Esoterica

When Satan Club went to school: What’s behind the group that created controversy in Chesapeake

The Satanic Temple was ready to pick a fight — lots of fights, actually, and it got them — in Illinois, in Pennsylvania and in Chesapeake.

. . .

Eventually, after the ACLU of Virginia took on the issue, the club held its first meeting in February and has continued to gather monthly since.

. . .

“Because of their actions, people who normally talk about the importance of religious freedom, some of them have said, ‘Actually, I don’t like religious freedom, if religious freedom means satanists can do this kind of stuff.’”

“This small group has kind of been able to punch above its weight in forcing these kinds of questions on people.”

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I Was a Child Bride: Dr. Tamara MC on the Language of Manipulation (Part 1)

When she was only 12-years-old, Dr. Tamara MC had a secret wedding ceremony in the middle of the night. Shrouded in pitch black and with no one present but her new husband, a much older man who could supposedly guide her to the kingdoms of knowledge and heaven, this night further cemented Tamara’s place in a highly abusive religious cult. Above all else, men wielding black leather whips forced females to surrender their “nafs”—the Arabic word for “self.” As she put it in an article for Mother Well Mag, the girls in that cult “didn’t know where [their] bodies stopped and the perpetrators' bodies began.”

Now, Tamara has earned a Ph. D. in Applied Linguistics, specifically studying how language can be used to manipulate vulnerable populations. She advocates against gender-based violence and has written prolifically about the nightmarish experiences that punctuated her youth, d0ing as much as she humanly can to prevent this from happening as frequently in the future.

Episode available since May 29, 2023

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The Lumerian Sisters: Jennings Brown on Liana Shanti

Another day, another wellness guru preaching enlightenment on social media. Total snooze, right?! Unless said guru begins telling her followers to cut ties with their “family cults'' in order to save their children from a ruling class of evil reptilian creatures, the likes of which are responsible for creating the COVID-19 “scandemic” as a Luciferian tool to harvest innocent souls…that might spice things up a bit. Or a shit ton.

Such has been the case with Liana Shanti, a nymph-like online persona who’s amassed thousands of predominantly female followers on Instagram, a platform she uses to share beliefs such as the one where the US government is going to put unvaccinated children into concentration camps, or that Florida is the only safe space and thus all her followers should move there.

Suffice to say, Shanti’s story is…truly a wild one. And luckily for us, we get to hear about it from none other than Jennings Brown, an investigative journalist and podcast/documentary producer who previously joined us to discuss The Teal Swan. This time, he’s on ALBC to explain the woman hiding behind Shanti’s online persona, her recent legal woes, and just how damaging her teachings have been to numerous families that now stand divided.

Episode available since May 22, 2023

Esoterica

Lori Vallow: US doomsday cult mum guilty of murdering children, rival

[I]n 2017, family and friends said Vallow's demeanour changed as she began reading the books by Chad Daybell, a religious author whose fictional books focused on the apocalypse were loosely drawn from the beliefs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The two eventually met sometime in 2018 and began recording a religious podcast together.

At the time, both were married. But together, Vallow and Mr Daybell's views veered towards the extreme, the prosecutor said.

The two deemed people either "light" or "dark" spirits and called those who had been taken over by evil spirits "zombies".

The only way to free someone's soul from the darkness, the couple said, was to kill them.

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Murder, Faith & End Times: Leah Sottile on Lori Vallow & Chad Daybell

f you still manage to read the news, good job. You’ve then no doubt heard that “Doomsday Mom” Lori Vallow was just convicted of murdering her 16-year-old daughter Tylee and seven-year-old son J.J. This judgment will be an end to this harrowing yet enthralling story, which turned 49-year-old mom and Mormon, Lori Vallow into an international media fixture, seemingly entangled in a web of infanticide, zombies, escapes to Hawaii, and a trail of mysterious deaths that remain suspicious as hell.

On today’s episode, we’re joined by freelance journalist and author Leah Sottile, whose book When the Moon Turns to Blood: Lori Vallow, Chad Daybell, and a Story of Murder, Faith, and End Times, illuminates the story of the former beauty queen and her grave-digger turned doomsday novelist slash extremist douchebag husband, Chad. Take a listen to learn more as Sottile breaks the case down, explaining how Vallow’s tale is just symptomatic of something larger.

Episode available since May 15, 2023

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‘Uncultured:’ Daniella Mestyanek Young on COG and the US Military (Pt. 2)

Today’s episode is Sponsored by BetterHelp. We’re back for part 2 of our interview with Daniella Mestyanek Young, the badass author of Uncultured: a Memoir. In her book, Young gets into the nitty gritty of growing up in the Children of God cult, now known as “The Family International,” with their horrifying pedophilic practice called “Law of Love.” In part 2, we dive deeper into Young’s time as a Captain in the US Army—a role that threw Young back into the trenches of misogynist and coercive abuse resembling the neglect she survived in her childhood.

How did military personnel respond to Young’s whistleblowing? What did she endure during her hazing as a new soldier? And why did another captain tell her she’d “probably get raped” on a certain military deployment?

Episode available since May 08, 2023

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‘Uncultured:’ Daniella Mestyanek Young on COG and the US Military (Pt. 1)

If hell is real, there is perhaps no circle of it as harrowing nor vile as the experience of growing up in the Children of God cult. Still active under the name “The Family International,” the group is known for being a real-life manifestation of the shittiest of shitty macabre practices, such as child sexual abuse involving their “Law of Love,”—a mandate for females of all ages to show Jesus their love by letting men straight up rape them.

One would hope that growing up in COG would be the last coercive, abusive, and negligent experience for today’s guest, Daniella Mestyanek Young, who is an American author, keynote speaker, and previous Captain in the US Army. One would also hope for ponies and rainbows and a bigger tax return this year but HEY, life’s no cake walk. On today’s episode, Young discusses her book Uncultured: a Memoir, wherein she details her cult-riddled childhood and how, shockingly, the US Army reflected comparable practices.

But how? Take a listen to part 1 of our interview with Daniella, with part 2 coming out next week.

Episode available since May 01, 2023