What if I told you that the movies you watch are not just entertainment, but a subtle form of religion? A “counterfeit gospel” with its own set of doctrines, rituals, and promises? This is not a conspiracy theory, but a look at how early Hollywood, influenced by Theosophy, began to craft a spiritual worldview that would captivate billions and shape the soul of the 20th century. This new faith did not need to attack Christianity directly; it simply offered a more palatable, less demanding alternative.
Here are the four key doctrines of this new “Gospel of Self”
1. The Doctrine of Original Trauma Instead of Original Sin
The Bible teaches that humanity is born with a fallen nature, a condition known as “Original Sin,” which requires a savior. Hollywood replaced this with the idea of “Original Trauma.” In countless films, a character’s brokenness or “evil” isn’t due to an inherent sin nature, but to a painful event in their past—a tragic loss, a betrayal, or a difficult childhood. This shifts the human problem from a spiritual and moral one to a psychological one, where the need for a savior is replaced by the need for a therapist or a cathartic experience.
2. The Doctrine of Reinvention Instead of Regeneration
The biblical promise of “being born again” and becoming a new creation through the power of the Holy Spirit was replaced by the distinctly American myth of reinvention. Hollywood became a city of fresh beginnings, where one could escape their past by changing their name, their story, or their face. This teaches us that salvation is an act of self-creation, and we don’t need to be supernaturally transformed by God; we can simply become the “god” of our own lives.
3. The Doctrine of “The Big Break” Instead of Grace
In Christianity, salvation is a gift of unmerited grace from God. In the gospel of Hollywood, this was replaced by the doctrine of “The Big Break.” Hope is placed not in divine favor, but in the secular “grace” of being discovered by a powerful producer or agent. These figures become the priesthood of the system, bestowing the grace of fame and fortune. This creates a system of works and fervent hope, where aspiring stars pray not for God’s favor, but for a lucky encounter that will grant them salvation from obscurity.
4. The Doctrine of Subjective Truth Instead of Revealed Truth
LOS ANGELES, CA – AUGUST 25: An exterior view of the Cross at Cahuenga Pass, Hollywood on August 25, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)
The Word of God presents truth as objective, external, and revealed, something humanity must conform to. Hollywood championed the opposite: the idea that truth is subjective, internal, and self-generated. The mantras of this doctrine—”Follow your heart,” “Believe in yourself,” “Trust your feelings”—became the new commandments, elevating the human heart to the status of ultimate moral arbiter, a direct contradiction of scripture.
The movie palace itself became the new church. These opulent, cathedral-like theaters were temples of escapism, where movie-going became a liturgy. The dimming of the lights created a sacred hush, and the audience sat in communal reverence, their collective consciousness focused on the “altar” of the screen. Here, they would receive the secular gospel of the day—a re-packaging of the American Dream into a doctrine of self-salvation, replacing the cross with the klieg light, and the promise of eternal life with the promise of celluloid immortality.
This was not a hostile takeover of culture, but a seductive replacement. It was a kingdom of illusion whose foundational principles stand in direct opposition to the Kingdom of God. The Apostle Paul’s warning to the Colossians rings with prophetic clarity for this age of enchantment: “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ” (Colossians 2:8).
Hollywood was never just a commercial enterprise. From its foundations, it was deeply entangled with spiritual quests, esoteric philosophies, and occult traditions. This post explores a section from my upcoming book, Hollywood from God’s Perspective, revealing how the Enlightenment’s paradoxical hunger for the unseen prepared the soil for the film industry.
“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world; the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, comes not from the Father but from the world.”
– 1 John 2:15–16
Throughout history, invisible forces of political, technological, and spiritual influences have shaped civilisations. From Babel to Babylon, from Rome to Silicon Valley, human societies have always been moulded by a convergence of visible governance and invisible spiritual or metaphysical realities. These unseen influences, often masked as progress or innovation, have guided humanity toward specific ends, sometimes seemingly empowering freedom, other times facilitating tyranny, deception, and decay.
Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, a growing fascination with mysticism, esotericism, and the occult began to permeate the intellectual and artistic circles of Europe and the Americas. This curiosity became a cultural undercurrent that would significantly contribute to the emergence of Hollywood. While the Enlightenment era championed reason and empiricism, it ignited a paradoxical desire for the metaphysical; a quest for hidden knowledge and spiritual ascendancy that science could not fulfil. As scientific advancements illuminated the material world, a fervent search for the immaterial emerged.
Enlightenment’s Paradox: Reason Awakens the Occult
This restlessness revived ancient pagan philosophies and gave rise to modern esoteric traditions, including spiritualism, theosophy, and alchemy. This desire manifested in the emergence of Hermetic traditions, Rosicrucian ideals, Kabbalistic thought, and secret societies such as the Freemasons and later the Theosophical Society. Influential intellectuals and artists of the era, such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Victor Hugo, and W.B. Yeats, engaged with these practices, exploring séances, automatic writing, and mediumship. Their creative works often reflected a connection to higher realms, resulting in literature infused with metaphysical depth and occult symbolism. In this context, new storytelling forms like science fiction, fantasy, and horror served as vehicles for these speculative ideas.
These movements did not simply run parallel to the Enlightenment, they often emerged from its very soil, cloaking themselves in the language of progress and intellectual liberation. The trend and hunger for ancient symbology, and spiritual mastery flourished significantly under the guise of artistic and philosophical exploration, subtly redefining how human creativity, excellence, and power were imagined. Furthermore, as colonial empires expanded, this curiosity absorbed elements from Eastern mysticism, African traditional religions, Egyptian mythology, and Native American spirituality, contributing to a hybrid spiritualism that rejected biblical orthodoxy in favor of syncretism. This fervency for seeking ethereal realism crescendoed in the nineteenth century, in particular, as it saw an explosion of séances and the embrace of spirit photography, mesmerism, and psychic experimentation. These ideas, though fringe at the beginning, evolved from influencing literature, art, theatre, and eventually to the silver screen.
From Séances to the Silver Screen: Cinema as a New Spiritual Medium
From its inception, Hollywood was more than a commercial enterprise; it was a spiritual project. This new spiritual project found its perfect instrument in the nascent film technology. The camera, a machine designed to capture light and project shadows, was a form of technological magic, capable of animating the inanimate and giving tangible form to dreams. It allowed storytellers the ability both to describe other worlds and to manifest them before the eyes of a captivated audience. In an age already steeped in spiritualism, where communicating with the unseen was a drawing-room pastime, the cinema emerged as the ultimate séance, a darkened room where the spirits of story could be conjured for millions.
Hollywood’s earliest pioneers were not immune to the influence of secret orders, metaphysical philosophies or the horror of the supernatural, in fact they were in awe of the unknown. The business executives, studio heads and talents became narrative technologies that could bypass religious orthodoxy while still satisfying spiritual hunger, blending artistry with immaterial, and often performing stories under the guidance of forces they did not fully understand.
Spirit-Guided Stars: Valentino, Mae West, and Beyond
An early example is silent film star Rudolph Valentino, who, with his wife Natacha Rambova, regularly consulted a spirit guide named “Meselope.” Rambova engaged in automatic writing, receiving creative guidance that informed Valentino’s successful career. This phenomenon was not isolated. Mae West reportedly claimed her screenplays were dictated by non-physical entities during meditative states, as noted by psychic Kenny Kingston in his book Psychic Kenny Kingston’s Guide to Wealth and Happiness.
He recalls her pacing around the room, saying, “Forces, Forces come to me and help me write a script.” She would begin to hear voices and images as the plot unfolded, often dictating while in a trance-like state. Marlene Dietrich famously consulted the astrologer Carroll Righter for career guidance, and many stars and executives employed divination to navigate the industry according to Brad Steiger in his book Hollywood and the Supernatural.
This fusion of occult philosophy and cinema grew more overt with time. Filmmaker Kenneth Anger, a devout follower of the British occultist, Aleister Crowley, viewed his films as a form of ritual magick. The public entanglements of figures like Jayne Mansfield with Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, highlighted the increasingly porous spiritual boundaries of the industry. As expected, this undercurrent of spiritualism redefined the modern imagination.
Esotericism in Hollywood’s DNA: Theosophy, Kabbalah, Freemasonry
Furthermore, the geographical location was by no means an accident. Early 20th-century Southern California was a cultural and spiritual frontier, a sun-drenched landscape attracting seekers, utopians, and unconventional thinkers fleeing the rigid structures of the East Coast and Europe. It was a fertile ground for new religious movements. Notably, the Theosophical Society, a highly influential esoteric movement founded by Helena Blavatsky that sought to synthesise ancient wisdom traditions. She had established a major centre ‘the Krotona Colony’ in the hills right above what would become the heart of Hollywood.
Theosophy, with its teachings on ascended masters, cosmic hierarchies, and secret doctrines, provided a spiritual vocabulary that resonated with the burgeoning film community’s own sense of creating new realities. Into this spiritually charged environment came the founders of the great studios; immigrants who, while often secular, carried a deep, intuitive understanding of the power of myth, parable, and the longing of the exiled soul. By the 1970s, satanist, Anton LaVey, observed the growing presence of Satanic themes in mainstream films, remarking with chilling foresight, “What we are seeing now are impasses where evil is not really defeated… This is the inevitable end result.” His insight proved prophetic, as modern celebrities increasingly and openly draw on occult symbolism and diverse otherworldly ideologies, fulfilling the role of a new priesthood for the digital age.
Ritual on Stage: Madonna, Beyoncé, Kubrick, Spielberg
Beyoncé, for instance with her music album Lemonade crafted a visual grimoire steeped in the Yoruba religion. In the music video, she embodies the orisha (goddess) Osun, the spirit of love, beauty, and sensuality. She performs ritualistic baptisms and immersions in water, a key element in Osun worship, and wears the goddess’s signature colour– yellow. Invoking and channelling this deity, she presents a powerful, alternative spiritual path to her millions of followers, one rooted in pre-Christian African tradition rather than biblical revelation. Madonna has, for decades, functioned as a high priestess of cultural subversion. Her public embrace of Kabbalah, signified by the red string bracelet she popularised, was just the beginning. Her performances are replete with esoteric symbolism.
During her 2012 Super Bowl halftime show, she appeared as an Egyptian goddess, flanked by Roman soldiers, and concluded her performance by descending into the stage amidst a swirl of light, a symbolic “disappearance” that occultists would recognise. The symbolic disappearance mimics ancient occult rituals of death and spiritual rebirth. In mystery religions, the descent into darkness or the underworld is a rite of passage symbolising transformation or apotheosis i.e. becoming divine. Madonna’s staged “vanishing” amid light and smoke echoes this archetype, casting her not as a performer, but as an initiated priestess completing a ritual act before millions.
By fusing sacred imagery, crucifixes, thrones, divine names with provocative dance, sexual symbolism, and elements drawn from Kabbalah, Gnosticism, and Freemasonry, Madonna deliberately collapses the boundary between reverence and rebellion. These antics are chucked down as “art” by the naive audience but she has consistently blended sacred Christian imagery with overt sexuality as seen in her “Like a Prayer” video. Jay-Z, who has openly referenced the occultist Aleister Crowley and his central maxim of Thelema: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” also embraces occult philosophy.
This phrase is rather the doctrine of a religion that elevates human will above divine command. Themes of self-deification and ritualism are replete and are central to the work of artists like Lady Gaga and Kanye West (now Ye). Gaga built her early career on the concept of the “Fame Monster,” using alter egos and a constant barrage of occult symbolism to explore subjects of transformation and the dark side of celebrity. Prominent filmmakers have also delved into these themes. Stanley Kubrick, embedded rich symbolic language and ritualistic undertones in his work. His final film, Eyes Wide Shut, is a direct and unsettling exploration of the occult practices of a secretive elite. The film’s centrepiece– a masked, ritualistic orgy at a country estate– is not a fantasy but a depiction of rites rooted in the traditions of real-world secret societies, exposing the nexus of power, sex, and occultism that operates beneath the surface of high society.
Likewise, Steven Spielberg’s films, while often more hopeful, consistently present a narrative of salvation arriving from a non-divine source. His fascination with non-human intelligences and benevolent higher powers, typically in the form of wise and gentle extraterrestrials (E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind), subtly offers a replacement for the God of the Bible. They are saviour figures who descend from the “heavens” to offer enlightenment, healing, and unity, but without the inconvenient requirements of repentance, judgment, or the Cross.
The Mystery of Lawlessness on Screen (2 Thess 2:7)
Figures like Madame Blavatsky, Freemasons, Rabbinic Kabbalah sages and Aleister Crowley became the backbone and authorised voices that propelled these arcane philosophies in the Hollywood entertainment systems; undersigning promises of divine-like power through knowledge hidden from the masses. Their ideas and symbols; the all-seeing eye, the tree of life, star child, the pyramid, dual identity, ascendancy, the concept of a “Great Architect,” and the pursuit of hidden knowledge (gnosis) are no longer hidden. They are openly woven into scripts, sets, costumes, music videos, and cinematic worlds, seeding the collective imagination with ideologies far removed from biblical truth.
As the Apostle Paul wrote, “The mystery of lawlessness is already at work” (2 Thessalonians 2:7), and in our time, it is at work on a global stage, broadcast in high definition.
Hollywood is not neutral. It is a stage for spiritual ideologies that rival biblical truth, embedding occult archetypes in the collective imagination.
This post is a window into Chapter 1 of my upcoming book.
