No More James Arthur Ray

I am pretty late to the party on this story, which actually took place January of last year. Self-help author James Arthur Ray passed away on that date at the age of 67. Ray was famous for being convicted of negligent homicide for three deaths that occurred at a "sweat lodge" retreat that he ran - and charged students big money to attend. I covered that story here on Augoeides back when Ray was found guilty in 2011. Ray would go on to serve two years in prison and resume his self-help industry career.

The sweat lodge deaths occurred after dozens of people traveled to a scenic retreat just outside Sedona in October 2009 for Ray’s five-day “Spiritual Warrior” event. The sweat lodge was the culminating event, touted as “hellacious hot” and a chance for participants to have powerful breakthroughs. Two people — 38-year-old Kirby Brown of Westtown, New York, and 40-year-old James Shore of Milwaukee — died inside the sweat lodge and 18 others were injured. Another person, Liz Neuman, 49, of Prior Lake, Minnesota, fell into a coma and died after more than a week in the hospital.

At trial, prosecutors said Ray ratcheted up the heat to dangerous levels, ignored pleas for help, and watched as overcome participants were dragged out of the sweat lodge. A jury acquitted Ray of more serious manslaughter charges and convicted him of three counts of negligent homicide, for which he served concurrent sentences for the deaths. He was released in July 2013. Ray had acknowledged that he was responsible for the deaths but offered no excuses for his lack of action as the chaos unfolded at the sweat lodge.

After leaving prison, Ray remained active in the self-help industry. He frequently posted videos on social media of himself and his wife, Bersabeh Ray, offering advice. The couple also hosted a podcast, Modern Alchemy, and maintained a website where Ray offered one-on-one video sessions up to 90 minutes for $2,500.

I also recall seeing footage of Ray in a documentary on the self-help industry, pitching his trainings to audiences for the low, low price of $45,000.00 - with financing in the back. Knowing Ray's history, it amazed me that he was back to grifting so hard. His basic pitch was that he had lost everything and made it back again, so he was the guy anyone looking to succeed should study with. When he "lost everything" because he killed three people.

Waffle House Teleportation

According to online memes, Denny's is Waffle House for people who don't know how to fight. Living in Minnesota where Waffle House does not exist, I have no personal experience suggesting this is necessarily true. However, I am assured by friends who grew up in the south that the statement is one hundred percent accurate. Apparently fights at Waffle House are common to the point where jokes about them have become cliche. And according to a top Fema official, fights aren't all that happen at Waffle House. Teleportation does too.

Gregg Phillips, who in December was appointed to lead Fema’s office of response and recovery, has spoken on “multiple podcasts” about being teleported against his will, CNN reported on Friday.

On a January 2025 podcast appearance, Phillips claimed that his car was “lifted up” while he was driving and transported 40 miles (65km) away into a ditch near a church. And in another instance on the same episode, Phillips said he was teleported 50 miles away to a Waffle House in Rome, Georgia, CNN detailed in a deep dive into Phillips’ past public statements.

“I was with my boys one time, and I was telling them I was gonna go to Waffle House and get Waffle House. And I ended up at a Waffle House – this was in Georgia, and I end up at a Waffle House like 50 miles away from where I was,” Phillips said on the podcast Onward, co-hosted by rightwing activist Catherine Engelbrecht.

Phillips added: “And they said, ‘where are you?’ and I said, ‘a Waffle House.’ And: ‘a Waffle House where?’ And I said: ‘Waffle House in Rome, Georgia.’ And they said: “‘That’s not possible, you just left here a moment ago.’ But it was possible. It was real.”

But Phillips did warn about the dangers of teleportation. “Teleporting is no fun,” he said “You know it’s happening, but you can’t do anything about it, and so you just go, you just go with the ride. And wow, what just an incredible adventure it all was.”

One of the rules I practice magick by is that if something can happen, it can be done with a spell. In particular, if a person can randomly be teleported to a Waffle House, it stands to reason that a "Teleport-me-to-Waffle-House" spell must be possible. I totally want to learn it. It's not as useful as it could be if I lived someplace other than the Upper Midwest, but I do visit places with Waffle Houses when I travel. The spell could save me half of the trip even if I need to get back home by mundane means.

General car teleportation is more useful, since driving anywhere involves a car or truck by definition. But if the landing is so imprecise that my vehicle could end up in a ditch, the effort would be wasted because there's no point in doing forty miles of a road trip in an instant if your transportation is disabled moments later. Maybe with a formal spell the control would be better, but that likely will require significant experimentation to get right.

Let me tell you, I don't believe in magical secrecy. So if I ever figure these spells out and get them to the point where I can teach them to others, all my readers will be the first to learn. If not, maybe Phillips is just out of his mind. And I say that as a guy who casts spells.

All Hail the Prophet!

The prophet in question, of course, being me. Last week I posted my prophetic prediction that the current war in Iran would not bring on The Rapture or the return of Jesus. Apparently some of the "Jesus dorks" mentioned in the meme accompanying that article predicted that the Rapture would happen on March 22nd or March 23rd of this year. Today is March 24th, which means I'm right again. Still a true prophet, folks!

As this is the Thelemic Holy Season, our lodge is doing the Office of the Readings at this time. Our version of the Office of the Readings include not just the Holy Books of Thelema and the writings of Aleister Crowley, but also additional texts from some of the saints named in the Gnostic Mass. Regarding prophecy, one of our readings is from Saint Hippolytus, an important early Christian thinker. The reading from Christ and Antichrist, includes the following:

For as the blessed prophets were made, so to speak, eyes for us, they foresaw through faith the mysteries of the word, and became ministers of these things also to succeeding generations, not only reporting the past, but also announcing I the present and the future, so that the prophet might not appear to be one only for the time being, but might also predict the future for all generations, and so be reckoned a (true) prophet. For these fathers were furnished with the Spirit, and largely honoured by the Word Himself; and just as it is with instruments of music. so had they the Word always, like the plectrum, in union with them, and when moved by Him the prophets announced what God willed.

For they spoke not of their own power (let there be no mistake as to that ), neither did they declare what pleased themselves. But First of all they were endowed with wisdom by the Word, and then again were rightly instructed in the future by means of visions. And then, when thus themselves fully convinced, they spoke those things which were revealed by God to them alone, and concealed from all others. For with what reason should the prophet be called a prophet, unless he in spirit foresaw the future? For if the prophet spoke of any chance event, he would not be a prophet then in speaking of things which were under the eye of aIl.

In other words, every "End Times" prophet in all of history was and is a false prophet. They all predicted that the world would end on a specific date, and the world is still here. I, on the other hand, have made fun of those folks every time and predicted that they would be wrong every time. They were wrong, which makes me a true prophet - at least according to Hippolytus!

Obviously I have no desire to be regarded as a Christian prophet since I'm a Thelemite, but anybody taken in by one of these predictions should take a long hard look at all the times I've called out End Times predictions on this blog. They're always wrong, every single time. I genuinely feel for folks taken in by scammers like Harold Camping years ago. Some of them gave up their entire lives to become full-time evangelists because they believed he was a real prophet and the world was ending - and then nothing happened.

My next prophetic prediction is the same one I made in the previous post - no Rapture or Apocalypse or End Times will take place because of the ongoing stupid war in Iran. When the war ends without any such event, you can bet I'll go ahead and make fun of the "Jesus dorks" one more time!

Debunking Patterson-Gimlin

A new documentary by Marq Evans looking into the famous Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film has finally uncovered real evidence that the film was faked. For years, researchers have speculated that the film was probably a hoax just based on probability. The argument goes something like this: if Bigfoot is a real animal running around in the California woods, somebody would have eventually gotten some footage better than Patterson-Gimlin, but no one ever has.

Now that's not exactly evidence, but it speaks more to a clever fake than a random wilderness encounter. Gimlin was interviewed years ago and confirmed that Patterson had basically led him to the site and told him to start filming as soon as they saw the creature, so it could have been set up without his knowledge. He added that for years he had been convinced the creature was real, but admitted in his old age that he was no longer entirely sure.

Bigfoot believers point out that the Patterson-Gimlin stands up to close analysis. You can magnify it and see what look like muscles moving under the skin. The proportions are all wrong for a human in a suit, with the ratio of arm length to height falling between that of the largest humans and apes. Special effects experts reviewed it when it first came out and concluded that it would have been incredibly expensive to fake if not impossible. The stabilized version of it that was created with digital technology still looks amazing and totally believable.

In the early 2000's a Discovery Channel program tried to make their own fake Bigfoot film using the current special effects of the time. It looked terrible. The Bigfoot was too skinny and the arms were too short. Even though the fur and so forth was well done, the final version still looked way faker than the Patterson-Gimlin. They had found a big person to put in the suit, but clearly said person was not big enough. The shorter arms also fell firmly into guy-in-a-gorilla-suit territory. Believers seized on the failure of this recreation as evidence that the original film was real.

No Rapture for You

Since the United States attacked Iran at the end of February, I have been seeing statements like the ones in this article floating around the Internet about how Evangelical Christians believe that the war is part of a divine plan that involves the End Times, the Rapture, and the return of Jesus. Citing references to the Book of Revelation regarding Persia and the lands of "Gog and Magog," they assert that the attack is a key event that will lead up to the "Battle of Armageddon" and bring back their savior.

This is not a new story. Back in 2003 when the United States attacked Iraq many similar sentiments showed up online. The fall of Babylon - modern day Baghdad, Iraq's capitol - is referenced in the Book of Revelation, and Christians found it reasonable to think that the text might refer to the country's military defeat. Iraq was defeated on the battlefield, but we all know that no magical Rapture followed. Clearly the war was just a war.

Understanding why this is should not be that complicated, but in the minds of Rapture believers it nonetheless is. Their entire theological model is based on the works of John Nelson Darby's system of dispensationalism, which was formulated in the 1830's. As such, it is an entirely modern system of Biblical interpretation that would not be recognized by Christians of even 300 years ago. And yet, today it is a foundational teaching of many Evangelical churches.

AI Devil Worshippers?

There are lots of reasons to hate AI. As a writer, it really bothers me that large language models were trained on content for which their creators received no credit or royalties of any kind. AI could have been built ethically, but it wasn't. An ethical version of exactly what we see today could have been built with (A) opt-in for writers and/or artists submitting content and (B) royalty payments to those writers/artists based on the percentage of their work AI compositions include. There are no technical barriers to creating that sort of system, but AI companies decided that they would rather just steal from creators.

I recently came across a reason for hating AI, though, that never occurred to me. Apparently the Roman Catholic Church is running an "exorcism training course" that teaches, among other things, that AI can be used for "devil worship."

Father Luis Ramirez Almanza is running an exorcism training course in Rome in May, and he’s giving it a very 2026 theme. He wants clergy and faith leaders thinking about artificial intelligence as a tool that can be used in spiritual warfare. It’s not limited to Catholic clergy, either. Reporting says he’s inviting rabbis, imams, and evangelical pastors to attend, basically pitching a rare interfaith training built around a shared enemy.

The first weird thing about this is that "devil worship" - that is, the theistic worship of a literal devil - is incredibly rare. It is a practice that is disavowed by even the vast majority of people who identify as Satanists, such as members of The Satanic Temple and Church of Satan. Outside those two groups there are barely any Satanists in the world, so the theistic practitioners are a tiny minority. Christians sometimes try to give Satanists numbers by defining all non-Christians as "devil worshippers," but with the inclusion of rabbis, and imams in this course it sounds like that's not what the Catholics are up to here.

As a point, I received a comment over on BlueSky in reponse to a recent post that I was wrong about the Church of Satan not practicing magick because Anton LaVey wrote books on it. It is true that LaVey himself knew a lot about magick and likely practiced at least some of it, but I was talking about the organization today. If you look at this article on their current website, you can see that they are hostile towards both literal "devil worship" and anything transcendental or supernatural. I also have heard a story from years ago of a Thelemite kicked out of The Satanic Temple for openly practicing magick, so their current beliefs apparently fall along the same lines.