Was Elvis Actually an Occult Magician?

 

Rockstar, heartthrob, actor, style icon, soldier: there are a lot of things one could call Elvis Presley to the agreement of the vast majority of music lovers, but “occult magician” would likely garner a few raised eyebrows and incredulous stares. Sure, Presley had an almost otherworldly energy about him when he was on stage, gyrating his hips and crooning into the microphone. But a full-blown magician? A U.S. veteran and public figure almost as synonymous with 1950s Americana as apple pie?

That magical moniker seems a little unlikely to stick. However, writer, podcaster, and former Ayahuasca dabbler Miguel Conner argues just that in his book The Occult Elvis: The Mystical and Magical Life of the King, which Conner released in April 2025. And indeed, Conner’s arguments for why Presley was actually an occult magician or as out-there as you might think.

Author Miguel Conner’s fascination with the King of Rock and Roll started sometime after a particularly formative Ayahuasca ceremony in 2022. Conner began to make connections between Elvis Presley and the occult, from the musician’s documented interest in New Age religions (he was supposedly reading A Scientific Search for the Face of Jesus when he died in the bathroom) and various accounts from those who were close to Presley while he was alive. From his ex-wife, Priscilla Presley, to Presley’s entourage, nicknamed the “Memphis Mafia,” to other advisors close to the King, Conner certainly boasts an impressive roster of first-person resources.

Some of these stories range from coincidental to completely uncanny. One fan claimed Presley told her he wasn’t from Earth but rather Jupiter’s ninth moon. A friend remembered playing racquetball at Graceland under a cloudy sky until Presley waved his hands and, suddenly, the sun appeared. Conner’s book includes testimony from Presley’s former bodyguard, Sonny West, who said the musician told West matter-of-factly, “If [extraterrestrials ever] make contact, we can’t be afraid because they are not going to hurt us.” Presley’s mythical connection to the otherworldly seemed to start from within the womb, allegedly communicating telepathically with his stillborn twin, Jesse.

“He was a multi-faceted seeker,” Conner told The Guardian in 2025. “Somebody who sought the larger questions of life. He was a man of prophecy, of experience. My thesis is that he was the greatest magician in Western civilization. A magician is always known by the system they leave behind. With Elvis, he left us rock music.”

Elvis Presley’s monumental impact on music, pop culture, and society, his fascination with New Age spirituality, and countless stories connecting Presley to other dimensions, realities, and powers all make fascinating arguments for why the King of Rock and Roll was an occult magician. If we were to take author Miguel Conner’s points at face value, one could then ask the question: was Elvis aware of the metaphysical power he possessed? According to Conner, he did, thanks to a trippy cloud formation.

In his book The Occult Elvis: The Mystical and Magical Life of the King, Conner describes a moment in which Presley is watching the clouds in Arizona when he notices one that looks like Joseph Stalin. Slowly, the cloud shifted to form an image of Jesus Christ. Presley allegedly said of the incident, “The face of Stalin turned right into the face of Jesus, and he smiled at me, piercing my heart and every fiber of my being with his light.”

According to Conner, “What [Elvis] realized was that the evil was inside of him, too. He felt he wanted this darkness wiped away or cleaned, and if it destroyed him, he was fine with it. He had a role to play in the betterment of humankind, and he could do it through music and making people feel better, and hopefully open up their minds to more spirituality.”

Presley would only have until his 42nd year on Earth to pursue this mission, dying on August 16, 1977, at his Memphis, Tennessee estate, Graceland. But given Conner’s eccentric thesis—and supposed sightings of Presley at his Tennessee home—we can’t help but wonder if that fateful summer day was actually the last this existential realm would see of the King.

by Melanie Davis at americansongwriter.com on February 7, 2025

A Man of Tao

Thirteen years ago, dejected after failing an important exam at a Memphis scholarly conference, David Rosen sought refuge at the gravesite of his childhood idol, Elvis Presley, at Graceland.

Amid the stillness of the Meditation Garden, just beyond Lisa Marie’s swing set, Rosen found consolation ... and inspiration.

“I had no idea why I was crying,” recalled Rosen, now a Texas A&M; University professor. “But I knew that something was going on here.”

That “something” grew into a years-long study of the spiritual life of Elvis Presley, a spiritual life that Rosen believes is wedded to the ancient Chinese religious concept of Tao - that there is a central organizing principle of the universe--and one that the Jungian psychoanalyst details in his book “The Tao of Elvis. - Presley, who died a quarter-century ago Friday, “was a deeply spiritual man,” said Rosen, whose book is divided into reflections on 42 Taoist concepts - one for each year of Elvis’ life. “I want people to suspend judgment and approach Elvis with a spiritual attitude. Elvis embodied the Tao - he was struggling his whole life to figure out what was his unique purpose in life, struggling to balance opposites” - opposites with parallels in Taoism.

“Elvis was a man of Tao, who struggled to balance the opposites: poverty and wealth, male and female, old and new, good and evil, king and non-king, joy and sorrow, water and fire, dark and light, and stillness and movement,” he writes.

The book argues that Elvis was more than sideburns and swivel. Amid the fame-earning pelvis pumping and lip curling nestled traces of Elvis’ own spiritual quest.

“He wore a Star of David, a Jewish spirituality symbol, and a cross - a Christian spiritual symbol,” Rosen said. “He always joked, ‘I don’t want to be left out of heaven on a technicality.’ ”

On tour, Elvis traveled with his favorite booksa - mong them the Torah, Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet,” the Bible and “The Autobiography of a Yogi.”

Not too surprising, Rosen said, for a man who once pined to join a monastery and whose co-star in one film abandoned Hollywood to become a nun.

“Elvis read widely; he read the ‘Tao Te Ching,’ ” Rosen said. “I think he thought of himself as a deeply spiritual, religious individual. He was open to all the religions of the world and all spiritual concepts.”

Elvis’ routine also included meditation (“Better than any drug I know,” he once said), particularly before performances.

“A lot of people don’t know that he was a member of the Self-Realization Fellowship of Yogananda,” Rosen said. “Elvis meditated 30 minutes a day to get the ego out of the way so God could speak through his songs. He thought God had a special use for his voice.”

Indeed, though rock ‘n’ roll was his bread and butter, Elvis never took home a Grammy Award for his rock music. His three Grammys were for sacred songs: “He Touched Me” (1972) and “How Great Thou Art” (1967, 1974).

“When you listen to his spiritual music, there’s a natural soulfulness that comes through,” Rosen said, adding that Elvis’ songs were “manifestations of the Tao working through him.”

The professor wonders whether Elvis had much choice in the matter; he says that Elvis’ “very name means ‘the force of God’ in Hebrew,” and his middle name, Aaron, was that of Moses’ brother.

Even in his dreams, Elvis connected with a higher power, Rosen writes. In the mid-1960s, Elvis said he saw the face of Jesus Christ in clouds above an Arizona desert.

Afterward, Elvis said: “I know now. I’ve got to do something real with my life. I want out. I want to become a monk and join a monastery.”

After writing a will in 1977, Elvis “was shaken by a dream in which he saw ‘the face of God.’ It manifested itself in the form of a white so bright he almost couldn’t look at it.”

“He gets this gift of light in his darkest hour,” Rosen said. “And that’s a Taoist principle--that you find the light in the darkness.”

Elvis’ death in 1977 marked the end of his struggle to reconcile his opposites, the end of his struggle to reconcile his true self with the weighty title “the King,” Rosen said.

“In our society we don’t have royalty, so we often project our own desire to link with the divine onto singing stars, movie stars, even presidents,” he said. “All of that was projected onto Elvis. But he knew he was not a king, and that caused him a lot of mental anguish.”

Elvis’ death has meaning for everyone, Rosen said.

“The point of the book is: We don’t have to go the way he did, but we can learn from his life,” he said.

“He’s a mirror for us to look into and draw projections from. Instead of using Elvis to make that link to the divine--a lot of people approach a sort of worship of him today--instead we can use him to find our own link to the divine,” Rosen said.

by Shelvia Dancy at latimes.com on August 17, 2002