The Podcast Pentagram: Occultism in Catholic Media
The Occult Revival in Traditional Catholicism- Part V
In Part IV, we traced how esoteric and occult themes have infiltrated traditional Catholic publishing houses, institutions, and even liturgical spaces. But the reach of this revival isn’t limited to bookshelves and pulpits. It thrives in the algorithmic bloodstream of digital Catholic media.
From YouTube channels to podcasts, Substack newsletters to social media threads, a new class of Catholic influencers is rebranding Catholicism as a mystical labyrinth of symbols, initiations, and secret knowledge, complete with tarot aesthetics, alchemical analogies, and gnostic vocabulary, all cloaked in the language of tradition.
Gnostalgia and the Rise of the Esoteric Podcast
One of the most explicit examples is the Gnostalgia Podcast, a show that openly describes itself as exploring the intersection of traditional Catholicism and “Western esotericism.” Its guests include figures immersed in Hermeticism, Kabbalah, and occult metaphysics, all while invoking the language of monasticism and Latin rite piety.
These episodes often play on traditional aesthetics: Gregorian chant intros, Gothic fonts, iconography; to launder gnostic themes like the divine feminine, spiritual ascent through secret knowledge, and the rejection of external religious authority. What passes for mysticism is often a mood-board of heresies.
The hosts, and many of their guests, clearly long for a version of Catholicism that feels more enchanted. But what they end up selling is initiation. The Church has seen this pattern before.
Sebastian Morello and the Self-Defense of Esoteric Influencers
When challenged for their proximity to occultic or gnostic ideas, many of these influencers double down rather than recant. A perfect example is Sebastian Morello, whose book Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries prompted criticism for its ambiguous praise of magical traditions and syncretistic mysticism.
Rather than clarify or retract, Morello took to Substack to defend himself. In “Snuffing the Pyre: A Reply to Michael Warren Davis,” he insisted that Catholic mysticism is often misunderstood and that critiques of syncretism are simplistic. In short, he conflates legitimate mystical theology with magical religion.
Instead of explaining why Morello’s beliefs are incompatible with Catholicism, in this case I think an audio is worth 1,000 words. In this excerpt from the Gnostalgia Podcast: The Gods on Their Knees, Morello matter of factly describes how the manifestation of Valentin Tomberg, the author of Meditations on the Tarot, was guiding his writings from beyond the grave as a “god” literally present in his living room. I ask that you listen to this podcast excerpt and ask yourself if what you are hearing is anywhere close to something that should be presented as Catholic…
Morello’s book was published by the publishing company Os Justi Press, owned by none other than Catholic Traditionalist fixture, Dr. Peter Kwasniewski. Far from distancing himself from the work, Professor Kwasniewski defended both it and Morello vigorously on his Facebook page giving them both renewed credibility among many Traditionalists.
I stand by Morello and his book 100%, and recommend it wholeheartedly to all intellectually adventurous readers looking for a potent critique of the disease of modernity coupled with a profoundly incarnational and sacramental vision of Catholic life pointing the way to the remedy.
From Devotion to Aesthetic Fetishism
What connects these podcasts and influencers is not doctrine but affect. Their appeal lies in mood: old books, obscure saints, arcane vocabulary, dimly lit altars, and embroidered vestments. The supernatural is no longer a dogmatic reality to be believed, but a symbolic system to be explored.
This trend is particularly strong among younger Catholics disillusioned with modernity. They crave the supernatural not as revealed truth but as imaginative escape. It is a fantasy Catholicism, more aligned with medieval RPGs and folklore than with the Council of Trent.
They want to fly dragons over rainbows, chase leprechauns, and fight the Jabberwock. They are cousins to the ghost hunters.
Their opposition to modernism is real, but they react not by returning to Thomism or magisterial tradition, but by romanticizing magic. It is a supernaturalism unmoored from discipline.
Jimmy Akin and the New Normal
Jimmy Akin, senior apologist at Catholic Answers and host of Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World, often navigates this terrain with finesse. When callers ask about tarot or astrology, Akin doesn’t outright condemn. Instead, he issues measured cautions: astrology can be abused, tarot is risky, but these practices aren’t always mortally sinful.
In doing so, he shifts the tone from rejection to nuance. Occult practices become spiritual curiosities: entertaining, maybe even useful, if handled correctly. His podcasting brand has the feel of coast-to-coast AM with a rosary.
To the average listener, the message is clear: the Church isn’t against mysticism. You just have to do it responsibly.
The Alien, the Apologist, and the Ethicist
Consider this gem from the podcasting underworld: an episode of Pints with Aquinas in which Matt Fradd interviews Catholic Answers apologist Jimmy Akin about UFOs, Freemasonry, and Bigfoot. Yes, really.
At one point, the conversation takes a detour into the truly extraterrestrial. Akin recounts a case of alleged alien abduction in which the abductee claims he was forced to copulate with an alien female. Rather than laugh or change the subject, Fradd gamely asks the obvious next question: “Would it be immoral to have sex with an alien?”
What follows is not satire. Akin launches into a meticulous Thomistic moral analysis of alien-human intimacy, parsing whether it would be fornication, bestiality, or perhaps morally permissible depending on the alien’s level of rationality.
There are no words, but there is a video:
I’m not suggesting this is occultism. I’m suggesting it’s theological cosplay. It’s a symptom of what happens when Catholic discourse is unmoored from pastoral seriousness, doctrinal gravity, and any contact with sane priorities.
We live in a moment when Marian devotions are collapsing, catechesis is decimated, and liturgical abuses rage, but Catholic podcasting has time to debate interstellar breeding ethics.
Evangelization or Initiation?
The Church teaches that the purpose of evangelization is conversion: a turning toward the truth. But what many of these Catholic media outlets promote is not conversion, but initiation.
They do not lead people to Christ so much as lure them into a symbolic world, promising illumination through mystery, arcana, and interior gnosis.
This is why figures like Morello, Akin, and podcast hosts with gnostic sympathies are not outliers. Their content thrives because it blends spiritual aesthetics with an ethos of esoteric exploration. Orthodoxy becomes not a demand of the intellect, but a flavor of the imagination.
The Medium Is the Mystery
Catholic media, like all media, shapes formation. And when podcasts, TikToks, and YouTube reels adopt esoteric aesthetics and syncretic content, they don’t just “explore,” they catechize. They re-train the senses. They substitute ambiance for truth.
What you feel becomes what you believe.
And so the revival of traditional Catholicism online faces a quiet danger: that in fleeing the desiccated rationalism of modernism, we fall into the luminous abyss of mysticism unhinged.
In Part VI, we will explore the doctrinal and metaphysical core of this trend: the revival of Sophiology, the mystical cult of the divine feminine. Beneath the beauty of Marian devotion lies a shadow theology that must be exposed.
Note: I would like to thank Alistair McFadden (@JustACatholic1 on X) and his work “Observations on the Influence of the Occult in Traditional Catholic Discourse” found here (https://justacatholic.medium.com/observations-on-the-influence-of-the-occult-in-traditional-catholic-discourse-2d798e5ba51c) for inspiring this series.
Disclaimer:
This article presents theological critique and religious commentary based on publicly available materials, official publisher catalogs, and the known writings of referenced individuals. No accusation of personal wrongdoing is made toward any author. All analysis is offered in a spirit of fidelity to Catholic teaching and pastoral concern for the salvation of souls.
Thanks, Chris, for a hugely enjoyable plunge into the fantasy land of esotericism. Morello's idea that he is being guided by the long dead Tomberg raises all manner of questions. Like, has there been a funnier Catholic article in the last ten years? Is there anything left of Peter Kwasnieski's reputation? Is there anything left of Catholic teaching on death and judgement if Tomberg is apparently not in Heaven, Purgatory or Hell, but still hanging around Morello's study?
Apparently the great Tomberg scholar Roger Buck thinks that Tomberg is now a daemon or maybe a minor god, rather than a Dickens type spook. So maybe he has been granted an exemption from Judgement. Whatever he is, I hope he sticks to guiding Morello and leaves me alone. I live only 15 minutes' walk from Tomberg's house and he could easily find me.
THANK YOU for speaking out about this. I’ve been following this disturbing pattern since the McFadden essay.
Ultimately, gnosticism/perennialism/occultism/Traditionalism spouts the same heresy as Modernism, which is the original lie of the garden: that Divine Revelation is not enough, but that fractals of truth exist elsewhere outside the Church. For the Modernist, these truths subsist in degrees in every religion from Protestantism to the pagans at Assisi. For the wannabe mystic, they can be found in private messages from the tarot, etc. It all boils down to a lack of belief that the deposit of faith contains the whole of Truth.
Given this connection, I’m not *as* surprised that this phenomenon has taken off among NO podcasters. But it’s a supreme irony that traditional Catholic circles, which supposedly reject this Ur-heresy in the form of religious indifferentism, are infested with the same heresy at the level of LITERAL magic (??!)
Maybe it’s a symptom of Trad, Inc.’s going/being soft on Modernism? The cognitive dissonance of the hermeneutic of continuity must be wearing on the psyche. If you spend years convincing yourself that V2’s statements on religious liberty are secretly perfectly orthodox, then you of course begin to doubt the Church’s claims about herself (as evidenced by the absurd sacrifice of Vatican I on the altar of Vatican II), not to mention your own powers of perception. The existence of “secret” knowledge that unites these antithetical doctrines follows—ie 2+2 DOES equal 5 somewhere beyond Revelation and reason…and the fruit of the forbidden tree is the key.