Occult Elvis: was Presley a telepathic demigod who could heal the sick and change the weather?
A new book argues that the singer whose looks, voice and charisma changed so much more than music was one further thing: the world’s greatest occult magician.
The Mystical and Magical Life of the King, is a book that gathers material from sources including Priscilla Presley, the clique of Presley’s associates known as the Memphis Mafia, and spiritual advisers such as his personal hairstylist and guru Larry Geller.
This is not the first to take such an approach. Presley’s spiritual life has been examined elsewhere, in books such as David Rosen’s The Tao of Elvis, first published in 2001, and Elvis: Between the Lines: His Quest for Higher Consciousness as Told Through His Notes.
In The Occult Elvis we learn of Presley’s talent for weather manipulation, one day waving his hands to clear rain from the sky, so two friends could play racquetball at his Graceland court. Longtime fan Wanda June Hill also appears, with her revelation that the King divulged to her that he was not from this planet, but rather hailed from Jupiter’s ninth moon. The book also details Presley’s belief in extraterrestrials and his claim to have had several UFO encounters, once telling his bodyguard Sonny West: “If they make contact, we can’t be afraid, because they are not going to hurt us.”
To the sceptically minded, some of this will require not so much a pinch of salt, but a Graceland-sized helping. Yet Conner is a scholar of gnosticism, a broad field of Christian mysticism, and hosts the Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio podcast. He argues that Presley became the US’s “egregore”: in occult parlance, that is a non-physical, demigod-like manifestation that takes on a life of its own after being created by the will of a collective. From his earliest days, Conner writes, Presley was surrounded by strange happenings: he supposedly received psychic guidance from his stillborn twin brother, Jesse; and he recalled to girlfriend June Juanico that, as a boy, he would astrally project himself into the stars.
“He considered himself a faith healer,” says Tillery, who recalls being “amazed” when he learned the extent of Presley’s spiritual life. The writer heard one story about a friend of Presley’s who had been in a motorcycle accident and was now in hospital dealing with excruciating pain. “Elvis visited him,” says Tillery, “and spent 30 minutes waving his hands over the guy’s back – and he said it was amazing. The pain was almost all gone. He hadn’t had any relief for two weeks.”
The singer died in his bathroom at the age of 42, while reading A Scientific Search for the Face of Jesus by Frank O Adams, according to a 2022 article in the Daily Express. But a torrent of strange accounts poured forth about the King after he died, including a string of sightings taken up by the tabloids and collected in Raymond A Moody’s 1987 book Elvis After Life. “When you look at Elvis apparitions that still happen today,” says Conner, pointing to the Graceland website where visitors can record their own, normally prosaic sightings, “he’s up on the level of sasquatch, Jesus and the Virgin Mary.”
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/f...er-jupiter
A new book argues that the singer whose looks, voice and charisma changed so much more than music was one further thing: the world’s greatest occult magician.
The Mystical and Magical Life of the King, is a book that gathers material from sources including Priscilla Presley, the clique of Presley’s associates known as the Memphis Mafia, and spiritual advisers such as his personal hairstylist and guru Larry Geller.
This is not the first to take such an approach. Presley’s spiritual life has been examined elsewhere, in books such as David Rosen’s The Tao of Elvis, first published in 2001, and Elvis: Between the Lines: His Quest for Higher Consciousness as Told Through His Notes.
In The Occult Elvis we learn of Presley’s talent for weather manipulation, one day waving his hands to clear rain from the sky, so two friends could play racquetball at his Graceland court. Longtime fan Wanda June Hill also appears, with her revelation that the King divulged to her that he was not from this planet, but rather hailed from Jupiter’s ninth moon. The book also details Presley’s belief in extraterrestrials and his claim to have had several UFO encounters, once telling his bodyguard Sonny West: “If they make contact, we can’t be afraid, because they are not going to hurt us.”
To the sceptically minded, some of this will require not so much a pinch of salt, but a Graceland-sized helping. Yet Conner is a scholar of gnosticism, a broad field of Christian mysticism, and hosts the Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio podcast. He argues that Presley became the US’s “egregore”: in occult parlance, that is a non-physical, demigod-like manifestation that takes on a life of its own after being created by the will of a collective. From his earliest days, Conner writes, Presley was surrounded by strange happenings: he supposedly received psychic guidance from his stillborn twin brother, Jesse; and he recalled to girlfriend June Juanico that, as a boy, he would astrally project himself into the stars.
“He considered himself a faith healer,” says Tillery, who recalls being “amazed” when he learned the extent of Presley’s spiritual life. The writer heard one story about a friend of Presley’s who had been in a motorcycle accident and was now in hospital dealing with excruciating pain. “Elvis visited him,” says Tillery, “and spent 30 minutes waving his hands over the guy’s back – and he said it was amazing. The pain was almost all gone. He hadn’t had any relief for two weeks.”
The singer died in his bathroom at the age of 42, while reading A Scientific Search for the Face of Jesus by Frank O Adams, according to a 2022 article in the Daily Express. But a torrent of strange accounts poured forth about the King after he died, including a string of sightings taken up by the tabloids and collected in Raymond A Moody’s 1987 book Elvis After Life. “When you look at Elvis apparitions that still happen today,” says Conner, pointing to the Graceland website where visitors can record their own, normally prosaic sightings, “he’s up on the level of sasquatch, Jesus and the Virgin Mary.”
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/f...er-jupiter
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
