From New Dawn 209 (Mar-Apr 2025)
Elvis Presley remains one of culture’s greatest icons and solo pop stars today. At best, he’s viewed as an innovative, profoundly talented performer who led rock music into the heart and psyche of Western (and parts of Eastern) culture. At worst, he’s a symbol of American excess and consumerism, the musical version of McDonalds or Mountain Dew.
As music critic Bill Holdship said: “Elvis is loved, and he is hated. He was a genius, a fraud. A saint, the devil. The king, the clown. Even more than when he was alive, Elvis has come to symbolise everything great and everything hideous about America.”
Regardless of one’s view of Elvis’s legacy, most consider the entertainer a mainstream figure. His idiosyncrasies and quirks were publicly known and never concealed, yet idiosyncrasies and quirks are an accepted part of being a mainstream entertainer.
However, it might be shocking for many to know that Elvis was deeply immersed in all manner of alternative spirituality. In my book, The Occult Elvis, I propose that the King of Rock’n’Roll was arguably the greatest magician of modernity, regardless of how one defines “magic” (performative sleight of hand, consciousness manipulation, reality-bending, co-creation with the universe, etc.). More importantly, he was the chief American Shaman and the eternal egregore of the postwar American Dream.
Elvis was so mystical that he went from a musical star to interacting with the very denizens of the stars. Keep in mind that this research avoids the countless tabloid stories about Elvis that were ubiquitous in the eighties and nineties (the fake news before fake news). The findings come from those close to Elvis: Priscilla, family, the Memphis Mafia, and intimate friends and colleagues.
In short, you’ll find that this ain’t your grandma’s Elvis.
Elvis the Seeker
Elvis grew up in a Pentecostal family and community, which partly means that as a child, he was taught less about God and more about how to experience God. It’s no secret that Pentecostal and various Black churches in the Depression Era paralleled ancient Mediterranean religions’ shamanistic/mystery school vibe. Instead of being possessed by Dionysus, the attendee was invaded by the Holy Spirit for transformation and healing. That was the life of young Elvis. Furthermore, as a youth, he was always curious about metaphysics and the meaning of life.
His Protestant beliefs began to waver after he had conquered the world as history’s first and greatest rock star. In the late fifties, Elvis began to expand his spirituality, dabbling with aromatherapy, embracing Eastern modalities, and speculating that reincarnation was a theological possibility. The Bible was still his go-to inspiration, but The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran came in second. Why the shift when the world had given him fame, money, and adoring fans? Wasn’t he the epitome of the conservative alpha male curried for the general public? There are two reasons, and both have to do with trauma, that great puncturer of belief systems:
Evangelical leaders turned on him in the mid-fifties. His own pastor stated that he was caught in a web spun by Satan, and the country’s most famous preacher, Billy Graham, doubted Elvis’s faith. These allegations wounded Elvis, and he began questioning the authenticity of Christian pastors and church structures.
The death of his mother, Gladys, in 1958. The shock of losing a person he loved more than anyone in the world sent him down a spiral of despair and reflection, and it didn’t help that he would spend the next two years in the army in faraway Germany.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t until a third crisis that the floodgates of the occult opened. The predicament was years later, in 1964, when Elvis had morphed from a performer to a successful movie star yet was disillusioned by his career, life, and relationships. Why did he feel empty if he had reached the mountain top of stardom? Did he have a higher purpose, or was his destiny to become yet another washed-up celebrity eventually?
As they say, when the student is ready, the master will appear. In a series of fortuitous events, Elvis met Larry Geller, a hairdresser for many Hollywood celebrities and a profoundly experienced esotericist with vast arcane knowledge. What started as a haircut evolved into a master/student relationship.
Geller first introduced Elvis to The Impersonal Life by Joseph Benner. Deeply moved by its nondualist message, it became his favourite book. The work taught him that the ego is an illusion that must be transcended to uncover one’s true nature. Benner encouraged readers to release limiting beliefs and focus on their divine essence, the “I AM” presence, enabling connection with universal consciousness. Any individual can manifest their highest, divine potential. Elvis realised for the first time that the concept of the “Universal Christ” was present in everyone, further understanding that all religions share a common faith in God’s message.
With the concept of the Universal Christ (or Christ Consciousness, as it is known in current times), Elvis was freed from the dogmas of fundamentalist Christianity. With Geller at his side, he explored a galaxy of alternative spirituality. He studied influential nineteenth and twentieth-century occultists, including H. P. Blavatsky, Manly P. Hall, G. I. Gurdjieff, and P. D. Ouspensky. He became a devotee of the Indian yogi Paramahansa Yogananda. He learned and applied esoteric practices such as sex magic, meditation, astrology, and numerology. He gained a workable understanding of Kabbalah, Gnosticism, Theosophy, and various Eastern mystical traditions.
Knowledge is power, as they say, and power grew from Elvis, translating into extraordinary abilities. From his Pentecostal background, Elvis always believed in healing and other miracles (and he and his family had a gift for these abilities, indicating some genetic witch line). Elvis continued his healing abilities – from removing Priscilla’s headaches with a touch to curing cancer in his backup singer with prayer – fueled by the perennial wisdom of different traditions. Soon, he began to manipulate the weather, telekinetically move objects with his will, read minds, and astral travel. To him, these abilities were not the end-all of his quest, as Yogananda’s teachings said, they were merely indications one was getting closer to enlightenment. That’s what mattered to him the most.
Elvis’s embrace of the occult extended to other arenas, such as conspiracy theories, parapolitics, secret societies, and more (isn’t that what always happens when one goes down the rabbit hole of what is possible? Asking for a friend, Terence McKenna, Philip K. Dick, William Burroughs, and other modern magicians?)
This evolution, naturally or perhaps supernaturally, led Elvis to beliefs and eventual encounters with extraterrestrials.
Close Encounters of the Elvis Kind
Today, we live in a time where the UFO and the angel, the saucer-hunter and the priest, are deeply intertwined. From government reports to Ancient Aliens on the History Channel, the many ideas of extraterrestrials are no longer fringe but rather conventional. As with his other ideas and practices, Elvis was ahead of the curve.
In the sixties, Elvis concluded that the imagery (which he sketched) in Ezekiel surely must be alien technology. He loved Erich von Däniken’s Chariot of the Gods. He was familiar with The Book of Enoch and read The Urantia Book, two constant favourites for blurring the lines between extraterrestrials and angelic visitations.
He and Geller would have been right at home conversing with Philip K. Dick or a UFO Discord group.
Elvis experienced three direct UFO encounters (in between two major mystical experiences). While driving through the New Mexico desert on Route 66 from Memphis to Los Angeles, he and his entourage witnessed a bright disk streaking across the night sky. The UFO descended but abruptly halted, made a right-angle turn, and accelerated until it vanished from their eyesight.
“That object maneuvered like a flying saucer,” Geller said afterwards.
Elvis remarked, “It’s ridiculous to think we’re the only life with millions of planets in the universe.”
“If they want to tell us something,” Geller said, “Why don’t they land on the White House lawn or the Pentagon and contact our leaders instead of visiting an occasional individual out in the boondocks in the middle of the night?”
“I’ve thought about that,” said Elvis. “Maybe they don’t want to cause panic, plus they want us to evolve spiritually by giving us a chance to make our own decisions. They’ll work quietly behind the scenes, influencing us without appearing to.”
“And how will they do that?” Geller asked.
“By the power of their minds,” Elvis answered, “which must be vastly superior to ours, or they couldn’t be flying across the sky.”
Elvis and Geller would also have been right at home before a US government hearing on UAPs or participating in a podcast about how aliens are the reason humanity hasn’t extinguished itself in nuclear fire.
The other two extraterrestrial encounters occurred in his Los Angeles and Graceland homes in Memphis, respectively. Elvis wasn’t alone on each occasion and was far more filled with curiosity and wonder than any dread. The details are in my book and how Elvis perhaps saw himself as more than an earthling but part of an alien federation.
His father, Vernon, claimed that when Elvis was born, a blue light appeared above their home in Tupelo, Mississippi, halting suddenly and freezing everything in the area. What is the alien stork dropping off a stranger in a strange land or a cosmic herald as happened with the births of Julius Ceasar, Genghis Khan, Jesus, and other historic figures?
Elvis fan Wanda June Hill believed in the former. During a late-night conversation, Elvis once revealed to her that he wasn’t from this planet. He mentioned encountering “light form” men who predicted his future, including his interest in karate and his iconic white suits in Las Vegas. Towards the end of his life, he spoke of a “blue star planet,” referring to Jupiter and its advanced civilisations. He claimed his true home was Jupiter’s 9th moon. At one point, Hill alleged that his eyes glowed and an aura surrounded him.
Hill’s testimony falls closer to the tabloid genre and many of today’s radical social media posts. However, when coupled with Elvis and his communing with space entities, there’s a strong argument that something fantastic kept happening to the King of Rock n’Roll.
Caught in a Karmic Trap
As most know, Elvis led a tumultuous life that ended when he was only forty-two. His spiritual peaks, meditation breakthroughs, and supernatural experiences were sandbagged by too many bouts of drug addiction, unhealthy living, and other poor life choices.
As I write in the book, Elvis was doomed as soon as the alien blue light descended on his home, his life paralleling many shamans across the globe that end their lives as broken, drug-addicted savants – the Wounded Healer trope we find even beyond Indigenous cultures. Elvis, as America’s Shaman, fell into that category, unable to battle his demons even as he exorcised so many demons in his millions of fans across decades – and even today. Carrying the spiritual weight and sins of a tribe is not easy, and the spirit world is replete of dark things that go bump in the astral flight.
Perhaps he returned to Jupiter’s 9th moon or has reincarnated as an internet conspiracy buff in some small town in Idaho. Wherever he is, Elvis has earned his rest. His past incarnation was not only of a history-changing figure but also of a person who was a deep seeker who wanted more than anything to find a sacred purpose and commune with higher forms of consciousness.
Miguel Conner’s new book The Occult Elvis: The Mystical and Magical Life of the King is available from all good bookstores.
© New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
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