LUNCH TIME WITH DEMONS

Ashlee B. Caress
  • 5.0 (15)
  • Spirituality
  • Updated Weekly

Welcome to Lunch Time With Demons — where the vibes are real, the tea is hot, and the demons might just be more reasonable than you think. Join demonologists and religious scholars A. Bella and Ryan as they dive into the beautifully bizarre world of the occult. With decades of combined experience in spirit work, theology, and ritual practice, they offer a grounded, modern take on demonolatry and the ancient grimoires that continue to shape our understanding of the infernal divine. Each episode serves up digestible dialogue on everything from our own spiritual practice, personal encounters, ghost stories, to cross-cultural religion, mythology, and dismantling toxic dogma; all while honoring the sacred. If you've ever wondered what demons really are, how to approach the infernal with reverence, or why your religious trauma still flinches at the word "Lucifer," this podcast is your permission slip to unlearn, explore, and reclaim. Whether you're a seasoned practitioner, a curious newcomer, or someone just here for the spicy theology and paranormal tea, grab your headphones. New episodes every week. Bring your own offerings.

  1. 5d ago

    Morning Chats and Layered Dimensions - Lunch Time with Demons

    Season Two (Ep 28) This episode of Lunchtime with Demons opens with Bella recounting a severe 2019 car accident, an oncoming collision that left her with hairline cervical fractures, a torn meniscus, and lasting PTSD which she frames as the catalyst for her creative and spiritual awakening. She traces how that forced downtime pushed her to write Milk and Honey, Second Death, and The Dao of Farfalla, and to eventually leave conventional work to run her own business and lean fully into her clairvoyant abilities. She and Ryan talk through the rejection she's faced from collaborators and industry gatekeepers, and she repeatedly urges creatives to "stand by your pile of poop" and get uncomfortable art into the world rather than chase mainstream approval. The conversation then shifts into a philosophical riff on the nature of the divine using ants and crows as metaphors for how limited beings can only partially perceive a much larger consciousness and how deepening one's spiritual practice inevitably alienates a person from "normal" life, relationships, and marketable work. Bella connects this to her own relationship with Lucifer, describing his guidance around timing and patience for releasing her writing, and shares that her client work is showing a thematic pattern of "divine family" members re-emerging in her practice. The episode closes with her noting that it had originally been planned as a deep-dive on the demon Azazel (who entered her life around the time of her accident), which she and Ryan push to a future three-part episode, alongside a note of gratitude for the support she's received around a possible self-published book Numos. Cover art created by Casey at BellTarot.com  Abella's Link Tree Ryan's Link Tree

  2. Jul 11

    Self-Devotion - Lunch Time with Demons

    Season Two (Ep 28) This episode of Lunchtime with Demons is recorded remotely while Bella is visiting family in Arkansas, and it centers on solitude, presence, and spiritual practice. Bella reflects on how having unstructured alone time away from her usual New York noise and workload has deepened her connection to her team making their presence feel louder and more constant. She and Ryan discuss how gatekeeping and rigid "rules" in occult retail spaces often stem from ego and a need to feel right, contrasting that with their own approach of education over prescription. Ryan shares a parallel practice of using solo drive time as space to check in with their own team instead of numbing out with music. The second half turns more personal and vulnerable: Bella describes receiving unexpectedly bad news mid-episode and how staying anchored to Lucifer let her regulate quickly rather than spiral, framing the setback as "a dead end for them, not for me." She weaves this into broader themes that peace and stability are internal, not external, outcomes; that manifestation rarely looks like what you expected; using her fitness journey and five years of business ownership as examples. She closes with an appeal to listeners not to give up, and previews upcoming episodes on Azazel and Leviathan, noting she'll start covering demon-specific content on the podcast itself while the companion book is still on submission. Cover art created by Casey at BellTarot.com Abella's Link Tree Ryan's Link Tree

  3. Jul 4

    Surrender - Lunch Time with Demons

    Season Two (Ep 27) This episode of Lunchtime with Demons centers on Bella's deep dive into "surrender" as a practice, sparked by a TikTok comment and by her own ritual experience during the recent Strawberry Moon in Capricorn. She frames surrender not as passive acceptance of circumstances but as an internal act recognizing that triggers and "problems" we see externally are reflections of unhealed patterns and old identity/ego programming, and that real surrender means releasing the self rather than submitting to people or situations. She's careful to distinguish this from victim-blaming, explicitly excluding situations involving abuse or violated autonomy, and instead applies the framework to everyday friction like toxic friends, bad bosses, or recurring relationship patterns. Raven contributes grounding metaphors throughout learning to float as a child, treating symptoms versus root causes when sick  that reinforce Bella's core point about looking inward rather than fighting outward circumstances.The conversation also moves into identity and ego death, with Bella discussing how labels (even flattering ones) box people in and how she's spent months dismantling parts of her own identity as "the demon lady," a former performer, someone who feels she must defend her heritage or beliefs when triggered. She offers practical, small-scale surrender techniques (stepping outside, a few deep breaths, a beach ritual releasing words on the tide) alongside the larger, harder work of not building your sense of self around a need to defend or prove yourself. The episode winds down on prison reform advocacy work Bella has quietly done for years, a distinction between healthy alone time and harmful isolation, and a closing riff on bird-watching and a red-breasted nuthatch as a spiritual sign about tackling problems from new angles ending on her message to stop shrinking yourself out of fear of being "too much." Abells's LinkTree Ryan's LinkTree

  4. Jun 27

    King Belial Part Two- Lunch Time with Demons

    Season Two (Ep 26) This episode is Part 2 of Bella and Ryan's deep dive into King Belial, picking up where last week's lore-heavy episode left off. Bella frames her approach to Belial's cross-pantheon connections (vampiric folklore, Brahma, the Fae, Vlad the Impaler, draconian energy) through her broader philosophy that pantheons are human-constructed walls, and that stripping them away to engage with divine energy directly reveals how deeply interconnected it all is. Belial himself, she says, has told her to stop trying to untie the knot and instead embrace the synchronicities.The heart of the episode is Bella and Ryan sharing personal gnosis about what working with Belial actually looks and feels like. Bella revisits her infamous first encounter with him a half-sleep vision where he appeared in a terrifying form and "vomited blood" into her mouth recontextualizing it not as something to fear but as a tailored activation designed to break through her subconscious fear of him specifically. She describes him as witty, grounding, physically active in meditation (Ryan echoes this with his sword-fighting imagery), deeply invested in the practitioner's day-to-day life, and fiercely accountable mirroring back exactly the energy you bring, and refusing to enable avoidance or self-deception. The episode closes with a warm advisory to anyone considering working with him: commit honestly, move at your own pace, let him be soft with you, and don't let the scary lore or other practitioners' stumbles put you off. Abella's LinkTree Ryan's LinkTree

  5. Jun 20

    King Belial Part One - Lunch Time with Demons

    Season Two (Ep 25) This episode is Part 1 of what's planned as a multi-part series on King Belial. Bella opens with her usual disclaimer that everything shared is her own unverified or shared personal gnosis rather than doctrine, then walks through Belial's introduction in the apocryphal text the Ascension of Isaiah: how King Manasseh, son of Hezekiah, falls under Belial's influence and is cast as a corrupt ruler for embracing divination and sovereignty, while the prophet Isaiah, who opposes him, is eventually martyred (sawn in half) for refusing to abandon his belief in a coming Messiah. Bella reframes this conventional "good vs. evil" narrative, arguing Manasseh wasn't corrupted but had tapped into something real about Belial too early for a world sliding into monotheism, and that the demonization of Belial mirrors a broader pattern of dismissing mediumship and non-monotheistic spiritual experience. From there the conversation shifts into Bella's personal UPG (unverified personal gnosis)/SPG (shared personal gnosis)  framework for working with Belial: his titles and archetypes (Emperor of the Void, the Masterless, King of Lies, trickster, fallen angel), his cross-pantheon presence (including a connection to Brahma and ties she's drawn to extraterrestrial/cosmic themes), and her core argument that Belial is too vast to be "contained" or intellectually understood, only experienced. She describes him as the personification of the void and source energy, warns that practitioners who try to box him in or treat him transactionally tend to face destabilizing consequences ("an atom bomb in your basement"), and frames those ruptures as ultimately generative rebuilding rather than punishment. Ryan chimes in periodically to affirm these points, including noting his own recent practice work with Belial. Bella closes the episode promising a Part 2 covering the more practical side of working with him, including his draconic connections and ties to Vlad the Impaler. Abella's LinkTree  Ryan's LinkTree

  6. Jun 13

    Reflection - Lunch Time with Demons

    Season Two (Ep 24) This episode is mostly a solo reflection from Bella, with Ryan offering quiet support throughout. She opens up about a brutal week that brought several old wounds to the surface: perfectionism, fear of being "too strange," money/worth issues, and a deep ache around being "burned out" while feeling unappreciated. She shares a heartfelt fan message as a jumping-off point to talk about her sense of purpose (being a "mirror" who reflects people's potential back to them), then gets into the painful contrast between that purpose and 20 years of rejection in her creative work, especially her ergodic literature project NUMoS. A family conflict that spilled into a conversation with her young daughter adds another layer of rawness to the episode. The second half shifts toward how she's been processing all this through mind-body-spirit practice and small "divine" synchronicities crying in a sun shower, a gifted tarot deck and perfume from Ryan, and book covers messages that felt like signs from Lucifer, Leviathan, and Belial. She uses these to illustrate her "let them / underestimate me" mantra about not needing external validation, recommends a few poetry collections (by Megan Fernandez, Jesse K. Bear, Haley Lou Richardson, and R.H. Sinn) as resources for working through similar wounds, and closes with an emotional thank-you to listeners and Ryan for supporting the show and giving her space to be unapologetically herself. She previews next week's episode, which will focus on King Belial. Abella's Linktree Ryan's LinkTree

  7. Jun 6

    Love and Light - Lunch Time with Demons

    Season Two (Ep 23) The episode opens with casual small talk Bella describes her morning visiting "Lady Woodstock," a new goddess figure in Woodstock, NY, and documenting the experience for Patreon, before the two dive into their main topic: the concept of "love and light" in witchcraft and occult spirituality. They spend much of the conversation unpacking the negative connotations that phrase has accumulated and how it has become almost a punchline in the community, associated with spiritual bypassing, the suppression of difficult emotions, and a moralistic framing of darkness as something to be purged rather than integrated. Both hosts argue that this "love and light only" mindset ironically causes harm by casting judgment on others and discouraging people from sitting with pain, grief, or anger. The conversation pivots toward a more constructive take, with Bella and Ryan advocating for shadow work and emotional integration as a healthier alternative. They discuss how dark or stagnant energies aren't inherently evil but instead teachers and lessons that, when faced honestly, can lead to genuine self-love and growth. Bella wraps up with a personal example about preparing to see an ex and choosing to process her pettiness internally, not for his sake but for her own peace. The core message is that authentic spiritual practice means making room for the full spectrum of human emotion rather than suppressing the difficult parts under a veneer of positivity.   Bella Link Tree Ryan Link Tree

  8. Jun 1

    Inner Child Work With Lucifer - Morbid Monday

    The episode of Morbid Monday invites listeners to let their inner child "step forward," acknowledging how vulnerable and scary that can feel. Bella speaks to the wounds many carry feeling small, dismissed, or unimportant while affirming that the listener is resilient, worthy of gentleness, and always has been. The tone shifts into a visioning exercise: imagining a life where money flows without burnout, where you speak at your own pace without fear, where joy and play are prioritized over productivity-as-identity. Bella encourages listeners to release comparison and envy, reframing others' success as proof of what's also possible for you. The episode closes with an affirmation that the programming keeping you "small" no longer has to apply and that reconnecting with your inner child is the path back to that freedom. Abella's Link Tree

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5
out of 5
15 Ratings

About

Welcome to Lunch Time With Demons — where the vibes are real, the tea is hot, and the demons might just be more reasonable than you think. Join demonologists and religious scholars A. Bella and Ryan as they dive into the beautifully bizarre world of the occult. With decades of combined experience in spirit work, theology, and ritual practice, they offer a grounded, modern take on demonolatry and the ancient grimoires that continue to shape our understanding of the infernal divine. Each episode serves up digestible dialogue on everything from our own spiritual practice, personal encounters, ghost stories, to cross-cultural religion, mythology, and dismantling toxic dogma; all while honoring the sacred. If you've ever wondered what demons really are, how to approach the infernal with reverence, or why your religious trauma still flinches at the word "Lucifer," this podcast is your permission slip to unlearn, explore, and reclaim. Whether you're a seasoned practitioner, a curious newcomer, or someone just here for the spicy theology and paranormal tea, grab your headphones. New episodes every week. Bring your own offerings.

Information

  • Creator
    Ashlee B. Caress
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    70
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2024
  • Show Website
    LUNCH TIME WITH DEMONS