A British tarot reader is bullying YouTube into censoring a four-year-old interview on a popular esoteric blog because he is frightened of being recognised. Frater Ruptus Catenae said he was nagged into doing the interview because he wanted to help Frater TP, aka “Toby”, out. Watchers of the Dawn has seen emails from Toby asking to be interviewed at the time, when he was a psychology student.  The interview attracted a whopping 465 views over four years, which shows the level of interest.  Then, a couple of months ago, Ruptus Catenae got a snotogram from “Toby”, who was getting a little paranoid. When he did the video, he used the names Frater TP and Toby because he thought that no one could link the two.  “I went onto your podcast under the assumption of anonymity (hence the pseudonym). But this is no longer being kept and my pseudonym (Frater 'TP) is now linkable to my real name even though it was not traceable at the time.”  Toby said it was putting his personal ...

Occult writer Stephen Skinner is demanding praise and acclaim for his involvement in the publication of a book which he had nothing to do with.  Andreas Erneus' edition of Book 1 of the Summa Sacre Magic e has just been released to fairly widespread acclaim from those who like their magical books to have been kicking around in Latin for 700 years. The only issue is that Skinner has already published all five volumes of the book and is inconsiderably vexed.  Erneus has failed to mention his mighty tomes . “Although I know that in producing this book Andreas read my translation of the same work, published by me in January 2025, he does not mention it in his bibliography, nor in his text at all. This is rather dishonest from a scholarly point of view.”  Skinner moaned to his Facebook chums. He pointed out that his edition has now translated all 5 volumes of this book, not just volume 1, which is certainly of interest to his readers. Erneus seems particularly puzzled by Sk...

Occult influencer Maevius Lynn has ditched her plans to become a priestess, saying local OTO politics turned spiritual work into a nasty little power game. The occultist and YouTuber said the Order’s old rumour mill about women being pushed into the priestess role is not what hit her. “I have been blocked. My progress, I have been bullied. I have been shamed. I have not had the opportunity to be a priestess at all in my tradition, at all.” Lynn claims she was frozen out of opportunities and shut out of the admin who keeps people moving, with deadlines and paperwork somehow never reaching her. She says the sniping escalated into a smear campaign led by someone in a position of authority. Lynn said: “It got to a point where it wasn't just like little jabs at me in person and little henpecking going on. It got to the point where someone was making up lies about me to try to ruin my reputation behind my back. And what a stupid way to spend your time, really. What a childish, path...

Patrick Noone sells himself as a Celtic healer and has claimed he sees fairies on his farmland, but he ended up in Ennis Circuit Court for far darker reasons.   The 58-year-old farmer pleaded guilty when arraigned on two counts of sexual assault contrary to section 2 of the Criminal Law (Rape) Amendment Act on 15 November 2023.   The court heard Aer Lingus cabin crew alerted the captain after a teenage girl sitting beside him reported inappropriate touching, and the Boston-bound flight was turned back to Shannon Airport.   Noone, of Curragh, Kilconnell, Ballinasloe, Co Galway, admitted sexually assaulting the then 16-year-old by rubbing and grabbing her buttocks on board the E1135 flight within the jurisdiction of the Irish state.   He also pleaded guilty to kissing her arm and rubbing her thigh during the same flight. Counsel for Noone, barrister Antoinette Simon, told the court her client is a self-employed farmer with no previous convictions a...

Italian peddlers of pricey occult courses and conferences, LaSocietà dello Zolfo (LSDZ) , are pushing an esoteric event titled L’Alba d’Occidente (“The Dawn of the West”) that gives a mystical makeover to one of Italy’s most toxic historical figures. The target of the incense-and-symbolism treatment is Gabriele d’Annunzio , a protofascist icon whose ideas and methods fed directly into Mussolini’s bloodstained regime. La Società dello Zolfo has spent years building international credibility by surrounding itself with well-known Italian and English-speaking occult figures. Names such as David Rankine, Stephen Skinner, and Christopher Warnock regularly appear in connection with the society’s activities, events, courses and social orbit. Their presence at other LSDZ gatherings gives the group street credibility and an aura of legitimacy. That international sheen now buffers an event that strips d’Annunzio of his political reality and repackages him as a poet, a Mason, a Martinist, and ...

A north London woman who posed as a faith healer to con victims out of £1m (€1.17m) to fund her extravagant lifestyle has been jailed for 10 years. Juliette D’Souza posed as a shaman for more than 12 years, tricking 11 people, telling them the money would be used as a spiritual offering to cure health problems, including terminal illnesses and infertility. The 59-year-old from Hampstead insisted the cash was a “sacrifice” and that it would be hung in the Amazon rainforest. She claimed two other shamans would perform rituals around the money before it was sent back, and their problems would be resolved. Instead, the cash went on designer handbags, luxury holidays and antique furniture. Many of D’Souza’s victims were financially ruined, with one man left “as poor as a church mouse”, the court heard. D’Souza also “remorselessly extracted” more than £200,000 (€234,000) from an elderly woman over several years. On Thursday, she was convicted at Blackfriars Crown Court of 23 counts of obtain...

Christian Poeschke A blistering report from the Vienna International Sceptics’ Association has shone a harsh light on a booming esoteric racket where energy coaches claim they can rinse away the spiritual residue of previous foreign partners from a woman’s DNA for 150 euros. Dubbed Telegonie-Löschung, the method is a soft marketing label for a long-dead race theory hauled out of the nineteenth century and polished until it looks like wellness. The report wastes no time linking this fantasy to its ideological ancestors. It states that telegony is connected to racial hygiene and to the volkisch ethnonationalist worldviews of the nineteenth century. The same document then explains that the idea later entered directly into National Socialist ideology. So this is not just fringe and heritage pseudoscience with a history of doing real damage. Berlin’s Telegonie-Löschung Basencoach Christian Poeschke [ pictured ], who flogs the whole thing as a spiritual detox for modern women. His pi...

 Maxine Saunders defends Christian Day again The witch world has turned in on itself again, and Maxine Sanders, Queen of the Witches, has had quite enough of it.  Speaking about the endless squabbling that has gripped parts of the craft community, Saunders tore into those she sees as petty, power-hungry busybodies. “Say to those people who are distracted from the work by lots of infighting and bickering. Oh, have I got opinions on that now,” she said, clearly exasperated.  “There’s so much viciousness in the craft, judgmental nastiness. They forget themselves. Somebody picks on someone who’s been a bad boy, and then others pile in instead of just asking, ‘Are you bad?’” Sanders went on to describe the craft’s current state as “vicious,” filled with self-appointed judges who “have no power in their own circle and nothing better to do.” She insisted that the backbiting should stop, calling it “unnecessary” and “nobody’s business.” The Queen of the Witches then turned he...

Evangelicals forgot how badly witch hate worked for them in Salam last time The Pagan Solidarity Alliance has torched Salem law enforcement for sitting on their hands. At the same time, a pack of Bible-thumping zealots went on a three-day crusade against witches, spiritual shops and ancestral altars. Things kicked off on 26 October when the evangelical mob stormed the Psychic Fair and Witches’ Market, screaming abuse like it was a Sunday hobby. Not content with that, they marched into a local witchcraft shop the next day, vandalised private property and smeared some oily muck on an ancestral altar. Then on 29 October, the fanatics expanded their little hate tour, targeting more businesses and sacred sites. They blocked doors, lobbed fluids about, and shouted every slur in their hymn book at shop owners and passersby. Local police, apparently on a three-day tea break, handed out nothing but warnings. Not a single arrest. Not a single charge. The Pagan Solidarity Alliance rightly poi...

A self-styled “Archon Basilius” of the Canadian-based Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Martin Thibeault , has been showing off to his Facebook followers with what look like front-cover triumphs on the world’s most prominent business magazines. There’s just one tiny hiccup: the "covers" are adverts. Thibeault proudly posted an image of himself on the cover of Forbes Australia , calling it “by far my greatest accomplishment.” Which is quite a statement from a man who “crossed the abyss” in his magical order. A quick look at his personal website reveals 14 magazine covers allegedly featuring him as one of the “top disruptors of the blockchain industry.” It all looks glossy, billionaire, and “please believe I’m a super entrepreneur.” So, we dug further. The articles attached to those flashy covers all tell the same heartwarming tale: Thibeault used to be a shy carpenter (yes, like Jesus), failed twice in brick-and-mortar businesses, but somehow still became the masterm...

Bartolo Longo takes a more necromantic role The Vatican has officially declared Bartolo Longo a saint, recognising a man who once immersed himself in spiritualism and occult rituals before becoming a pillar of Catholic charity and devotion.  Pope Leo XIV canonised Longo during a ceremony in St Peter’s Square witnessed by 70,000 onlookers, many drawn by the astonishing trajectory of the former law student turned religious icon. Longo was born in 1841 in the town of Latiano in southern Italy. Raised in a Catholic household, his life took a sharp turn when he enrolled at the University of Naples in the 1860s. At that time, spiritualism and anti-clericalism were hot across Europe, and Longo found himself swept up in the intellectual and occult trends of the time.  He participated in séances, spiritist circles, and ritualistic practices that the Church later labelled. He even claimed to have been "ordained" in one of these groups, though it is unlikely that it was a formal Satan...

Russian despot Vladimir Putin has dumped his most loyal witch in jail, even after years of magical devotion and magical support for his regime. Alyona Polyn, 45, known in less enchanted circles as Elena Sulikova, has been sentenced to two years behind bars for “extremism and insulting the feelings of believers.” This, after she organised covens of self-proclaimed witches to cast spells boosting Putin and sending his enemies “back to the abyss.” We are not sure that the intention is correct. Enemies of Putin are unlikely to have come from any abyss. Ukrainian intelligence didn’t see it as harmless hocus pocus. Kyiv’s SBU security service said she was “not only involved in magic and esotericism, but also recruiting new members… outside Russia on the instructions of the FSB.” Her witches were allegedly told to spy on Ukrainian troop movements and feed the data straight to Moscow’s spies. It's unclear when everything went pear-shaped for Polyn. For some reason, the Russian security f...

  Australian pagan singer Wendy Rule [ pictured ] has publicly dumped New Orleans-based self-styled “warlock” Christian Day's Hexfest after he made a repellent crack about starving Palestinians. Despite watching Day hurl online abuse across the Pagan community like a drunken bard, Rule had initially agreed to perform at his Hexfest event next August. Her usual stance is to remain neutral, moving between Pagan factions without kicking off. But that plan went up in smoke this week whena revolting Watchers of the Dawn quote from Day about the plight of those in Gaza surfaced on the WitchesWorkshop page. For those who missed it:   “They can always dine on one another. I'm surprised they haven't eaten the hostages yet.” Given the chance to deny or explain the remark, Day instead clammed up. Rule then sent him a polite email withdrawing from the festival. No contract had been signed and no cash had changed hands. She didn’t explain her decision, having seen Day’s flair for ...

South African doomsday enthusiast and part-time preacher Joshua Mhlakela has once again shuffled the celestial calendar, claiming the “Rapture” is now pencilled in for early October. This comes after his original divine RSVP for 23 or 24 September, which, rather embarrassingly, didn’t go off. Speaking on the Centtwinz TV YouTube channel, Mhlakela bravely addressed the minor inconvenience of the world not ending, confidently announcing that it was all a mix-up between calendars. Jesus is apparently a Julian calendar guy, not a fan of the more widely used Gregorian one. “The 7th and 8th of October is the real Feast of the Trumpets. I’m a billion per cent sure,” he declared, with the same level of certainty one might reserve for misplacing their car keys. Mhlakela explained that after a spiritual debrief with the Almighty, he was told: “Days from now, I will Rapture my church.” Based on his hotline to heaven, the new deadline for Earth’s expiration is 7 or 8 October. No need to cancel ...

Patricia Crowther, one of the last surviving High Priestesses initiated by Gerald Gardner, died yesterday. She was 97. Born Patricia Dawson, she arrived in a household already brushing shoulders with the unseen. Locals claimed she had clairvoyant sensitivities from a young age. A neighbourhood fortune-teller, known as Madame Melba, supposedly encouraged her mother to develop the girl's talents. She took the name Thelema within Craft circles, but her birth name remained tethered to her earliest hauntings. Before she could scry her future, she gave herself to the stage. Singing, dancing and acting all became tools that would one day serve her magical workings. Somewhere in those theatrical years, she crossed paths with a hypnotist who led her through what she later described as past-life regressions. It was a curtain-raiser to the deeper spiritual business to come. In the mid-1950s, she met Arnold Crowther, a stage magician and ventriloquist. Their meeting was chalked up by many as f...

After about 100 years of realising that they should shut the fuck up, Christian Nationalists are crawling out of their holes to demand that anyone who disagrees with their weird take on Christianity (including Jesus) should be burnt at the stake. In a new book,  The Pagan Threat Confronting America's Godless,  Pastor Lucas Miles reckons pagans are coming for your pew and your passport. He says only his Bronze Age certainty can stop them. Miles already penned Woke Jesus: The False Messiah Destroying Christianity . That book says the whole loving and tolerant Christ idea is woke nonsense and claims Jesus would cheer on right-wing Christian Nationalist morals that felt old in the 19th century. Now his latest tome, which will be in the bookshops soon, is more explicit about how much he hates occultism and paganism.  The book is introduced by the caring, sharing man of God, who is apparently now beloved of all, the "unalived" Charlie Kirk. Kirk called Miles a fearless warrior ...

Anyone who had the unlikely event of Marco Visconti and Ike Baker appearing together publically to bury the hatchet on their bingo card can collect.  The pair have been banging each other's heads together in text posts for ages sat down for "face-to-fate" chat in Brian Gathy's  Liminal Currents   vblog to see if they could sort matters out, and much to Watcher of the Dawn 's surprise they did. The conversation focused on a recent outpouring of the pair which followed the Charlie Kirk assassination, both of their reactions , and those of their followers.  Most of it appears to be a break down in communication after Baker posted“Alea iacta est” [the die is cast]. When asked if he was really calling for civil war, he snapped back: “it had already started.” Anti-fascist Italian writer Visconti sparked a storm after accusing broadcaster Baker of echoing far-right rhetoric when he used the phrase Alea iacta est . He argued that in Rome, where he grew up, fascists...

Founders of a Scottish conservation charity tried to keep their occult interests quiet while chasing public cash to restore Aleister Crowley's old haunt. The Boleskine House Foundation (BHF), bagged £250,000 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and has nearly completed rebuilding Boleskine House near Loch Ness (and it is looking good even if it has got a larger occult theme than the original).  Once home to Aleister Crowley for 14 years the site has long been a magnet for occultists including Led Zep guitarist Jimmy Page. But leaked chats suggest the charity’s original inner circle had a different agenda. Former members say they were asked to conceal any ties to Thelema, Crowley’s spiritual philosophy, when the project launched in 2019. In messages seen by The Sunday Times , Keith Readdy, an American academic who bought the fire-damaged property with his wife Kyra, advised volunteers to present themselves as history buffs. “We can say we’re honouring the Fraser family,” he...

According to the Russian press, the one person who really knows how the Ukraine War ends is a Russian psychic with more eyeliner than credibility. Adelina Panina, speaking to Kremlin mouthpiece MK, announced with great certainty that Russia is “confidently moving towards inevitable victory” and that the triumph will be signed “on paper” before year’s end. Which is a bold call, given she also once prophesied the war would wrap up neatly in May, and we all saw how that went. Her latest premonition is, of course, about as authentic as her eyelashes, and one has to wonder whether the spirits whispering in her ear are vodka fumes or the collective mumblings of Moscow’s propaganda department. Panina appears to have learnt from her previous mistakes and gave her oracles a few months to play out.   Still, she assures her audience that a peace deal will soon be recorded for posterity. Families who’ve buried loved ones and endured years of bombing will no doubt be thrilled to hear ...

A bunch of chancers flogging curses on Etsy are now claiming they magically assassinated Charlie Kirk after right-wing conspiracy nuts hijacked a Jezebel piss-take. Before Kirk was shot, Jezebel ran a satirical piece mocking Etsy witches who charge silly money for spells. The article joked about hexing Kirk, but made it clear they only wanted to curse his socks and sabotage his podcast mic. “I just want him to wake up every morning with an inexplicable zit. I want his thumb to grow so big that he can't tweet,” the story said. After the killing, Christian nationalists and the usual frothing right-wing rags latched onto the piece and took it dead seriously. They started bleating that witches had blood on their hands and started gathering firewood for a bonfire. While the entire Wiccan movement should probably be keeping quiet right now for their own safety, the same Etsy witches Jezebel was mocking are crawling out to take credit, hoping to drum up business despite not being involve...