completely see it why in one of these videos when he says something like
00:16:35.180well people have genuine general intuitions around good and evil and therefore there must be
00:16:41.500something behind those intuitions about good and evil then you're locking your religion into saying
00:16:46.120well then what is religiously true or what is good and evil for god is what feels good and evil
00:16:49.600for you and this is clearly what she believes about religion she believes her religion because
00:16:55.720it aligns with her moral intuitions which is i want to do x i'm going to do x somebody else
00:17:01.860wants to do x how dare you tell me not to do x gives me the power i crave yeah it gives me the
00:17:07.760power i crave yeah right that's not really stuck with me but to your point and this is exactly the
00:17:14.120right point um those who have been in this movement and then actually look around and see
00:17:19.880how their friends in the occult are doing and then keep looking around and see how their friends who
00:17:26.180are religiously devout are doing they're like huh huh and that is exactly what happened to another
00:17:31.880of the very prominent conversions which was kat von d aka katherine von drachtenberg she is if1.00
00:17:40.120you're a woman you know who she is because she she makes I would argue pretty decent makeup she's a0.97
00:17:45.160celebrity tattoo artist an LA ink star and she's really known for her gothic and occult aesthetic1.00
00:17:51.220and she also had tarot collections that were tied to her makeup line she had witchcraft books she
00:17:57.840had she did spell work like she was in it like all the way and then suddenly in July of 22
00:18:03.500she discards her occult library her tarot decks and then she was baptized in a baptist church in
00:18:11.820indiana in october 2023 but then later entered the orthodox church in 2025 and while she didn't
00:18:20.180originally she said that her priest discouraged her from explaining why she converted when you
00:18:26.820come to look at her aesthetic oh yeah gothy witchy woman why did she become orthodox yeah
00:18:33.160i wonder what's going on when you see this this like gothy woman's aesthetic and then you're like
00:18:37.640she converted to baptist when i first heard this i was like yeah this is her in an orthodox church
00:18:44.260and you're like probably not gonna last oh your son with the little skull icons on his well you
00:18:50.400can see that these witches use orthodox imagery like the other which literally used orthodox
00:18:55.600imagery of like their relic icons and stuff like this yeah as um as an example of well it was an
00:19:02.240example of the power of like accessories and crowns and stuff witchcraft so what's funny is
00:19:08.280the witches can't even distinguish orthodox christianity from spiritualism in witchcraft
00:19:14.360yeah but i think the important thing here though is that she found like an aesthetic that worked0.98
00:19:18.360for her but she also realized oh actually you know oh god i love i love her demonic bathroom
00:19:24.280so freaking much she still has it yeah it looks pretty cool i mean she's kept the demonic bathroom0.94
00:19:29.620even after converting back I think it works for an orthodox person okay you know what yeah this is0.90
00:19:34.540what I want to say and this is where I have a actually pretty strong belief in ecumenicalism0.75
00:19:39.920around Christianity where when I talk to because unfortunately the Celestium interview the
00:19:45.080recording didn't work so we're gonna have to redo it but when I'm excited to talk with her again
00:19:48.660though so yeah when I talk with um you know an orthodox person like her one of the things I
00:19:55.260always hate when christians do is when they say christians believe this or christians believe this
00:20:00.760or christians believe this and i'm like well is it in the bible and they're like no but it's what
00:20:04.520christians believe and i'm like so what you mean is you've been told by somebody that christians
00:20:10.160believe this like your local minister or something like this and you've incorporated it into your
00:20:14.120identity and now you are using it in a manner that is potentially exclusionary and i want to
00:20:20.120be clear here when christians do this i think they're essentially trying to manifest christianity
00:20:24.920to be what they want it to be. I don't think that they actually believe that their way of
00:20:31.740interpreting the Bible is the only way of interpreting the Bible. However, when I see
00:20:36.700other religions do it where it's even more common specifically is in Buddhism and Mormonism, which
00:20:43.960is a form of Christianity, but a highly deviant one, is specifically in those two religions.
00:20:51.580I have frequently brought up things that are just like patently and obviously true.0.99
00:20:57.520If you have studied the religious history, like in Buddhism, I'm like, oh, yeah, the goal is to end the cycle of suffering and prevent sentient life from continuing to exist.
00:21:06.420And people were like, no, that's not what Buddhism is.
00:21:09.060And I'm like, you can do a basic search like this is this is sort of the core of the religion.
00:21:14.620This isn't some fringe side belief I'm mentioning or within Mormonism.
00:21:17.680when i was talking about elements of the mormon afterlife uh this is more on leaflet stream not
00:21:22.000within our own audience or somebody who is very like no we do not believe that you continue as
00:21:27.440a ghost on earth um until the rather i'm like no you do like this is this is the central church's
00:21:34.240canon right now you can uh you know debate around whether or not you can see them or whether there
00:21:40.720was a strong veil between them and the living but not whether or not this happens and they just
00:21:45.520refuse that because they're like, I've never heard it from my church. And I think that this
00:21:49.460is also true is the Buddhists who convert. And they're like, well, I identify as a Buddhist.
00:21:53.320It's a minority religion where I live. And because I identify as it, then therefore my beliefs
00:21:59.340define what it means to be Buddhist or to have Buddhist beliefs. And I have things that I believe
00:22:06.120are true about Christ, about God, about the way the world is structured. And I will say,
00:22:11.460I believe this about Christianity, but I am okay with sex that believe things about Christianity
00:22:20.420that I believe are wrong or existing and working with them. Because the reality is, is even if I0.56
00:22:27.220think that Baptists are one of the closest to biblically accurate branches of the Christian0.98
00:22:33.960tradition, I really like Baptists, generally speaking, this woman was clearly never going
00:22:40.360anesthesia baptist yeah and she talks in one podcast that i i used in my research about how
00:22:45.720icons just made immediate sense to her as a visual artist and that she first thought that this flat
00:22:51.120style looked like people before they learned how to draw and then once she understood them as
00:22:55.400windows to heaven she was like oh my god this is so cool yeah like she needed that that is that is
00:23:00.040like a way that she makes sense of the world as an artist and as a human i don't work that way you
00:23:04.940don't work that way that's why we need a different type of religious tradition clearly when it comes
00:23:08.700to icons and idolatry i have argued recently that it is why you still have child sacrifices
00:23:13.900and cannibalism happening in mexico right like yeah uh it is why the same time more to quote
00:23:18.800hey but it's also why this which is no longer but the point here is the reason why i'm not saying
00:23:24.700we need to have a crusade against the orthodox in america or we need to have a crusade against0.99
00:23:29.580catholicism in america is because if we remove these as options women like her are going to1.00
00:23:38.580day witches and if we're talking about the difference between a form of christianity0.97
00:23:43.880that allows for icons and living life as a witch clearly her life her children's life
00:23:51.220the life of everyone in our society is going to be better for the fact that she follows the
00:23:58.160orthodox tradition yeah and she ultimately came person who believes that they are a catholic and
00:24:05.900and castles can say well we don't the church has condemned it and i'm like well they haven't
00:24:09.060condemned it as hard as they've condemned spsx which is pretty odd yeah um like it'd be really
00:24:14.680cool if they could do an inquisition i i think a lot of people would support that also target
00:24:19.120the narcos love that mexicans would love that great idea anyone in the vatican say let's do
00:24:24.540an inquisition against you know oh my gosh it would pull so well everyone would love it human0.99
00:24:28.860sacrifices to saints they believe are catholic right i think even the wokes would love it right0.99
00:24:33.620you know everyone would love it come on let's go oh no the wokes wouldn't love it because a lot of0.90
00:24:38.820the santa muerta cult is gay or lgbt i forgot yes she is yes santa muerta lgbtq and female icons0.86
00:24:45.440somebody was like oh a deity that accepts you no matter who you are because it only cares that0.91
00:24:50.840you're gonna die one day that sounds like maybe not a deity you should be worshiping don't worship
00:24:56.660cosmic horror deities can we can we just agree on a couple but but the thing is is that for every
00:25:04.360catholic who or somebody who believes they're a catholic who gets involved in these things
00:25:08.020because there weren't strict enough policies around like icon worship there are probably
00:25:12.98010 000 people who convert because they like the vibe of the giant fancy churches right um and they
00:25:22.540like the the feel of it all for every person who within the orthodox tradition may be drawn to it
00:25:28.960for darker reasons there are 10 000 women like this or more a hundred thousand maybe half a
00:25:34.800million people so when i'm against something like idolatry i want to be clear i'm not against it
00:25:40.600because i think it makes a person un-christian you know i think a lot of christians don't follow
00:25:45.380the sabbaths as we didn't for a long time even though it's very clearly laid out that you're
00:25:50.000supposed to. I think it's something I'm against because if everybody could create restrictions
00:26:01.120against it, society would be a better place. At the same time, I don't think that our society
00:26:07.780that's structured right now gets a net better if I enforce that upon everyone. I think some
00:26:13.960people's path to having a better life travels through iconoclasm travels through idolatry and
00:26:23.100that is the the world that we live in you know if you live in a fallen world you need to say okay
00:26:29.180yeah but if i get rid of all that how many people are not going to find a way to a better life
00:26:35.580and it's a lot of them and so that that's what i mean i'm like it is helping people i do think
00:26:43.040society would be better if it didn't exist at all but i think it would be harder to get to that
00:26:48.200ultimate society from where we are now if it didn't exist at all yeah only churches aren't
00:26:55.460winning that many converts so that might be a big number but celestium has made me believe that the
00:27:00.480orthodox church has hope for the future if she and her crew are out there proselytizing in roblox
00:27:08.560all right they're gonna be okay i know i've met some orthodox preachers who i really liked who are
00:27:14.720fans of the show apparently um and it's a it's a it's a it's they got ritz they got a cool style
00:27:21.280i like it yeah i think you know they've got it going on and i'm glad that kat von d is among
00:27:26.180them now and she she ultimately i mean first you know got baptized not not into the orthodox church
00:27:32.360she switched but like what drove her to this again is that she compared her christian friends
00:27:37.220who had light in her words with her occult friends who lived in quote drama and dread and gloom and
00:27:44.000doom end quote her words yeah realized that she had been one of the miserable ones and she also
00:27:49.620said that new age practices like tarot and spell work and meditation nature worship yoga all the
00:27:54.240stuff she was doing had been band-aids to her and crutches that never really solved anything and
00:27:59.340what ultimately triggered everything for her um unlike the you know year of introspection
00:28:04.560that Alex Reitero went through was the pandemic and just kind of sitting alone with her thoughts
00:28:09.920and her husband, she and her husband just started talking. And then she started feeling like she
00:28:14.160was deprogramming, like actually deprogramming from occult practices, which is really-
00:28:20.300Well, I think that's the way it works for a lot of people. And I will say, I mean,
00:28:23.680my one caveat on the Orthodox tradition is just make sure you never let them in a funeral home1.00
00:28:28.420with a bedazzler um oh my god don't be dull be dazzling dazzle with a bedazzler the kit that can0.98
00:28:37.000change your wardrobe from dull to daring just place the gem stud on the bedazzler platform
00:28:41.540then press down to attach to your fabric look it's as easy as using a stapler in seconds you've got a
00:28:47.300dazzling design children love the bedazzler too it's great for gifts crafts and costumes now with
00:28:52.820a bedazzler you can add glittering rhinestones and studs for a fraction of the cost okay fine
00:28:57.460Look, let's move on to the one who I think-
00:29:00.520Keep the bedazzlers away from them and they're fine, right?1.00
00:35:41.820I'd be like, if you as your profession are like a witch and a medium, and you're supposed to let spirits communicate with you, and you had a kind of vision like this, you would probably take it really seriously.
00:35:53.440And she had a vision of Jesus in an Episcopal church in January of 2017, so before she got baptized.
00:35:59.240And she said that that experience completely changed her.
00:36:01.980And then also, and this is the most important part, this is what it would have convinced me if I were her, is that she read Deuteronomy 18, 10 to 12, which is the prohibition of divination and fortune telling and witchcraft and consulting the dead, like her entire career.
00:36:18.720and that was the ultimate decisive moment for her which i appreciate and i think that it's
00:36:25.860interesting there are all these people who are christian and are like no witchcraft is okay you
00:36:30.820can be a devout christian and a witch and and like read tarot and and then they just they just
00:36:36.700hadn't gotten around i guess to reading the bible well and i appreciate that she did it
00:36:42.240they contextualize themselves as prophets no because right when when it says that it's also
00:36:48.280like it the part of the bible that's like witchcraft bad a divination bad is then like
00:36:54.940but the prophets are important and i think the kind of insinuation is a girl you're not a prophet
00:37:01.200um i think i appreciate that during virtue was like okay this confidence somebody has
00:37:09.000hurts to read this this is my entire career it's wrong and it's going to be incredibly painful
00:37:15.780to tell all of the people who are my fans who are extremely invested in this entire lifestyle
00:37:21.060that i was wrong and that they should not do this but she did it and and so you know alex
00:37:27.300reads tarot did the very least you could do she just stepped back and she nuked her content i
00:37:36.260guess she could have chosen to not nuke her content but she did take the easy way out of
00:37:40.940just being like personal choice I'm not judging you I think Doreen Virtue did the most virtuous
00:37:46.280thing which is I was wrong you need to stop this this is bad well I mean and that's what we did
00:37:54.100with atheism yeah but I think it's harder because our career wasn't God is not real don't be you
00:38:01.640know like that we didn't make money from it we were the effective altruist community kind of
00:38:07.580not really no no we didn't make money from telling people religion is bad don't do it
00:38:12.060um whereas she she did and she genuinely believed as well that she was a christian doing god's work
00:38:18.540through angels with all this so it must have really hurt and she said that that passage lifted
00:38:24.320the veil and she fell to her knees immediately and repented and gave her life to jesus and i i
00:38:30.740appreciate that sorry what passage the deuteronomy 18 10 to 12 oh you mean the the
00:38:37.280condemnment passage the it wasn't like any positive thing it was just like this is bad
00:38:42.200and she's like i didn't know and she was like oops ah like no one told her i guess and before
00:38:49.020that she like again literally thought that she was a christian doing god's work and that the
00:38:53.200angels were helping her and she just this is this is one of those things where i mean like this is
00:38:57.220really clear in like deuteronomy and yet there's a lot of jews who like know their stuff like the
00:39:02.220the the the bal shems who practiced all this stuff right like and they were like there's a lot of
00:39:07.700stuff okay when i went and i looked at how long the bible was in terms of like the audiobook
00:39:12.860of the how long is it of the old testament alone just the old testament i'm pulling it up here
00:39:18.200it's kind of ridiculous and there's there's so much detail in there look you could read it
00:39:24.720every day again and again over a lifetime and you would not the holy bible king james version
00:39:32.500shall be thine i've got 71 hours and five minutes left come on man like this is hard
00:39:41.040this is hard okay i i'm not ready for this it's i'm trying i haven't i was like oh you have to
00:39:48.920get to the new testament i'm like i only get to listen to audiobooks when i'm cleaning things
00:39:54.600and falling asleep and the kids aren't asking for anything this is gonna take a while um
00:39:59.040like 15 minutes a day anyway this is why we need the sabbath obviously and yeah yeah you can just
00:40:05.880sit which by the way we're gonna start this this friday we're gonna be starting
00:40:10.940i don't wanna but i have to the 10 commandments are yeah we're gonna believe it if god wrote it
00:40:19.600we gotta do it and we have to honor our parents and i have to not blaspheme although i was
00:40:24.360looking at blaspheming more and it's more like treating god flippantly so being like oh my god
00:40:29.460if something were really really serious which is normally when i'm saying that it's maybe not
00:40:34.660blaspheming i gotta look into this more look we're we're trying we're trying just like dorian
00:40:39.400virtue okay but anyway it's i think it's great she converted i think it's great that she's shaming
00:40:43.600them even though they'd be coping and here's the interesting thing though there isn't really a lot
00:40:49.260of the inverse existing. You don't see prominent Christian religious influencers who are turning
00:40:56.200to witchcraft. Are they deconstructing sometimes? Absolutely. But mostly what I see them
00:41:00.940deconstructing from, because I like to follow Fundy Snark, okay? I love to follow the gleeful
00:41:06.600analysis of the ex-Mormons and the Fundy Snark people going through the deconstruction0.89
00:41:14.920experiences of Christian influencers, most of those people's gripes are not actually with like
00:41:23.020God or the Ten Commandments at all. It's more with like this particular church in which they
00:41:27.900were raised, which I agree is equally, I agree it's problematic and I agree that that church
00:41:32.460needs to fix its ways. So I'm kind of with them on that. I think the deconstruction is very
00:41:37.340productive that we see among Christian influencers. But no, there are lots of people who are like1.00
00:41:41.880raised evangelical or conservative christian who leave the church and pick up tarot astrology or
00:41:47.400witchcraft um religion news service profiled this in 2025 with practitioners like kevin garcia and
00:41:54.100elliot adam and charlie claire burgess they describe tarot as this way to rebuild spirituality
00:41:59.400after bad religion i totally believe i've won i don't think they were actually really christian
00:42:04.720to believe with i believe that they were raised in weak christian traditions that never won their
00:42:10.540souls or their faith in the first place i think that happened with a lot of people and i think
00:42:15.760it's important that these churches pay attention when they see this happening and it means that
00:42:19.840they need to do better um and tend to their own flock better well strengthen your tradition i
00:42:25.180mean i really think this needs to be the number one thing you just saying well this is the way
00:42:29.220it's always worked for us and it's like well i mean it's clearly not working for this generation
00:42:33.640for any of the mainstream christian denominations except for the charismatics which are
00:42:37.480being crazy and not good i want to be clear like as much as i rag on catholics in this i i actually
00:42:44.700think the charismatics are a much more dangerous group no honestly yeah it's someone in the0.63
00:42:51.860comments was like why would you compare pentecostals to witchcraft we condemn witchcraft
00:42:57.320and you when you say something like i've condemned witchcraft or we condemn witchcraft
00:43:04.240it really has the same vibe as when a catholic or an orthodox from your perspective says well we
00:43:11.520condemn idolatry and you're like well what's that and they go oh that's an icon and you're like okay
00:43:16.600so you just changed around definitions and i'm like okay dude one like the stuff that i see
00:43:22.960happening within the walls of a pentecostal church makes this soft core alex reed's tarot
00:43:29.360set an intention for the day after looking at a tarot card stuff looks just like downright pious.
00:43:51.800So for context on what we mean by this, if you go to books like Frank Pandora's Modern Spiritualism
00:43:58.180in 1902, we see that a phenomenon very similar to the Pentecostal speaking in tongues of today
00:44:03.920was very common among spiritualists of the 1850s to 1900s. However, if you go to the early
00:44:11.660Pentecostal movement, what they meant by speaking in tongues, and we can see this in things like
00:44:16.440A. A. Bode's British paper Confidence in May 1908, or from Charles Param, is they thought that God
00:44:24.500would give them the ability to speak in other languages to preach to people outside of the
00:44:29.000united states like in one case a guy went all the way to india because he thought that he'd be able
00:44:33.540to speak indian and it didn't work and it created a lot of disappointment in the early pentecostal
00:44:38.580movement and then they redefined it as basically whatever those spiritualists were doing for some
00:44:45.520other instances of this you have things like the word of faith or private confession the idea that
00:44:50.740spoken words of faith create or guarantee health and wealth, and that revelation knowledge overrides
00:44:56.720sense knowledge traces largely to E.W. Kenyoy, 1867 to 1948. Kenyoy observes the ideas from the
00:45:05.620New Thought movement, specifically Finnis Quimby and the broader mind-science metaphysical movement
00:45:10.320of the 1800s and 1900s. These teachings later flowed into the Pentecostal and charismatic
00:45:16.020circles via Kenneth Hagin and others. This is basically manifesting. It's something that you
00:45:22.100see within some Pentecostal movements that looks a lot like the manifesting you see from like the
00:45:28.160book, what's it called? The Secret that like Oprah used to promote and stuff like this,
00:45:33.600which is just straight up New Age spiritualism ported into Christianity. Or you have things like
00:45:41.200slain in the spirit. This became a signature of Mariah Woodworth's Edda, the trans evangelist of
00:45:47.240the 1880s to 1920s, and later healing evangelist. People collapsed, intertranslate states, or lay
00:45:52.800unconscious for hours. This is not something you see in scripture at all. You see in scripture
00:45:58.280people falling over when they encounter God or angels, but not at worship services. But it is
00:46:04.860something we see pretty extensively in the spiritualist movement and in the sort of proto-witchcraft
00:46:12.000movements that were appearing during the late 1800s, early 1900s. So to be clear here, we don't
00:46:20.560think that Pentecostals believe that they are practicing witchcraft, or I'd say is they picked
00:46:26.440up practices without knowing. This is something we see throughout the Bible. Even in the temple,
00:46:32.120We see Canaanite gods beginning to appear at periods and they had to be cleared out.0.96
00:46:37.260To accidentally pick up practices from people who are around you is a normal thing and is something that we are supposed to be ever vigilant of.0.63
00:46:48.220it it it bothers me so much that they are using these these these tricks to make people feel as
00:46:56.380though they're having deeply felt spiritual experiences without actually studying scripture
00:47:00.640without actually doing hard things sorry no that is worse so the reason here and really we do need
00:47:10.000to differentiate in the same way that we like some Catholic groups pretty unimaginably like
00:47:13.500Go ahead. Fix it. Yes. And just like others, like the Jesuits was in the Pentecostal community.0.95
00:47:19.940The charismatic Pentecostals are the ones we have a problem with, but the charismatic Pentecostals
00:47:25.000more so than other communities in the same way where I can be like, well, the Vatican
00:47:28.200is the head of your movement, Catholics, and it's really bad. With the Pentecostal movement,0.98
00:47:33.080the charismatic part of the Pentecostal movement is the part that's growing really fast and that
00:47:37.580makes up the majority of the movement at this point. And when I hear charismatic,
00:48:10.840It comes from the 1920s spiritualist movement.
00:48:13.500it then was incorporated in christianity and then somebody saw a line in the bible they were able to
00:48:18.600use to justify a type of magic that had been honed for a long time by just straight up wiccans and
00:48:26.100stuff like that well the wiccans didn't exist during that period but but their predecessors
00:48:29.440yeah what was that guys and note here what we are not saying is we are not saying that they are not
00:48:36.300christians we are not saying that they are not trying to be christians we are not saying that
00:48:41.940they don't look to the Bible for justification. We are saying that we disagree with their
00:48:48.380practices and we think other traditions have seeped in in the same way that somebody could
00:48:52.760say of us, oh, you guys have allowed atheism to seep into your religion or agnosticism.0.51
00:49:00.860But it would be dishonest for us to say that they are not attempting to be Christians
00:49:07.040in their own way and do not define themselves as christians typically i take people on the way
00:49:12.400they define themselves like above where i said i think mormons are christians and i think that
00:49:18.720it's important that we do that when we are talking about what criticisms we have of other movements
00:49:25.120because it's the quickest way to get them to stop listening to you when you say oh well this isn't
00:49:32.300even christianity or this is paganism as apparently when we're talking with celestium a lot of people
00:49:38.100say of iconography in or a lot of people say of icons in the eastern orthodox tradition they're
00:49:44.320just like this is pagan i'm like no it's not pagan it has elements that god appears to disapprove of
00:49:50.640from my interpretation of the bible but that is my interpretation creepy guy whatever the the people
00:49:59.800by the way all the crawley crawley alexander crawley alexander crawley the witches love him
00:50:04.760by the way the modern witches they're like oh he was you know i followed his work blah blah blah
00:50:08.660anyway it's all connected uh do do your homework uh but yeah no maybe witches they're worse
00:50:16.220again than i would argue many of the so-called witches on on witch talk so one of the fascinating
00:50:24.660One of the fascinating things that I want to take a moment to sort of dig into on this is where, so within Christianity, you have parts of Christianity that have become significantly porous towards this stuff because they have been able to find correlates that look sort of like it in parts of the Bible.
00:50:42.920And this is, well, this is what we're seeing as the charismatic Pentecostals, where they're practicing stuff that looks like and often had its origins in the spiritualist movement and then was incorporated and sort of whitewashed or laundered into the Christian movement using, you know, one-off verses here and there, missing the wider point of like, you should be suspicious enough about this stuff that you just shouldn't be engaged with it.
00:51:09.360Um, this is, this is still rare within the wider Christian movement, but within the Jewish movement, it's been much more porous to individuals who want to engage in serious mysticism, um, or serious, uh, witch-like practices of things that we would think of as witch-like practices.
00:51:27.880You know, spells, talking to the dead, doing sorts of, and obviously this is offensive for me to say for our Jewish viewers, but in the same way where I would say that a Catholic icon or an Orthodox icon is idolatry from my reading, and they would say it's not idolatry from their reading, or we define it as something different than idolatry, or a Pentecostal charismatic will say,
00:51:55.740well this isn't witchcraft because we call it putting on hands or whatever they want to call
00:52:00.160it right um and i'm like well it it seems to be what is outlined as witchcraft within the bible
00:52:05.660uh you will get things in the jewish tradition like when i talked about speaking with the dead
00:52:10.540in the jewish tradition you have something called kvich lach which are petitionary prayers or notes
00:52:16.920which are written for dead individuals who are supposed to intercede on your behalf with god this
00:52:23.160is not like a super rare or fringe thing and yet it is strictly said that you are not allowed to
00:52:30.320talk to the dead and they're like well technically this is you know because of x y and z in the same
00:52:35.200way that you know within judaism you get a lot of well technically i i'm not showing my hair because
00:52:41.300i'm wearing a wig and that works within judaism but that wouldn't work within most other religions
00:52:46.860that derives themselves from warnings around the warnings that we get in things like deuteronomy0.55
00:52:52.940well as i pointed out to simone and and again this really sucks for jews that this happened0.75
00:52:59.860but when the people who created what we today call witchcraft were creating witchcraft their
00:53:07.580primary source in many cases was the kabbalah and so if you have as i did when i was younger
00:53:15.980studied witchcraft because i hung out with like the artsy kids in school and everything like that
00:53:19.860and I wanted to get laid and that meant you had to know your basics on witchcraft right yeah um
00:53:24.140and and so I remember the first time because I I I then studied Kabbalism later and I opened it up
00:53:30.580and I was like uh-oh uh-oh I recognize all of these diagrams I had to write these at one point
00:53:38.600yeah actually yeah you made me look them up on another episode and they're like
00:53:42.560exactly the same yeah you were like you were like come on Kabbalism can't look that which
00:53:47.360no i was wrong open up open up a thing on your screen here and do a google image search for