LUNCH TIME WITH DEMONS

Ashlee B. Caress
  • 5.0 (16)
  • 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. 9h ago

    Back To School - Lunch Time with Demons

    Season Two (Ep 33) This was the back-to-school episode of Lunchtime with Demons, marking the show's return to weekly episodes and its first anniversary. Bella and Ryan opened with the news that Spotify ranks them the #1 demonology podcast (with a laugh about having essentially no direct competition), then swapped personal updates: Ryan talked about the busy summer at the shop and meeting Marcella Kroll for a tarot signing, while Bella recounted turning 40, the deaths of Tim Curry and Dolly Parton that same week and how both artists shaped her life (Rocky Horror, playing Dolly in Country Girls the weekend her grandfather died), and a birthday trip to Quebec City and Montreal. The Montreal trip became the episode's emotional core. Bella described the culture shock of returning to the U.S. (a rough stop at Cracker Barrel) and used it to riff at length on American burnout culture, self-worth tied to productivity, and how travel exposes how normalized that grind has become; Ryan connected it to his own experience leaving a chef career. They tied this back to deity/devotional work perfectionism and feeling unworthy of a deity's favor and Bella flagged September as a time for reflection and gently raised suicide-awareness month, urging listeners toward small acts of connection. The episode closed with a card pull (King of Wands, Gratitude, and Sparks of Light) tied to themes of self-worth and gratitude, and a teaser that the next episode will focus on Leviathan. Cover art created by Casey at BellTarot.com Abella's LinkTree Ryan's LinkTree

  2. Aug 24

    Joke's on Them - Morbid Monday

    In this Morbid Monday episode, Bella opens up about a rough-but-transformative eight months, using Brandi Carlile's "The Joke" as a jumping-off point for reflecting on setbacks with her creative career. She talks candidly about the frustrations of trying to get her work (including her book NUMoS) through traditional publishing channels, and how "burn-to-earn" market pressure and personal limitations from her team have blocked projects she believes in. She pivots into a passionate call for other artists and creatives to self-publish, share their work unapologetically, and stop waiting for permission from agents or the market. She recommends a self-published poetry book, teases new writing going up on her Substack (poems, essays, and eventually  NUMoS excerpts), and closes with an emotional thank-you to Ryan for being a steady, unwavering supporter through her ups and downs.  Abell's SubStack Tarot in Everything: 78 Tarot Poems - Lexi Hideko

  3. Aug 22

    Azazel Part Three - Lunch Time with Demons

    Season Two (Ep 32) Azazel Part Three: This is the third and final episode in Bella and Ryan series on Lord Azazel, focused specifically on the physical side of working with him offerings, colors, tarot, and the forms he takes. Reading largely from her unpublished book (still on submission with publishers), Bella explains that Azazel isn't especially drawn to typical physical offerings, preferring devotional ones instead: red wine and dark spirits, frankincense and myrrh, animal bones (she describes finding a fully decomposed mouse skeleton and placing it on his altar), and raw/imperfect-cast metals like silver, steel, gold, pewter, and obsidian. She also describes bringing him books she struggles with (citing the neuroscience book "Behave"), writing out her doubts and personal revelations as offerings she says are "more precious to him than gold," and BMS (blood, masturbation, sex) offerings strictly by his request only. She lists his preferred colors (indigo, silver, gray, slate, pewter, black, emerald, moss green), tarot cards (the Emperor, Wheel of Fortune, King of Swords), and describes his physical form tall, lean, wild black hair, narrow eyes under a heavy brow, a military-style jacket, trailing fog/smoke, and sometimes appearing as a crow or magpie-like bird. She also shares a personal synchronicity ritual she calls "Adam" (ATOM), where repeated symbols/names signal his presence. Ryan then shares his own experience, describing a windowsill altar Azazel asked him to build using reflective/shiny objects, and a copper vessel where evaporating water (or, more recently, distilled vinegar) creates a striking blue oxidized crystallization he's incorporated into his woodworking and magical crafts — interestingly, both note they independently have similar oxidized copper bowls for Azazel. The two discuss how Azazel excels at helping people perceive the divine and recognize dimensions of reality beyond ordinary human perception, comparing it to how an ant can't fully perceive humans. Bella closes by promoting a new project a channeled spoken-word poetry book called "The Essence Inferno" she'll share on TikTok  thanks Azazel for "going next" in the book series, teases an upcoming entity for a future episode, reminds listeners the show returns to a weekly schedule in September, and mentions it was her 40th birthday. Cover art created by Casey at BellTarot.com Abella's LinkTree Ryan's LinkTree

  4. Aug 8

    Azazel Part Two - Lunch Time with Demons

    Season Two (Ep 31) Azazel Part Two : This episode of Lunchtime with Demons opens with Bella sharing that she's been moving through grief in her personal life while leaning on her spiritual practice including Azazel for support. She then shifts into the episode's main focus: a historical walkthrough of Azazel drawn from her forthcoming book, tracing his appearances from Leviticus and the Yom Kippur scapegoat ritual, through the Books of Enoch (where he's cast as a chief Watcher who taught forbidden knowledge), Jubilees (positioned as the origin of demons), the Apocalypse of Abraham, and a lesser-known apocryphal Islamic reference under the name Iblis. Along the way she and Ryan discuss how monotheistic traditions tend to frame divine knowledge-sharing as corruption, using it as a lens to critique religious authority more broadly, with a tangent into Mormonism and Joseph Smith as a modern example of religion taking on governmental power. The second half moves into Bella's personal UPG (unverified personal gnosis) about Azazel describing him not as a fallen angel but as a primordial being and an early evolution of Lucifer, independent of him but spiritually linked, with Elohim framed as having supported rather than opposed the Watchers' descent. She closes on a more emotional note, reflecting on how grief has drawn her toward tragic literature (Hadestown, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet) as an unexpectedly healing practice, before previewing the next episode, which will cover practical work with Azazel altars, offerings, tarot, and planetary associations. Cover art created by Casey at BellTarot.com

  5. Jul 25

    Azazel Part One - Lunch Time with Demons

    Season Two (Ep 30) This episode kicks off a three-part series on Azazel, flipped from their usual format instead of starting with history, Bella and Ryan open with their personal experiences working with him. Bella shares how Azazel entered her practice in 2020 while she was primarily working with Lucifer, Duke Vaal, and Amon, describing an intense, unsubtle energy that initially scared her. She recounts a striking synchronicity: after telling him she wasn't ready, he said he'd return in a year and exactly a year later, a crow flew into her bedroom on that same date. She frames him as Lucifer's counterbalance and mirror, the "atmosphere" that lets her practice bloom, associates him with Saturn and the Akashic Records, and describes him as the one who pushed her out of solo practice into visibility and accountability. Ryan describes Azazel as one of the quieter, more understated presences in his practice, communicating primarily through light projected images, reflections, and unexpected beams that show up "everywhere" once the connection was established. Bella adds her own recurring visionary motif of ritual baths, faceless attendants, and Azazel reading to her from wordless books that reveal text over time, along with a memorable exchange during tornado-relief work where he told her "everything is funny." Both agree he's intensely attentive, expects devotion, and shows up unmistakably once you know his "signature." The episode closes with housekeeping: the podcast is shifting to biweekly through August due to summer scheduling, an update that Lunchtime with Demons remains on submission. Cover art created by Casey at BellTarot.com   Abella's LinkTree Ryan's LinkTree

  6. Jul 18

    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

  7. 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

  8. 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

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5
out of 5
16 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
    75
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2024
  • Show Website
    LUNCH TIME WITH DEMONS