S01E123: Eat The Goddess, The Ecstasy Of Drinking Blood
Tonight’s Tarot:
https://tarotx.net/tarot-card-meanings/linestrider-tarot/two-of-wands.html
Freaks of Hazard:
In the morning to Captain Oblivious, who sent in some penta-paypal with $5.55!
Mary Kate Ultra sent an absolute killer package along with a note! Here’s some pics of the amazing gifts!!!
The koozies reminded me I had this patch in the collection!
A TALE OF TWO HELLFIRES
Disturbed Graves - A look into a strange building erected onto Montpelier Hill.
The King Of Hell - A little bit about Richard Parsons (!ding) and the founding of the Hellfire Club. This club ran from 1917-1921.
The Irish Hellfire Club: Hellfire & Harlots
In a biography about Oliver St. John, author Ulick O’Connor states, “The Bucks’ Castle (the Hell-Fire Club) can still be seen on a hilltop near Dublin. Here they galloped in the evening dressed in red and black (the devil’s livery) to show not so much their sympathy with Satanism as their contempt of superstition. Their leader was Jack Parsons, the Earl of Rosse.”
“Oddly enough, a much later Jack Parsons popped up during the 1940s as as the head of the Californian Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), implicating himself with along with L. Ron Hubbard (founder of Scientology) and good old Aleister Crowley. This is where it starts getting all weird again – according to Paul Rydeen, who refers to Michael Hoffman, Parsons claimed to be a descendant of a Hell-Fire Club founder!”
The Irish Hellfire Club: No Smoke Without Fire
“Somerville-Large tells us ‘popular supposition associates [The Hell-Fire Club] with the gaunt ruin on top of Montpelier Hill, and the odd black mass have taken place in Mr. Conolly’s airy shooting lodge. The club is supposed to have set fire to the place to give it a more hellish appearance, while the reputed burning of a lady in a barrel sounds like an outdoor occasion’. Andrew Behan, who unfortunately seems have been possesed by the dark forces of H.P. Lovecraft and the Necromonicon, reckons that it is possible that ;the Hell-Fire Club did indeed carry out black masses and orgies on Montpelier Hill’, but ‘merely used satanic regalia to spice up their bawdy drinking sessions.’ Behan’s essay can be found at several locations on the web, which doubtless will lead to the inclusion of various characters from Lovecraft’s Cthulu Mythos in the future lore of the Irish Hell-Fire Club.”
Archaeologists Explore An Ancient Tomb Beside The Hellfire Club
The Cairon - There’s rubble to prove it! But how high?
Cracked Axe - We got something! Digging in the dirt pays off. Off to antiquity!
Dublin Hellfire Club Stories & Paranormal Investigation | Haunted Ireland
Strange Links - It’s said to be cursed. It’s always those pesky storms crashing in.
Particularly Sinister - The Hellfire Club has not been kind to strangers. It’ll drive you absolutely mad!
https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/5044707/5033358
A written tale of the cat being exorcised by the priest.
The diaboliad, a poem. Dedicated to the worst man in His Majesty's dominions
A poem about one of the members, who sold his soul to relieve his debts.
“Yet another tale tells us that during a black mass, a footman spilled a drink on Whaley's coat, after slipping on the mass of drunken bodies on the floor. Whaley poured brandy upon the man, set him alight, and soon had the entire building ablaze. Most were too drunk to escape. Or so we're told...other versions say it was reproduce the sensations of hell. The building was burned again in 1849 to celebrate the visit of Queen Victoria to Dublin.”
“As if all of this wasn't enough, around the beginning of 1971, while plumbing work was being done in the house, a shallow grave was found beneath the floor, apparently containing the skeleton of a dwarf, and a brass figurine, depicting a horned and tailed devil thumbing its nose. Was this the dwarf that the Hell-Fires are supposed to have murdered?”
A Visit From The Devil - An example of one of the more notorious stories surrounding this space.
We depart Ireland and head to England to take a look at another club that was later given the moniker of the Hellfire Club. This club, known as the Brotherhood of St. Francis of Wycombe. Sex runs unbound with prostitution being one of the highest revenue generating activities.
Was Ben Franklin In A Sex Cult?
Dashwood’s Travels - What was Francis Dashwood into? Hear about some of his amazing travels as a young lad! He’s kinda like a young Crowley. Can you smell the orgies? It’s the Friars of St Francis of Wycombe, better yet known as the Hellfire Club.
Then he returned to London to help found the famous Society of Dilettanti, to promote classical studies, and the Divan Club, for Ottoman culture. Both clubs mixed their scholarly meetings with exuberant bouts of drinking, whoring, and wearing of fancy dress: The Dilettanti swanned about in red togas with an MC done up as Machiavelli, while members of the Divan Club wore sultanlike outfits and were attended by harems of pink-cheeked lovelies. Although Dashwood was by now a member of parliament, the era was marked by a bracing indifference to the private behavior of politicians. But his irreligious Hellfire Club—officially known as the Order of the Friars of St. Francis of Wycombe—would be his most subversive achievement, whose rites he preferred to conduct in secret. In 1750, Dashwood gathered his friends and concocted a fake religious sect, renovated the abandoned medieval abbey of Medmenham near his family estate, and began to use it as a private rumpus room for carnal misbehavior. In this isolated setting, beneath old stained-glass windows and new erotic frescos, a dozen randy “apostles” would gather in monks robes for twice-weekly bacchanals. Aristocratic women would travel from London to join the frolics dressed as nuns, and comely local “nymphs” were hired, allegedly to lie naked on his altar so the monks could lick holy wine from their navels—an exciting aperitif before the real festivities began. To crank up the eerie atmosphere, revelries were also held inside purpose-built caves dug on Dashwood’s estate, in torch-lit chambers that evoked the pagan catacombs of ancient Rome.”
The Hellfire Club - Orgies in the Thames Valley England's Puzzle - The Society of Dilettanti ended up founding the Royal Arts Academy.
DO WHAT YOU WILL! The Lives & Times of the Hellfire Club -Other notable members:
“John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, one of the most rakish men of the day. Sandwich’s pleasures were (apart from sandwiches which he named) gambling, flagellation and young ladies. He is said once to have preached a sermon to a congregation of cats.”
“John Stuart, the 3rd Earl of Bute had exploited the lucky situation of a card game with a young Hanoverian to become the future George III’s most dependable advisor, later Prime Minister. William Thackeray wrote that "He was hated with a rage of which there have been few examples in English history."
“Frederick, Prince of Wales, is not positively known to be one of the brotherhood of Sir Francis but given his known friendships (notably Bute) and licentious tastes, his attachment to them is plausible. He was the most English of the Hanoverians, holding no attachment to his German roots. He was generous and favoured ‘politics without party’, kingship without faction as in the teachings of Bolingbroke. He was crowned George III in 1761 in a sometimes farcical ceremony which did not bode well for things to come: war in the colonies, seclusion and eventual madness.”
Nun Of Your Business - Gonna need to be discrete you know! Can’t have anyone recognize you!
The tunnels run a quarter of a mile underground. Check out the spectrogram of them here: https://www.hellfirecaves.co.uk/the-caves
“We are not entirely sure of the reasoning behind his decision to dig a long winding tunnel a quarter of a mile into the hill with all sorts of chambers and divided passages leading off it and a huge room half way down. One can only presume it was an element of mischief and a fun project to undertake. The design is clearly symbolic and is thought to have something to do with the Eleusinian mysteries of ancient Greece. He was no doubt inspired by his travels on his Grand Tour when he would have visited other similar caverns and tunnels.”
Members would also have to pass a small underground body of water they deemed “The River Styx”.
Medmenham Abbey - What a vibe! We should get some stained glass in the green room!
The Hellfire Club, an 18th-Century Ritual Cult for the Famous and Powerful
“The gardens included a Temple of Venus and Parlour of Venus as well as statues of Pan and Priapus – perfect for a club dedicated to divine procreation.”
The Hellfire Club Tunnels And Caves, West Wycombe - Some more great photos of the property
Black Mass - There’s no conspiracy! It’s all for parody! Sacrificial wine does sound tasty tho.
“There is no doubt however, that the members took part in mock-religious ceremonies, usually at the initiation of new members, and the like. The main point of the gatherings, as John Wilkes put it, was that 'a set of worthy, jolly fellows, happy disciples of Venus and Bacchus, got together to celebrate women in wine and to give more zest to the festive meeting, they plucked every luxurious idea from the ancients and enriched their own modern pleasures with the tradition of ancient luxury.”
Thick White Liqueur - A sampling if you will of some porno from the day.
Club Members Only - There’s no concrete proof who was involved, but hey…it’s all about who you knew. Adding caves helped. Cave orgies! Woo-hoo!
EUGENICS -- Benjamin Franklin and the Hellfire Club
All sorts of great great name drops! It’s all about who you know! For science! Ride Jackie Ride.
https://historyhustle.com/the-hellfire-club/
https://englandspuzzle.com/the-hellfire-club-orgies-in-the-thames-valley/
http://www.blather.net/theblather/category/the-hellfire-club/
Riots, Revelries, and Rumor: Libertinism and Masculine Association in Enlightenment London
The Hell-Fire clubs : sex, Satanism and secret societies
THE HELLFIRE CLUB, Sir Francis Dashwood 2nd Bt. Documentary.
Francis Dashwood Of The English Hellfire Club
THREE HIGH PIMPS
CIRQUE DU SOLIS
Magdalena Solís: The High Priestess of Blood
Magdalena Solis never stood much chance at leading a normal life. Born in the 1930s to an impoverished dysfunctional family in Monterrey, Mexico, Solis became an underage prostitute to make ends meet. Her brother Eleazar was her pimp. This was her situation until 1963. Though she didn't know it yet, her life was about to take a wild and violent turn.
Meanwhile, brothers Santos and Cayetano Hernandez, a pair of petty thugs, had struck up a scam in the nearby small town of Yerba Buena. It was a marginalized community of 50 poor, illiterate inhabitants. The Hernandez brothers had taken advantage of the local hicks' naiveté and established a cult. The bumpkins worshipped them as High Priests of the powerful and exiled Inca gods, providing them with tribute in exchange for treasure supposedly hidden in the nearby mountain caves. For a while the Hernandez cult prospered. Santos and Cayetano kept the Yerba Buena people as sex slaves and held narcotic-fueled orgies in the caves. Eventually though, the followers began to tire of the promised treasure failing to materialize and began to voice dissent. The High Priests had to do something.
They went to Monterrey to find prostitutes to join in on the scam and keep the ruse going. It was here that Magdalena and Eleazar met the Hernandez brothers. They joined them and returned with them to the cult. At the next cave ritual Magdalena appeared to the stunned cultists through a smoke screen. She presented as the reincarnation of the Aztec goddess Coatlicue. Eleazar became the third High Priest of the cult. The only problem was that the trick worked too well! Magdalena took her role too seriously and began to believe her own deceptions, developing a severe theological psychosis. She soon took over control of the cult and took it in an even darker direction, involving drinking blood and sadomasochism. She became known as the High Priestess of Blood.
Magdalena ruled the cult with an iron fist. When two cultists tried to leave the group, she summoned everyone else before her and the High Priests. She sentenced the two would-be deserters to death as punishment for their betrayal. The cultists, too afraid to defy Magdalena, obliged her by lynching the condemned pair. After that, any dissenting cultist became a human sacrifice in Magdalena's honour. Her blood rituals involved the cultists beating, burning, cutting and maiming the sacrificed until they bled to death. Their blood was then collected in a chalice, mixed with chicken blood (animals were also sacrificed) and drank by all present to give them supernatural powers, eternal youth and immortality. All the while they smoked vast amounts of dope and consumed peyote. This continued for some time. Four more dissenters were butchered in this manner. By the end the bloodthirsty cult had perfected the art of dissecting the still-beating hearts of their victims before they bled out. One power-hungry cultist, Jesus Rubio, tried to join the inner sanctum of the High Priests, but was rebuffed.
Something happened in May 1963 that would turn out to be the beginning of the end for the cult. Attracted by the noises and lights coming from the caves, a local boy, 14-year-old Sebastian Guerrero stumbled upon the cult in the midst of a blood ritual. He fled to the closest police station and informed the cops that he had seen a group of murderous vampires preying on ecstasy and gluttonously drinking human blood. His claims were dismissed as that of a wild imagination. The next day officer Luis Martinez humoured Sebastian by returning to the cave with him before he was supposed to drive the boy home. The boy and the cop were never seen alive again.
Now police took the claims seriously. In conjunction with the army they descended on Yerba Buena on May 31. Magdalena and Eleazar were arrested at a farm in possession of a large amount of dope. Santos resisted arrest. The cops shot him for his efforts. Cayetano was assassinated by Jesus as retaliation for his earlier refusal to promote him to High Priest. The rest of the cult barricaded themselves in the caves and engaged in a shootout with the cops. Most of the cultists were shot in the fire fight. Those who were taken alive were eventually sentenced to 30 years for the murders. The Solis siblings were sentenced to 50 years each. Even now the cultists refused to testify against their leaders. The dismembered bodies of the 8 known victims were recovered, some missing their hearts (it is speculated that the actual number of victims is higher).
WET CULT FALL
Randall Carlson History of Halloween
Universal Celebration of the Dead at the end of October
The Pleiades, the Great Flood, the Universal Calendar
Death toll climbs in Seoul crowd crush Halloween incident
OPENER
Bill Hicks ★ Halloween Special ★ Greetings from Hell's Basement
INTERMISSION
Eddie Aich - After Party
Polkavant - Halloween Witchymix
Surf City - Headin' Inside (Live @ KEXP)
Simon Mathewson - Jah
CLOSER
Ramones - Pet Sematary (Instrumental Cover)
TAKE THESE, IT’S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE!
