Modern Occultist News

  Survival to Creation The Meditation Retreat Experience Renata Papp Renata Papp is certified in neurology and is a licensed esthetician who also works as a model, writer and transformation coach , a ll of which is shared on her Instagram and popular YouTube channel . Based in Budapest, Hungary, she shared with Modern Occultist her experiences at an intensive manifestation retreat and the lessons learned... (Affiliate disclosure: Some links on this blog may earn us a small commission at no cost to you. Every bit helps keep the lantern lit.) If you had asked my teenage self whether I believed in manifestation, nervous system regulation, or the idea that thoughts could heal the body, I would have looked at you in confusion—or fear. My early life was not shaped by empowerment or emotional literacy, but by survival. From a very young age, I struggled with depersonalization and derealization (DPDR), panic attacks, and obsessive-compulsive–like behaviors. At the time, no...

ON THIS DAY IN OCCULT HISTORY May 5 Thomas Carlyle's World Without Gods On May 5, 1840, Thomas Carlyle stepped before a paying London audience and delivered the first of six lectures that would become one of the most influential—and most dangerous—books of the nineteenth century. His subject was Odin, yet his real subject was God’s absence … and what humanity might put in His place.   (Affiliate disclosure: Some links on this blog may earn us a small commission at no cost to you. Every bit helps keep the lantern lit.) The room was full. It was always full—Carlyle had discovered, somewhat to his own disgust, that he was a magnificent public lecturer, and London's educated classes had been paying a guinea a ticket to hear him since 1837. He hated the performance of it. He was a Scottish farmer's son, built for the study and the page, not the podium. But the lectures paid his bills, and on May 5, 1840, in a hall in Edward Street, Portman Square, he stood before them a...

ON THIS DAY IN OCCULT HISTORY May 4 The Dark Side of the Moon On the night of May 4, 1783, William Herschel—the greatest observational astronomer of his age, discoverer of Uranus, builder of the largest telescopes in the world—turned his 10-foot Newtonian reflector toward the dark side of the Moon and saw something that shouldn't have been there… (Affiliate disclosure: Some links on this blog may earn us a small commission at no cost to you. Every bit helps keep the lantern lit.) The entry in Herschel's observing record is brief and exact, as his records always were: "May 4, 1783. I perceived in the dark part of the Moon a luminous spot. It had the appearance of a red star of about the 4th magnitude. It was situated in the place of Hevelii Mons Porphyrites, the instrument with which I saw it was a 10 feet Newtonian Reflector of 9 inches aperture." Hevelii Mons Porphyrites was the old name for the crater we now call Aristarchus—a name the ancient Greek astronome...

ON THIS DAY IN OCCULT HISTORY May 3 The Fall of Francis Bacon On May 3, 1621, Francis Bacon—Lord Chancellor of England, father of the scientific method, Viscount St. Alban, and the most powerful legal mind of his age—confessed to corruption before the House of Lords and was sentenced to “the Tower.” He had spent sixty years building the architecture of the modern world. It took Parliament roughly three weeks to pull it down.   (Affiliate disclosure: Some links on this blog may earn us a small commission at no cost to you. Every bit helps keep the lantern lit.) When the Lords sent a committee to his chambers to confirm that the confession was genuinely his—that a man of his stature had truly fallen on his own sword—Bacon received them with the composure of someone who had already done his grieving in private. "My lords," he told them, "it is my act, my hand, and my heart; I beseech your lordships to be merciful to a broken reed." The sentence came down four...

ON THIS DAY IN OCCULT HISTORY May 2 Peter J. Carroll (1953–2026) (Affiliate disclosure: Some links on this blog may earn us a small commission at no cost to you. Every bit helps keep the lantern lit.) It is with deep sadness that we report Peter James Carroll—occultist, author, co-founder of the Illuminates of Thanateros, and the architect of chaos magic as a living magical tradition—passed away unexpectedly in the early hours of Wednesday, April 22, 2026. He was seventy-two years old. The announcement on his website, Specularium.org, carried the only headline that fit: "The Wizard Has Gone." Robert Anton Wilson—no casual dispenser of praise—called him "the most original, and probably the most important, writer on Magick since Aleister Crowley." That assessment has aged well. Carroll didn't merely contribute to the Western magical tradition; he cracked it open, stripped it of its accumulated dogma, and rebuilt it on foundations that would have been unrecog...