10 Occultists Who Were Accused SPIES

Ten Political ‘Intriguers’

See the companion video, above.

Introduction

The occult is a shadowy world.

Historically, it has involved actors in sub–rosa activities, prompted the adoption of pseudonyms, and – depending upon how unfavorably ruling powers would react to discovery – resulted in the creation of clandestine networks.

All this is made to order for another area that might, at first glance, appear to be totally unrelated to these mystical or sorcerous undercurrents: namely, the world of spy craft.

But, in fact, the two arenas may overlap surprisingly frequently.

In this video, we’ll examine some of the junctures by looking primarily at ten (10) well-known occultists who have been accused of espionage.[1]

However, there is an almost unbelievably dramatic aspect to our entire saga. We will get to this in our final and climactic consideration of that much honored American Founding father who held a key to a kite string, for a Luciferian personal lightning strike. Of course, we’re referring to the man so well portrayed on the $100 bill, and who needs no further introduction now.

10. Aleister Crowley

We’ll start things off – as we have done before – with the man who styled himself “The Great Beast, 666,” Edward Alexander “Aleister” Crowley.

Perhaps no one has a higher profile in 20^th-century occultism than he.

If the usual biographical sketches are credible, at one time or other, Crowley dabbled in nearly every “alternative” form of religion, and joined every esoteric group, that existed. He had connexions to both English and French Freemasonry. He was initiated into the magical system of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He made a study of Theravāda Buddhism and Tantra. He became the head of the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.).

For more on some of these currents, see “10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults.”

When he was dissatisfied with the status quo, he either set about reforming preëxisting institutions in his own image, or simply formed his own associations. For example, he started the A∴A∴ (usually said to abbreviate the Latin phrase Argentium Astrum, or “Silver Star”)[2] – a magical society not to be confused with Alcoholics Anonymous.

Crowley modified the high-grade masonic degrees of John Yarker. He rewrote the rituals for the Gnostic Church and the O.T.O.

Effectively, he established his own quasi-religion called Thelema.

Not to be confused with the London-based hedge fund, …

…Crowley’s Thelema was based on precepts (such as “Do what thou wilt”) that were articulated by the Renaissance writer François Rabelais.

(For more on the particulars of some of this, see our previous “Top 10 Occultists of All Time.”)

But these interests placed Crowley in numerous, out-of-the way places on the earth. And he associated with many strange people.

These facts, together with Crowley’s own (often exaggerated) bravado, led to allegations that Crowley was a spy.[3]

For example, for two years, Crowley worked as a columnist for German-born American political agitator and accused spy George Sylvester Viereck.[4] In the lead up to both world wars, Viereck was outspokenly pro-German. He published two periodicals, The Fatherland and The International, for which Crowley both edited and wrote articles ostensibly championing Germany over against his native Britain.

In his autobiography, Confessions, Crowley maintained that he had been doing “undercover” fact-finding for British Intelligence.[5]

He also associated with Gerald Hamilton,[6] a man who, for a brief interval, was reputedly as notoriously “wicked” as Crowley himself.

Also like Crowley, Hamilton seemed prone to aggrandize himself; so biographical details are a bit sketchy. But Hamilton appears occasionally to have operated as an information broker or a police informant.[7]

According to biographer Tobias Churton, Crowley met with Guy Burgess in 1942.[8]

Burgess was a principal member of the ring of British double agents known as the “Cambridge Five.” Under the direction of Harold “Kim” Philby, and from the era of World War II right through the early stages of the “Cold War,” the five spies secretly assisted the Soviet Union – to which Burgess defected in 1951.

Crowley also had dealings – some of them potentially sexual in nature – with journalist and Parliamentarian Thomas “Tom” Driberg.

Driberg may (or may not) himself have worked with the Soviet KGB or the British MI5.[9]

In any case, he wrote a biography of Burgess.[10]

Finally, Crowley was acquainted with, and influenced, German-born doctor and occultist Arnold Krumm-Heller.

Krumm-Heller was the neo-gnostic founder of the South American-based Fraternitas Rosicruciana Antiqua – a blend of Martinism, Rosicrucianism, Spiritism, Thelema, and Theosophy.

He was a personal physician to Francisco Madero, the 37^th president of Mexico (until the latter’s deposition and assassination in 1913).

And, of course, Krumm-Heller was an operative in both the German and Mexican secret services.

Krumm-Heller appears to have reported to German diplomat and intelligence agent Felix Sommerfeld.

The two may have been attempting to engineer a war between Mexico and the United States. To that end, Krumm-Heller and Sommerfeld possibly engineering the bloody attack on Columbus, New Mexico by Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa on March 9, 1916.

9. Michael Sendivogius

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was still uncommon for non-nobility to be widely traveled. Exceptions included certain craftsmen (for example, stone masons) as well as self-styled adventurers and …occultists!

On the other hand, you have noblemen who were also esotericists. An obvious case is that of Michael Sendivogius, …

…whom we covered in “Top 10 Gold-Making Alchemists.”

Sendivogius shuttled amongst various European courts, including those of Emperors Rudolf II and Ferdinand II …and Polish[11] King Sigismund III, from the House of Vasa –…

…for whom (allegedly) he was “a double agent.”[12]

Among other things, Sendivogius seems somehow to have been mixed up[13] in the Russian affair of the “False Dmitry,” during that country’s so-called “Time of Troubles.”[14]

The gist was that a succession of various imposters – referred to as “Pseudo Dmitries” –…

…claimed to have been the youngest son of Tsar Ivan the Terrible,

…who was apparently assassinated at the age of eight.

The first of these pretenders actually managed for a time to assume rulership of the country.[15]

Espionage-related shenanigans concerning royal succession would later afflict other countries, including England – as we will see further on. And other European nations would give rise to interesting espionage-occultism interrelations.

8. Emanuel Swedenborg

And this brings us to Sweden, and to the late-17^th to early 18^th-century scientist turned philosopher-theologian, Emanuel Swedenborg.

Initially, Swedenborg studied physical science and became a knowledgeable mineralogist. His mechanical inventions, including one enabling ships to be transported on land, brought him to the attention – and into the favor – of government officials.

Following a series of mystical experiences in the 1740s, Swedenborg devoted himself to spiritual pursuits.

Essentially, he became convinced that he had a divine mission to reinterpret the Bible and Christianity, effectively being the conduit for a new gospel. But, he denied that he was acting on his own hook. Instead, Swedenborg claimed that he was merely delivering information obtained by “visiting” heaven and hell and conversing with angels and with God.

Swedenborg was preoccupied with the hermetic notion of “correspondence” between human beings and the cosmos – an idea we sketch in the video “10 Arcane Words.”

Several of his doctrines arguably had a neo-gnostic complexion. Some of them revolve around marital – and even sexual – concepts, as discussed in “Top 10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults.”

For all that, the influence of his Protestant-Lutheran background was still evident.

After his death, a few of his disciples – referred to as “Swedenborgians” – founded the Church of the New Jerusalem, or the “New Church.”

Swedenborgianism, in one form or other, attracted notables such as John Chapman, better known as “Johnny Appleseed”; Swedish entomologist Leonard Gyllenhaal, progenitor of actors Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal; Henry James, Sr., father of important writers Henry and William James; and popular health commentator Mehmet Cengiz Öz, who is, in 2022, a senatorial candidate in Pennsylvania and who’s known professionally as “Dr. Oz”[16]

But, Swedenborg also inspired a group of French esoterics, called the Illuminés of Avignon. This was an assembly of Freemasons, led by “Dom” Antoine-Joseph Pernety and Count Thaddeus Grabianka, who introduced the so-called “Swedenborg Rite” into their masonic rituals.[17]

As to whether Swedenborg the man had himself been a member of “the Brotherhood,” the matter is hotly disputed.

In her book Emanuel Swedenborg, Secret Agent on Earth and in Heaven,[18] author Marsha Keith Schuchard has argued not only that Swedenborg was a Freemason, but also that he was a Jacobite spy in the employ of the Swedish government, during the rise of parliamentarianism.

According to her, Swedenborg was valued, in part, because of his access to “secret Masonic networks” which functioned as confidential message-relaying systems.

Schuchard places Swedenborg, an inveterate traveler, at the epicenter of prominent British Prime Minister Robert Walpole’s intelligence apparatus in Hanover, Germany.

If true, this would place Swedenborg in a class of adventurers and businessmen, operating during the heyday of mercantilism, that also veered over into spy craft. This would include Swiss-English agent John Coustos and Prussian antiquarian Philipp von Stosch – both of whom were Freemasons.

It also includes the even more mysterious Count of St. Germain,[19] who was suspected of participating in Jacobite machinations during the 1740s.[20] He claimed to have been one of the last surviving members of the Hungarian royal House of Rákóczi.[21] “…[T]here is some evidence that Saint-Germain had worked for …[Frederick the Great] as a secret diplomat (i.e. a spy) in France…”.[22]

The so-called Grand Constitutions of 1786, one of the important documents in the formation of the Scottish Rite, name Frederick as the head of that order. Masonic orders play a recurring part in state intrigues.

7. Robert Moray

Recall that, as part of the far-flung occult connexions he maintained, Aleister Crowley was a high-degree Freemason. This is suggestive – not to say instructive – not least because (as we have seen) several other historically important members of the “Craft” also spent time as spies.

For example, consider the case of Sir Robert Moray. Moray was in on the ground floor of what is termed “speculative” masonry – as opposed to the “operative” variety in which bona fide builders and stone workers would have engaged.[23]

Although the official inception of the Grand of Lodge of England wouldn’t occur until June 24, 1717,[24] Moray is recognized as having been among the men “raised” to masons as part of “[t]he first recorded initiation in England” circa 1641.[25]

Prior to that, Moray was part of a secretive coterie of Scottish military and statesmen who had some connexion to France. In fact, Moray supposedly had close contact with the distinguished Duke Armand Jean du Plessis, better known as Cardinal Richelieu.

Richelieu was a shrewd political operator and managed to attain high offices in both the Catholic Church and in the government of France, where he was King Louis XIII’s chief minister.

Among his accomplishments was that he catapulted France above Spain as the most powerful nation in Continental Europe.

He did this, in part, by negotiating tactical alliances with numerous Protestant countries (including the Dutch Republic, England, and Sweden) to oppose the Hapsburgs, who controlled both the Iberian Peninsula and the Holy Roman Empire.

To advance this master plan, Richelieu maintained a network of spies – among whom was Robert Moray. And among Moray’s tasks seems to have been that of ingratiating himself with a militant group of lowland Presbyterian Scots called the “Covenanters.”

Making short shrift of portions of Scottish history, we may summarize the situation. The Covenanters opposed Kings James VI (i.e., James I of England), and his son Charles I – at least, insofar as these rulers followed the precedent set by Henry VIII – and assumed control of the church in Scotland.

However, even though the Covenanters resented monarchial intrusions into church governance and theology, they recoiled in horror when Charles I was deposed and executed.

So, the Covenanters extended an olive branch to Charles’s son. “Moray helped to persuade the Prince of Wales, the future Charles II, to visit Scotland for his coronation as King of Scots at Scone on 1 January 1651.”[26]

Charles II was reigning when a group of twelve men, including Robert Moray, met at Gresham College in 1660 and founded The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. Moray was apparently instrumental in procuring the royal charter from the king.

As discussed in a previous video, the Royal Society’s initial membership included Sir Robert Boyle, the alchemist who helped launch the modern science of chemistry.[27]

In 1688, Boyle’s advocacy helped persuade Parliament to overturn a law forbidding the practice of alchemy. This paved the road for the incorporation of the Bank of England just a few years later, in 1694.

So, it’s tempting to say that part of Sir Robert Moray’s legacy was the London-based money-power apparatus that, to a certain degree, supplanted the British monarchy starting in the 17^th century.[28]

But, Sir Moray was not the only “brother mason” to have entered into intelligence work. Another notable was the ponderously named individual (Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d’Éon de Beaumont) later known as the Chevalier D’Eon.

We had occasion to name d’Eon in “Top 10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults” owing to his alleged affiliation with English poet, and Emanuel-Swedenborg discipline William Blake.[29] In that place, we noted the chevalier’s reputation as a “cross-dresser” – an usual pastime for an 18th-century gentleman.

It turns out, however, that this fact – irrespective of its possible sexual connotations and implications – figures in at least one persistent tale of international intrigue.

According to the story, recounted in the chevalier’s memoirs, the French King Louis XV wished to open a secret channel of communication with Elizabeth Romanov, then the Empress of Russia. The trouble – according to d’Eon – was that England was using its influence to prevent French emissaries (on pain of death) from entering Russia.

In order to circumvent English security, the Chevalier d’Eon claimed that he impersonated a woman and inveigled himself into “service as a maid of honour to the Empress.”

D’Eon was closely aligned with the House de Broglie, which eventually produced famed quantum physicist Louis de Broglie, who postulated the particle-wave duality of subatomic parts like electrons.

For example, he and Charles-François de Broglie, also known as the Marquis de Ruffec, were both operatives in Louis XV’s clandestine “King’s Secret” group. Among other things, the marquis worked with playwright and spy Pierre Beaumarchais, composer of The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro.

Together de Broglie and Beaumarchais lobbied the French government in support of the American Revolution. In fact, the duo was instrumental in convincing Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, to intervene on behalf of the Americans to the point where he assumed command of his own troops in the Continental Army.

6. Nicholas Roerich

Nicholas Roerich was a late-19^th to early 20^th-century Russian painter and occultist. He achieved early public acclaim both for his Symbolist oil compositions as well as for stage-costume designs – for example, in Igor Stravinsky’s 1913 The Rite of Spring.

He and his wife, Helena, became students of Buddhism, Hinduism, mythology, and Theosophy – which, of course, owed its formulation in large measure to Russian esoteric H. P. Blavatsky.

Similarly to Blavatsky, the Roerichs claimed to be in contact with Himalayan-based “Ascended Masters.”

These “Mahatmas” prompted them to create their own, mystical system known as “Agni Yoga.”

Eventually, the pair traveled to United States by way of Finland and Great Britain. In America, the Roerichs impressed Freemason and financier Louis L. Horch, who – in 1928 – paid for the construction of the Roerich Museum in New York City.

Among those who frequented the museum, then called the “Master Building,” was masonic philosopher Manly Palmer Hall.

Nicholas Roerich also became a spiritual advisor to politician Henry A. Wallace. At the time, Wallace served as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s secretary of agriculture. But he would become FDR’s third-term vice president. Had he not been edged out by Harry S. Truman during the 1944 election cycle, Wallace might have become president of the United States when F.D.R. died in office in 1945.

Because of his contacts, history, and mobility, Roerich was commissioned by Wallace to search southeast Asia in search of drought-resistant grasses to offset the negative effects of the “Dust Bowl.”

But, what he may really have been doing was attempting to secure local support for an Asian union – possibly around Eastern-messianic expectations.

Roerich is now counted among the ranks of that motley assortment of characters who took up the reigns of what has been called the “Great Game” after the British Empire went into eclipse. The phrase the “Great Game” – a 19^th-century coinage – was popularized by Freemason and novelist Rudyard Kipling, especially in his 1901 classic, Kim.

The degree to which masonry interconnected with political intrigue was vividly, if fancifully, showcased in Kipling’s 1888 short story, The Man Who Would Be King, which was adapted for film in 1975 by John Huston and featured actors Michael Caine, Sean Connery, and Christopher Plummer.

Also termed the “Tournament of Shadows,” the overarching power struggle between the British and Russian empires revolved around the geopolitical significance of portions of Asia, including Afghanistan, India, and Tibet.

“…[T]o many theorists [this is the]…heartland of the world, and [it is] riddled with symbolism.”

Pursuant to his mythological interests, Roerich appears to have been on the hunt for legendary locations supposedly imbued with magical powers.

For one thing, beneath the surface of Tibet – quite literally – was said to lie the mythical subterranean city of Agartha, supposed home to the Lord of the World.

Or, again, the “hidden paradise called Shambala” has long been rumored to be in the vicinity. Some claim that it is an “undiscovered city” somewhere in the Himalayas “in northern Tibet.” Others – including Roerich – seem to have searched for it in the Altai Mountains, in an area sometimes referred to as the “Russian Tibet.”

Interestingly, F.D.R. wasn’t the only world leader to fix his attentions on Tibet. Under Soviet “Chairman” Vladimir Lenin,[30] the cryptographer, spy, and Tantric Buddhist Gleb Ivanovich Bokii also attempted to locate Shambala.

Almost incredibly, one of the stated aims was to “merge” the sex-magical oriented “Kalachakra-tantra and ideas of Communism”.[31] For more on Tantra, see “10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults.”

Until his summary execution during Joseph Stalin’s “Great Purge,” Bokii was active in the U.S.S.R.’s numerous pre-KGB-era secret-police outfits, including the Cheka, NKVD, and OGPU.

In the next decade, then-German Führer Adolf Hitler sent his own exploratory party to the Tibetan region under zoologist Ernst Schäfer. The expedition was operated under the auspices of SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler’s Ahnenerbe,[32] which basically investigated what might be termed “esoteric genealogy.” The explorers sought to establish that “….Tibet …[was] the cradle of the Aryan race…”.

Also operating in the Indian subcontinent was the eccentric, French-born Greek and occultist Maximiani Julia Portas. Portas later converted to Hinduism and changed her name to Savitri Devi.

Her Hindu sympathies stemmed from an interpretation of the history and etymology of the word “Aryan.” Devi perceived a connexion between the ancient, Indo-Iranian people group of that name and the racial identification embraced by National Socialist Germany, by way of French ethnologist Arthur de Gobineau and British philosopher Houston Stewart Chamberlain.

5. J. G. Bennett

Another interesting figure in the vicinity was John Godolphin Bennett. “J. G.” Bennett was apparently a linguistic savant who was connected, in some fashion, to British intelligence.

After mastering Turkish, he was stationed in Constantinople (Istanbul) toward the tail end of World War One.

Perhaps significantly, later American Central Intelligence chief Allen Dulles was also in the same vicinity.

“In 1916 Dulles joined the U.S. Foreign Service. …He was assigned to Constantinople (later Istanbul) from October 1920 to April 1922, and then went to Washington, D.C., to become the State Department’s specialist on the Near East.”[33]

While in Turkey, Dulles was mixed up in the hoopla surrounding the so-called Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Specifically, he was among the first opinionators to label the document spurious.[34]

The Protocols are a whole other story. One commonly repeated theory holds that they are the creation of one Mathieu Golovinski, a Russian writer in France who acted as an agent for Pyotr Rachkovsky, head of the Tsar’s “secret police,” the Department for Protecting the Public Security and Order (abbreviated “Okhrana”).

Like Dulles’s experience, Bennett’s time in Turkey resulted in his own promotion under General Edmund Allenby. (Allenby had commanded Colonel Thomas Edward “T. E.” Lawrence, who became famous as “Lawrence of Arabia.”) Bennett “…was recruited to be the head of Military Intelligence ‘B’ Division, with responsibility for the entire Middle Eastern region.”[35]

Following the European war and the Bolshevik revolution, Bennett was assigned to surveil Russian émigrés and expatriates. This put him in contact with occultist G. I. Gurdjieff, and Gurdjieff’s principal disciple, P. D. Ouspensky. Apparently, the trio were introduced to one another through Prince Sabahaddin de Neuchâtel. Sabahaddin was simultaneously the scion of the House of Osman, the then-ruling Ottoman dynasty, as well as a supposed anti-dynasty agitator and proponent of democracy.

As an aside, the “Osman” name is intriguing. One recalls the following tidbit related to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. “A member of a prominent Saudi Arabian family with links to the Texas Bush clan, Osama (Usama) bin Laden was known to the CIA in the 1980s as Colonel Tim Osman, a successful leader of the Mujahiddeen.”[36]

Nevertheless, these associations – and an alleged near-death, out-of-body experience – warmed Bennett up to all things esoteric. He ended up delving into Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way, Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy, H. P. Blavatsky’s Theosophy, and even becoming a missionary for Indonesian guru Muhammad Subuh Sumohadiwidjojo, bringing the “Subud” movement to Britain.[37]

4. Theodor Reuss

Turning to police spies, we ought to mention Theodor Reuss.

Along with Carl Kellner, Reuss was one of the initial founders of the Ordo temple Orientis, or O.T.O.[38] We mentioned this organization in connexion with Aleister Crowley, who ratcheted its sex obsessions into the stratosphere.

For some of the lurid details, see “Top 10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults.”

But beyond their common interest in magia sexualis and Tantra, Crowley and Reuss shared another thing in common: supposed ties to intelligence work.

In the case of Reuss, this amounted to alleged involvement with the Prussian secret police.

As writer (and former Blondie drummer) Gary Lachman notes, this put Reuss in the orbit of anarchists and socialists. In fact, Reuss was expelled from “…the English Socialist League for spying on Karl Marx’s daughter Eleanor for the Germans…”.[39]

Bear in mind that the Prussian secret police are identified by contemporary writers as having been the motivating force behind the infamous – and previously mentioned – document known as the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.

Almost universally – and variously – denounced as a “forgery” or a “hoax,” the Protocols are part of a spate of nineteenth-century, socio-politically supercharged manuscripts with questionable provenances.

Interlude 1: William Thetford

We hope to be able to enumerate ten of the most salient of these in a future video. But, for the time being, we observe that the nexus of intelligence with quasi-religious texts isn’t confined to previous centuries.

Consider, as just a single example, the ponderous tome titled A Course in Miracles.

After the works of Alice Bailey and Edgar Cayce, the writings of Marilyn Ferguson[40] and James Redfield,[41] and alongside other supposedly “channeled” treatises,[42] such as those of Judy Zebra “J. Z.” Knight[43] and Dorothy Jane Roberts,[44] A Course in Miracles has been hugely influential for “New Agers.”

The “course” contains material supposedly “channeled” by a psychologist named Helen Shucman[45] from an entity elsewhere identified as “Jesus.”

However, Shucman merely dictated the words of a perceived “inner voice” to at least one other collaborator. According to the story, this person was her colleague, William Newton Thetford.

And this is where things take a strange turn. For, consulting Thetford’s autobiographical sketch, as presented on A Course in Miracles’s website, we find that he was trained by Carl Rogers at the University of Chicago. Rogers – widely regarded was a board member for the Central-Intelligence-Agency-connected Human Ecology Fund, which appears to have been an MK-Ultra cover operation.

In a testimony to the interconnectivity of the tangled web of characters we’ve been surveying, we note – in passing – that the Cornell University-based Human Ecology Fund was also the institutional base for Louis Jolyon West. Dr. West engaged in public shadow boxing with L. Ron Hubbard’s Church of Scientology and was also consulted as a “brain-washing expert” in the trial of Patricia Campbell Hearst. Better known as “Patty Heart,” she is the granddaughter of publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst, and become notorious when she was arrested for numerous crimes – including bank robberies – committed in connexion with a strange, leftist terror organization called the “Symbionese Liberation Army.” Heart’s defense claimed that she had been mind-controlled through rape and other forms of coercion. Dr. West successfully petitioned then-President Jimmy Carter for commutation of her prison sentence and she was later pardoned by Bill Clinton.

Back to Thetford: the psychologist further disclosed that he himself was recruited into the C.I.A. during the 1950s. According to Thetford’s account, as retold via an interview with “transpersonal” psychotherapist Frances Vaughan, the C.I.A. was expanding a battery of personality assessments that had originally been conceived by Harvard University Professor Henry Murray.

During World War II, Murray worked for William “Wild Bill” Donovan’s Office of Strategic Services, or the O.S.S. Murrary is infamous for conducting a series of barbaric human “experiments” on Harvard students – including the now-infamous so-called “Unabo(b)mer,” Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski.

During Murrary’s “research project,” an untold number of individuals were given mind-altering drugs, including LSD, or lysergic acid diethylamide, as well as psilocybin.[46] Others were – essentially – emotionally traumatized. It is entirely possible that a few hapless “volunteers” were subjected to both pharmacological and psychological abuses.

As journalist Alexander Cockburn wrote in one Los Angeles Times article in 1999: “What did Murray give Kaczynski? Did the experiment’s long-term effects help tilt him into the Unabomber’s homicidal rampages? The CIA’s mind experiment program was vast. How many other human time bombs were thus primed? How many of them have exploded?”[47]

According to an article in Psychology Today, “Murray …supervised psychoactive drug experiments, including …[those of psychedelic-drug advocate Timothy Leary].”[48] Leary once publicly stated that he had long “…been an admirer of Aleister Crowley” and believed that he had “…carried on much of the work that he started over a hundred years ago…”.[49]

In any case, Murray’s legacy was continued (in part) by John Gittinger, best known for developing a “Personality Assessment System” that C.I.A. used for creating and exploiting psychological weaknesses in targets of espionage or in recruitment scenarios.

Thetford states: The P.A.S. “…was so accurate that I began working with …[Gittinger] and others to further develop and refine it.”

As a final point, recall Helen Shucman’s claim to have heard a disembodied voice in her head. It is interesting to consider this alongside a further datum known as the “microwave auditory effect,” whereby “communications are generated directly inside the human head without the need of any receiving electronic device.”

This was described in 1961 by biologist Allan H. Frey. At the time Frey published a paper on the phenomenon – now sometimes called the “Frey Effect – he was employed by General Electric’s Advanced Electronics Center at the MK-Ultra-connected Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.[50]

The power to induce the effect in controllable and predictable ways was supposedly harnessed by Joseph C. Sharp, a neuropsychiatrist working at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

In other words, we have an ostensible C.I.A. operative named William N. Thetford who, by his own testimony, was a participant in MK-Ultra psychological experiments. He’s working closely to “record,” edit, and publicize what would – partially through the promotion of media gurus like Oprah Winfrey – become hugely influential text of New-Age spirituality. And this text was allegedly obtained through a process oddly reminiscent of the “Frey Effect” – a radar-induced sensation of “inner communication” that had just been identified prior to Helen Shucman’s adventures in “inner dictation.”[51]

The case is hardly the only curious interstice between “intelligence” and contemporary culture.

As mentioned before on this channel, consider (in this vein) a man who may have inspired the fictional, Marvel Comics character Howard Stark, father of Tony Stark, billionaire playboy and tech savant …and the real-life identity for the superhero known as Iron Man.

3. Jack Parsons

Of course, I have in mind the American, California Institute of Technology-associated rocket scientist John Whiteside Parsons, better known as “Jack.”

Given his possible inspirational rôle for the movie representation of Howard Stark, I’m sure it’s just an extraordinary coinkydink that his given name, at birth, was “Marvel.”

He was also a principal member, and later head, of the so-called “Agape Lodge,” a United States branch of Aleister Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis.

By day, he made numerous discoveries pertinent to the manufacture of both liquid-fueled and solid-state aeronautical engines. Parsons was one of the founders of Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Lab. One important series of test explosions was fired off on Halloween (no less) in 1936. The event, which was photographed for posterity, is known as the “Nativity” and is annually recreated, in memoriam.[52]

Many of Parsons’ engineering projects were conducted under the directorship of Hungarian-born American mathematician and physicist Theodore von Kármán.

According to an article published by Britain’s august Royal Society – which we mentioned throughout “Top 10 Gold-Making Alchemists” – “…the most famous of [von Kármán’s] ancestors is Yehuda Loew ben Bezalel, the ‘Exalted’ Rabbi of Prague, a famous sixteenth-century scholar… who is …credited by legend with the creation of the Golem of Prague…”.[53]

By night, Parsons accentuated these tantalizing biographical details by performing “sex-magickal” (sic) rituals, some of which were aimed at summoning elemental spirits. The culmination of his efforts was the “Bablon Working,” the stated goal of which was the incarnation of a quasi-demonic being on earth.

For more on this aspect of Parsons’ life, see our video “Top 10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults.”

Eventually, and perhaps inevitably, Parsons’ path crossed with the Hughes Aircraft Company, originally founded by eccentric engineer and entrepreneur Howard Hughes. Parsons obtained a Hughes chemical-manufacturing contract. While under Hughes’s employ, he was accused of document theft. This led to charges of corporate espionage and allegations that he was spying for the newly created nation of Israel.

To complicate matters further, Parsons was – for a time – romantically involved with one Sara Northrup. Sara was the sister of Parsons’ first wife, Helen Northrup. Sara eventually broke things off with Jack and eloped with then-fellow thelemite, and later Church of Scientology founder, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, better known as L. Ron Hubbard.

As if the love triangles weren’t bewildering enough, a tapestry of espionage intrigue was superimposed on the situation. Firstly, Hubbard denounced Sara as a Communist spy. Though, Hubbard’s allegations have largely been dismissed – and appear to have been rejected by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents – as sour grapes.

Secondly, Hubbard himself was connected to U.S. Naval Intelligence. He would later claim that his membership, along with Parsons and Northrup, in the Agape Lodge had merely been part of a covert sting operation geared toward eradicating “black-magic” cults in California.[54]

Although officially exonerated of wrongdoing himself, Parsons’ reputation – and acquaintances – resulted in the permanent revocation of his all-important security clearances. He was compelled into ancillary fields (such as pyrotechnics) to continue exercising his peculiar skill sets.

Ultimately, Parsons lost his life conducting some (obviously perilous) experiment in his home. Explanations ranged from the pedestrian – such as hastiness due to the pressures of meeting shipment demand for an order of fireworks from a Hollywood movie studio – to the exotic – such as the speculation that Parsons was attempting to animate a Frankenstein-like creature called a homunculus.

Of course, there were also those who believed Parsons had been murdered. Hypotheses included that there was some anti-Zionist conspiracy motivated by Parsons’ cooperation with Israel; that various industrial tycoons – including Hughes – might have been looking to rid themselves of their competition; or even that the Los Angeles Police Department may have sought vengeance for Parsons’ rôle in the conviction of Captain Earle E. Kynette, who had been charged with conspiracy in an attempted car bombing directed against a former detective (Harry J. Raymond) who had blown the whistle on law-enforcement corruption.[55]

This subplot “thickens,” as it were, when one discovers that Captain Kynette didn’t simply preside over beat cops. He was the head of the L.A.P.D.’s “intelligence unit.”[56] He and his officers were themselves referred to in press clippings as “police spies.”[57]

2. John Dee

John Dee already had a reputation as a skilled astrologer, cartographer, and mathematician when he acquired a curious book that may have assisted – or even inspired – him in a more covert path.

The book, titled Steganographia,[58] had been written circa 1500 by the mysterious Benedictine monk Johannes Trithemius.[59]

The contents – and significance – of the book are still being debated (some 500 years later). But it’s clear that it uses ostensibly magical emblems and formulæ to convey groundbreaking techniques in cryptography.

In fact, the word “steganography” (albeit uncommon in conversation around the water cooler) has entered English, where it refers to “the practice of concealing messages or information within other nonsecret text or data.”[60]

And this appears to be precisely how John Dee applied the procedure. 17^th-century English polymath Robert Hooke,[61] writing at the turn of the 18^th century, “suggested, in the chapter Of Dr. Dee’s Book of Spirits, that John Dee made use of Trithemian steganography to conceal his communication with Queen Elizabeth I.”[62]

In this way, Dee – if I may be forgiven the expression – took a page out of the book of yet another Renaissance “magus” who had been influenced by Trithemius, the German polymath Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. Like Dee, whom he inspired, Agrippa was fascinated by codes and by all things esoteric, on which he wrote the seminal Three Books of Occult Philosophy.

And like his later, English counterpart (Dee), Agrippa also seems to have been connected to the world of espionage, and may have functioned as a “diplomatic spy” for Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I.[63]

Likewise, Dee seems to have at one time operated as an “intelligencer” for the English Crown. Reportedly, when Sir Francis Walsingham was appointed chief spy Queen Elizabeth, the rôle for which he is principally remembered, “he found it necessary to consult with the only man in England who understood encryption ciphers and who (legend has it) had long since served as the queen’s spy: John Dee.”[64]

There is an “idea of Dee as a roving James Bond of Tudor times” which, though it is “far-fetched” in certain respects – for example, Dee was certainly not regarded as a lady’s man – nevertheless has a “basis” in fact and history.[65]

For example, and remarkably, according to author Richard Deacon,[66] “…twentieth-century author” Ian Fleming “unconsciously [borrowed] as a code name for his hero the very signature used by Bond’s Elizabethan counterpart – 007.”[67]

Though Deacon admits that, overall, “despite his signature of 007, …[Dee] can better be compared to Admiral Sir Reginald Hall, Director of Naval Intelligence in World War I, than to James Bond.”[68]

“Unlike Bond, he was not directly involved in the maritime defence (sic) of the nation, but he was able to lend his technical and navigational know-how to sailors at the court of Elizabeth.”[69] To extend the analogy to Fleming-inspired characters, “[m]aybe he was a little more like Q than Bond…”.[70]

Interlude 2: Francis Bacon

We might as well continue this Elizabethan saga by speaking of the courtier to whom, according to Masonic philosopher Manly Palmer Hall, John Dee might have passed his torch of occult knowledge.

Francis Bacon[71] was a late-16^th to early 17^th-century English lawyer, philosopher, and politician. Intellectually, he was a trailblazing British empiricist. He articulated a method of reasoning that is still referred to a “Baconian induction” and was a forerunner of what evolved into the “scientific method.”

At his high point under King James I, Bacon became Lord High Chancellor. But his career as a member of court ended on a sour note. Bacon’s longtime enemy, the famed jurist Sir Edward Coke, brought numerous “corruption” charges – including accepting brides – against him.

Beyond his duties as a statesman, and seemingly apart from his rôle in the development of experimental science, Bacon may also have been an esoteric adept. As noted, Freemasonic writer Manly Hall, possibly drawing upon a tradition that was transmitted to him via Max Heindel’s[72] Rosicrucian Fellowship, represents Bacon as the inheritor of an occult gnosis that was transmitted to him by John Dee.

This is a story for another time. But, what is interesting from the standpoint of the current topic, is that Lord Bacon’s younger brother, Anthony, was undeniably a member of the Elizabethan-era spy network headed by the previously mentioned Sir Francis Walsingham.[73]

The Bacon family was a powerful force in England at the time. And it raises the question of how much sharing of information – and vision – might have occurred between the brothers.

In this respect, the Bacon family bears some similarity to the Dulles family.

In twentieth-century America, of course, Allen Welsh Dulles – having been instrumental in the wartime Office of Strategic Services and its successor, the Central Intelligence Agency – was indisputably one of the United States’s highest-ranking spies.

At the same time, his older brother, John Foster Dulles, was an attorney and high-level political insider. He was the Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, worked closely with Republican party boss Thomas E. Dewey, and was a key player in the U.S.’s early participation in the United Nations.

The Dulles brothers coordinated in at least two covert actions, both considered by Masonic President Harry S. Truman but ultimately authorized and implemented by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The first was Operation Ajax, by which the C.I.A. and Britain’s MI6 – in 1953 – overthrew the democratically elected Iranian leader Mohammad Mosaddegh and installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in his place. The second was Operation PBSuccess which, the following year, ousted democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz and installed a military junta.

1. Benjamin Franklin

Speaking of coups and rebellions, and as we teased in our introduction, we would be remiss if we didn’t say something about one of America’s homegrown revolutionaries.

And that brings us (at last) to number one. Benjamin Franklin, of course, was an 18^th-century polymath who is most famous for his rôle in securing the United States as its own nation, independent of England.

As one of the country’s preëminent statesmen, he was a cosigner for each of three, über-important, formative documents: the Declaration of Independence, the U.S Constitution, and the Treaty of Paris.

It’s worth mentioning that Franklin arguably displays numerous similarities to Francis Bacon.

For example, along with his Italian contemporary, Galileo, Bacon is regarded as a father of modern experimental science.

Similarly, having made contributions to the studies of electricity and oceanography, Benjamin Franklin was also at the forefront of investigation during his era. Several of his inventions, including bifocal lenses and the lightning rod, are still in use.

Moreover, according to Baconian legend, the man known variously as Lord Verulam and the Viscount St. Alban, figures in Rosicrucianism and the beginning of Freemasonry.

Likewise, Franklin not only became a mason, but he was elevated to the position of master at lodges both in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as well as in Paris, France.

There, in the “Lodge of the Nine Sisters”[74] – which (coincidentally or not) later became an important center for the bloody French Revolution[75] – he was initiated by Court de Gebelin, fountainhead of Western-occult fascination with the Tarot deck.

Franklin later personally initiated François-Marie Arouet, better known as the satirist Voltaire.

In truth, freemasonry may have just been the tip of the iceberg of Franklin’s occult involvement. Though, a word of caution is in order. The word “occult” has a range of meanings.[76] We discussed some of these in “10 Arcane Words.” For a more detailed survey, see that presentation.

But, somewhere along the “occult spectrum” lies the Bavarian Illuminati, to which Franklin can be connected through pamphleteer Thomas Paine.[77]

Paine was on intimate terms with one Nicolas Bonneville (and, incidentally, with Bonneville’s wife). Prior to the order’s office dissolution in 1787, Bonneville had been converted to Illuminism by Adam Weishaupt’s chief lieutenant, Christian Bode.[78]

At the same time, allegedly, the seeming sober-minded politician and printer was himself a member of a quasi-Satanic group known colloquially as the “Hell-Fire Club.”

Technically, the order to which Franklin is said to have belonged alternately called itself the “Brotherhood” or “Knights of St. Francis of Wycombe” and the “Monks of Medmenham” – both phrases intended as parodies of Christian (especially Catholic) religiosity. But the label “Hell-Fire Club” is the one that has stuck.

It turns out that there was a predecessor club by that exact name. This original incarnation goes back to a curious, 18^th-century English duke and playboy named Philip Wharton.

At various times, and somewhat like the later Frenchman who called himself “Léo Taxil” (for the details, see “Top 10 Gold-Making Alchemists of All Time”), the paradoxical Wharton posed as both friend and enemy of Freemasonry. Supposedly, he once presided over the Premiere Grand Lodge of England as well as the Grande Loge de France.[79] However, after his alleged expulsion, he founded an even more secret society. Wharton ran this supposedly “anti-Masonic” organization – called the Gormogons – along with Andrew Michael Ramsay, a Scotsman known by the French title Chevalier, that is, “Knight.”

In a famous speech delivered in 1736, Ramsay connected Freemasonry to a group of Catholic crusaders. Later typically identified as the Knights Templar, the military order to which Ramsay referred was said to have passed its mysteries on to those men who founded masonry.

This idea, called “Templarism,” is detectable in esoteric degrees of “appendant” societies, such as the York Rite which offers a set of “Knights Templar” degrees. But even within the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite[80] – which, in an apparent nod to our Scottish Chevalier, is sometimes designated by the French word Écossais – one finds shades of Templarism, for example in the so-called Knight Rose Croix.

Politically, Ramsay was also a Jacobite. This group, whose name comes from the Latin Jacobus, lent its support to James II, the Catholic king of England who was deposed by Parliament during the “Glorious Revolution” and replaced by the Protestant William of Orange.

There has long been speculation that certain Jacobites, like the Chevalier Ramsay – with the possible assistance of French Jesuits – attempted to rewrite various Freemasonic rituals. Their presumed intention was to introduce these reformulations back to England to increase public support for the ousted House of Stuart and possibly for Catholicism.

At least, this line – that Freemasonry had been coopted by agents within the Vatican’s militant Society of Jesus – was pushed by the likes of Bode, Bonneville, and Weishaupt. These men billed the Illuminati as the anti-dote. Its anti-authoritarianism was pro-revolution and equally opposed to kings and popes.

Philip Wharton himself had Jacobite sympathies for much of his life. And Wharton was friends with James II’s son, James Francis Edward Stuart, known variously as the “Old Pretender” or as the rightful King James III – depending on the side one favored.

Late in his short life, Wharton seems to have abandoned the Jacobite cause and (like Emanuel Swedenborg) may have been a spy for English Prime Minister Robert Walpole. Walpole was a stalwart advocate for the Georgian Kings of the German House of Hanover, and he employed numerous covert agents, including the ostensible anti-Jacobite George Dodington, 1st Baron Melcombe.

Supposedly, George Dodington also happened to be a member of Francis Dashwood’s circle. When Dashwood rebooted Wharton’s Hell-Fire Club, beginning at London’s George and Vulture tavern, Dodington reportedly signed up, along with other influential persons – including Benjamin Franklin.

This is interesting for many reasons, not least of which is writer Richard Deacon’s contention that the club served as a “cover” for “British Intelligence” and, in effect, became a “…centre of English espionage.”[81]

And Benjamin Franklin was right in the thick of things. In fact, according to one researcher, Franklin came to England in 1758 expressly “…to discuss the future of the American colonies with Dashwood.”[82]

Additionally, Franklin had close dealings in Paris with Edward Bancroft, who was later unmasked as a double agent. It is disputed whether Franklin knew of Bancroft’s intrigues or not.[83]

As if that weren’t enough, Franklin appears to have known and corresponded with the Chevalier d’Eon, who we covered earlier. According to Deacon: “The Philadelphia philosopher and the chevalier became friendly in the 1770s when the French master spy was assigned to London and promptly joined the Hell-Fire Club.”

All this doesn’t necessarily mean that Franklin was a spy himself, that he had treasonous designs, or that he was working for the British. Tho, historian Cecil B. Currey raises this precise possibility in his 1972 study, Code Number 72 / Ben Franklin: Patriot or Spy?[84]

Admittedly, Franklin was cunning. It could be that he was hedging his bets if the Colonists were defeated.

Alternatively, Franklin may have been conspiring with a group of supporters inside George III’s own government. In this regard it’s worth recalling that Freemasonry extended throughout Britain and its colonies. American lodges frequently obtained their “charters,” or their authority to operate, from either the Grand Lodge of England.[85] So, that there existed some transatlantic, supranational confederation is not outside the realm of possibility.

One does wonder, however, just what Franklin was doing cavorting with the “Hell-Fire” group, if not simply using their meeting place as a convenient locale for hatching political schemes.

It should be remembered that Franklin was something of a ladies’ man. He himself, in his Autobiography, admitted his weakness for the opposite sex, writing that he was “…hurried …frequently into intrigues with low women that fell in [his] way.”[86]

And his womanizing ways continued well beyond his youth. As one crude, 18^th-century poem put it: “Franklin, tho plagued with fumbling age / Needs nothing to excite him. / But is too ready to engage / When younger arms invite him.”[87]

The received, and sanitized, view of the club is that it was characterized by “ritual comedy, …banqueting and drinking, …and …wenching …”.[88]

Though, to read Daniel Mannix’s account, “…the Black Mass was celebrated and a solemn sacrifice [was] made to the devil of the virginity of the young girls lured into the cave system”[89] – a reference to the chalk caves directly beneath St. Lawrence Church, in West Wycombe, Southeast England, where Dashwood hosted Hell-Fire revels.

This darker complexion to the story might be dismissed as so much scandalmongering against the esteemed author of the Poor Richard’s Almanack were it not for an odd discovery made in 1998 by workmen renovating Franklin’s old digs at #36 Craven Street in London.

“…[O]ver 1200 pieces of [human] bone were retrieved… [f]rom a one metre wide, one metre deep pit…”.[90]

One of the builders who made the grisly discovery exclaimed: “It was like a horror movie”![91]

According to the London Times: “Most of the bones show signs of having been dissected, sawn or cut. One skull has been drilled with several holes.”[92]

At the time, “Paul Knapman, the Westminster coroner,” said in an official statement: “I cannot totally discount the possibility of a crime.”[93]

However, this angle was never investigated. According to the Benjamin Franklin House website: Since it was “determined that the bones were more than 100 years old …an inquest was not required.”[94]

Instead, is casually asserted that the bones are the “remnants of an anatomy school run from the House by William Hewson, son-in-law of Franklin’s landlady, Margaret Stevenson.”[95]

Even if this nonchalant reply is accepted at face value, one might worry that it glosses over several important points. For instance, there’s the issue of just where the bodies were obtained.

The further worry about why the remains of fellow human beings were so callously discarded is usually “answered” with the observation that the basement pit was “probably” used “to hide [the bones] because grave robbing was illegal.”[96] But, this solves nothing – unless, that is, learning about a Founding Father’s complicity in criminal grave robbery and evidence tampering is only worth an insouciant shrug.

That Hewson lived at the house for two years is mentioned in the usual retelling. But why Franklin shared quarters with him is evidently a question that is not interesting enough to answer. Likewise, the obvious follow-up query – namely, why Franklin would permit his home to be converted into a makeshift “anatomy school” – is apparently also of little to no consequence.

While one wrestles with these lacunae, commentators on the “Craven Street Bones” are busying themselves displaying an inexplicable omniscience in virtue of their (typically solemn) assurances that our American hero had nothing to do with the unsanctioned surgeries, themselves. Perish the thought!

Though, how Franklin’s aloofness and innocence could be ascertained without an investigation is anyone’s guess. Doubtless it is an inference from axioms such as that “he that would live in peace & at ease, must not speak all he knows or judge all he sees.”[97]

Nevertheless, on pain of being labeled gadflies, we must press this inquiry a bit further. After all, William Hewson was said to have been trained by anatomist William Hunter. In an article published in 2010 by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, one may read a “prima facie case” that Hunter, along with accomplice William Smellie, “were responsible for a series of 18th-century …murders of pregnant women, with a death total greater than the combined murders committed by the famous 19th-century murderers, Burke and Hare, and Jack the Ripper.”[98]

Not only this, but – as mentioned in “Top 10 Gold-Making Alchemists of All Time” – Freemasonic reference materials ritualize the word “autopsy.” This implies that, in a bizarre – and arguably twisted – way, some Masons (perhaps like Franklin) may view this procedure both medically and esoterically. But, surely, there’s nothing to see, here!

Conclusion

Lest viewers conclude that these odd – and frankly alarming – connexions are relics of the past, we have only to ponder the career of New-World-Order booster George Herbert Walker Bush.[99]

Bush had moved in upper-level political orbits since at least the early 1950s, when he worked to support the presidential campaign of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

But he was introduced (in earnest) into federal positions by Richard M. Nixon, who appointed him the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and chair of the Republican National Committee.

Coincidentally or not, Bush’s tenure corresponded to revelations about a sensational (and apparently bungled) burglary attempt – and ensuing coverup – at the RNC’s counterpart Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. The whole sordid business involved key personnel in Nixon’s Whitehouse and resulted in the president’s unprecedented resignation in 1974.

Reportedly, Bush’s profile was high enough throughout this period that he was considered for the vice presidency by Both Nixon and Gerald R. Ford.[100] It’s well known that Bush eventually did become V.P. under Ronald Reagan. And he nearly became president on March 30, 1981, when a would-be assassin’s bullets crippled White House Press Secretary James Brady and nearly claimed Reagan’s life.

It’s less well known that the Bushes had ties to the family of accused shooter, John Hinckley Jr. According to a New York Times article, dated April Fool’s Day, 1981: “The eldest Hinckley child, Scott, … is …a friend of Neil Bush, the son of Vice President Bush.”[101]

Neil Bush and Scott Hinckley were such close friends that the two had planned to attend a dinner together “…at the young Bushes’ home …but,” we’re told, “the dinner was canceled after the shooting.”

The “elder” Bush, who would in 1989 succeed Ronald Reagan and become the 41^st president of the United States, had been tapped in 1976 by then-President Gerald Ford to assume headship of the Central Intelligence Agency.

You’ll recall that Gerald Rudolph Ford – whose birth name had been “Leslie Lynch King Jr.” – had also been a member of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, better known as the “Warren Commission.”

Interestingly, although Bush denied having had any intelligence experience prior to his becoming chief spook, a provocative memo from longtime Federal Bureau of Investigation Director, J. Edgar Hoover, suggests otherwise. “Hoover reported that, on the day after JFK’s murder, the bureau had provided two individuals with briefings. One was ‘Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency.’ The other: ‘Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency.’”[102]

Just a year prior to Bush’s appointment as DCI, Ford was himself the target of two assassination attempts, just a few weeks apart. The first, on September 5, 1975, involved Manson-family member Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme and occurred in Sacramento, California.

We mentioned Charles Manson in “Top 10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults.”

The second assassination attempt, September 22, 1975, took place in San Francisco in front of the St. Francis Hotel. This public attention on the name “Saint Francis” reminded synchromystic extraordinaire, James Shelby Downard, of the Hell-Fire Club which – as we discussed – jokingly called its members monks of “Saint Francis.”

One Sara Jane Moore was arrested and served thirty-two years for the crime, until she was paroled in 2007 – during the presidency of George W. Bush. Moore, who was at one point an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had peculiar ties to William Randolph Hearst’s organization “People In Need” and to the Patty Hearst case. According to Time Magazine, Moore made national headlines “in the early 1950s by collapsing …in front of the White House …suffering from amnesia”.[103]

That’s probably not worth looking into. Nor, I suppose, is it newsworthy that George Herbert Walker Bush had connexions to so many high-level political killings – or attempts.

As stated, and following the bizarre pair of failed assassinations on Ford, Bush, “Sr.” served as director of central intelligence. His assumption of that title came fast on the heels of previous DCI William Colby’s surprisingly cooperative testimony during Congressional investigations into C.I.A. activities.[104]

Colby himself was found dead under suspicious circumstances in 1996. Oh! I almost forgot to mention the occult angle.

Along with his son, and 43^rd President, George Walker, as well as numerous other policy-making heavy hitters (like “Dubya’s” opponent in the 2004 presidential election, John Forbes Kerry), George Herbert Walker Bush was a member of the ultra-exclusive, and spookily named, secret society “Skull and Bones” operating at Yale University.

They meet in a walled-off building affectionately referred to as the “Tomb.” Supposedly, the Bonesmen have a collection of human skulls – including those previously resting on the shoulders of famous Apache elder Geronimo and of the previously mentioned Mexican revolutionary born José Doroteo Arango, but better known as “Pancho Villa.”

But that establishment-recruitment mechanism, which masquerades as a college fraternity, will have to be the subject of future study.

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[1] Some figures appear to have been accused as part of character-assassination campaigns. This is the current line taken, for example, on the late-19^th-to-20^th-c. Russian monk and mystic Grigori Efimovich Rasputin. He had a strange and multifarious reputation that included accusations of espionage, sexual deviancy, and an almost supernatural (though plainly not inexhaustible) ability resist death. However, these claims are now usually explained as having been defamatory attacks launched by Tsarist enemies during the tumultuous year 1917, which saw two successive revolutions. See, e.g., Albinko Hasic, “5 Myths and Truths About Rasputin,” Time Magazine, Dec. 29, 2016, <https://time.com/4606775/5-myths-rasputin/>. Be that as it may, Rasputin does seem to have been involved in political intrigues. Additionally, there are those who still advocate for there having been some connexion to intelligence. According to press reports, Rasputin may even have been killed by British agent Oswald Rayner. See Karyn Miller, “British spy ‘fired the shot that finished off Rasputin’,” Telegraph (U.K.), Sept. 19, 2004, <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/3344528/British-spy-fired-the-shot-that-finished-off-Rasputin.html>.

[2] This is far from uncontroversial. Wikipedia (“A∴A∴,” Apr. 2, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%E2%88%B4A%E2%88%B4>) provides a useful summary of the options. One possibility is that the phrase is actually Greek, rather than Latin. On this view, A∴A∴ stands for Άστρον Αργόν (Astron Argon or Aster Argos), which still translate to “Silver Star.”

This proposal is credited to James Eshelman, who gives an explanation based upon Jewish numerology (the Gematria of Kabbalah).

A variant on this Kabbalistic theme has it that A∴A∴ is a reference to the semitic phrase Arikh Anpin, sometimes referred to as the “Macroprosopus” (as in the Christian Cabalist Christian Knorr von Rosenroth) or the “Long Face.” This is an obscure concept in the emanationist cosmology of Jewish mysticism, and derivative systems. For more insight into the basics of both – emanation and Kabbalah – see my video “10 Arcane Words.”

A further option is that A∴A∴ represents the chimeric notion of a sublime, Acanum Arcanorum, that is, a “secret of secrets.” Indeed, Crowley appeared much taken with this sort of concept. Specifically, O.T.O. founders Carl Kellner and Theodor Reuss both professed to have discovered such an, ahem… penetrating mystery in the complicated subject of “sex magic,” to which I devoted an entire presentation. (See “Top 10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults.”)

Alternatively, one sees the phrase “Angel and Abyss” crop up periodically. Crowley certainly placed heavy emphasis both on the notion of a “Holy Guardian Angel” as well as of the indispensable significance of “crossing the Abyss” on one’s journey toward gnosis.

The Wiki authors also state that 20th-c. American novelist Lyon Sprague de Camp floated “Atlantean Adepts” as a candidate in his 1980 book, The Ragged Edge of Science (Philadelphia: Owlswick Press).

To round things out, Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea asserted (in their The Illuminatus! Trilogy, New York: Dell, 1975) that A∴A∴ doesn’t represent anything. To hear them tell it, anyone who presumes to decode the name gives himself away as a pretender.

[3] Theosophical Society (co-)foundress, Helena Blavatsky, has also been suspected of being an intelligence agent. She was interviewed by the British-based Society for Psychical Research. At the end of 1885, its highly critical was report was circulated. In it, principal investigator Richard Hodgson (who was an associate of both William James and Henry Sidgwick) denounced her as a fraud and “…accused Blavatsky of being a spy for the Russian government…”, according to “Helena Blavatsky,” Wikipedia, Aug. 31, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena_Blavatsky>; citing Bruce F. Campbell, Ancient Wisdom Revived: A History of the Theosophical Movement, Berkeley, Cal.: Univ. of Cal. Press, 1980, pp. 92–93; Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Helena Blavatsky, Berkeley, Cal.: North Atlantic Books, 2004, p. 13; Gary Lachman, Madame Blavatsky: The Mother of Modern Spirituality, New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher; Penguin, 2012, pp. 228–230 and 236–237; and Peter Washington, Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon: Theosophy and the Emergence of the Western Guru, London: Secker & Warburg, 1993, pp. 82–83. On Hodgson’s associations, see Nevill Drury, “Hodgson, Richard,” The Dictionary of the Esoteric, Delhi, India: Motilal Banarsidass Publ., 2004, p. 144. Hodgson’s conclusions were questioned by Vernon Harrison. See Goodrick-Clark, op. cit., p. 14.

[4] E.g., Crowley’s main Wikipedia article – “Aleister Crowley” – refers to Viereck as a “German spy.” At least, in the version available as of Sept. 24, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley>. Though, Viereck’s own article contains no such reference, and merely calls him a “pro-German propagandist.” See “George Sylvester Viereck,” Wikipedia, Aug. 8, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Sylvester_Viereck>.

[5] Gary Lachman, Aleister Crowley: Magick, Rock and Roll, and the Wickedest Man in the World, p. 196.

[6] Supposedly born Gerald Souter.

[7] See Peter Parker, “The Long and Disgraceful Life of Britain’s Pre-Eminent Bounder,” book review, Tom Cullen, The Man Who Was Norris, Spectator (U.K.), Jul. 19, 2014, <https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-long-and-disgraceful-life-of-britain-s-pre-eminent-bounder>.

[8] Tobias Churton, Aleister Crowley in England, Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2021, p. 207.

[9] “Tom Driberg,” Wikipedia, Oct. 13, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Driberg>.

[10] Tom Driberg, Guy Burgess: A Portrait With Background, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1956.

[11] And later Finnish and Swedish ruler.

[12] “Michał Sedziwoj,” Wikipedia, Aug. 25, 2022, <https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micha%C5%82_S%C4%99dziw%C3%B3j>.

[13] Michał Sedziwoj,” loc. cit.

[14] No fewer than three, and perhaps four. They were: False Dmitry I (fl. 1582-1606), False Dmitry II (fl. 1607-1610), and False Dmitry III (fl. 1611-1612). If there were a fourth (False Dmitry IV), he would have been active circa 1611-1612.

[15] Of course, Ivan the Terrible, was married to Anastasia Romanovna, through whom proceeded the House of Romanov. This dynasty would end with the abdication, and eventual murder, of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia by the Bolsheviks. As an aside, Tsar Nicholas II bore an uncanny resemblance to his cousin, King George V of Britain, as can be seen from a famous 1913 photograph depicting the two side by side. See <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tsar_Nicholas_II_%26_King_George_V.JPG>.

[16] Mehmet Oz supposedly also is an adherent of Sufism.

[17] Elsewhere, it is referred to as the Rite hermétique (“Hermetic Rite”).

[18] Marsha Keith Schuchard, Emanuel Swedenborg, Secret Agent on Earth and in Heaven: Jacobites, Jews and Freemasons in Early Modern Sweden, Leiden: Brill, 2011.

[19] Also written: Comte de Saint Germain. He is also said to have used a panoply of other titles, including: Comte Bellamarre, Marquis de Montferrat, Prince Ragoczy, Chevalier Schoening, Comte Soltikoff, Graf Tzarogy, and Chevalier / Count Weldon. See Isabella Cooper-Oakley, The Comte De Saint Germain, 2nd ed., London: Whitefriars Press, 1912, passim.

[20] See, Horace Walpole, “The Rebel Army Has Retreated From Derby…,” letter to Horace Mann, Dec. 9, 1745, Letters of Horace Walpole, vol. 1, Charles Duke Yonge, ed., London: T. Fisher Unwin; New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1890; online by Ted Garvin and Linda Cantoni, eds., Project Gutenberg, <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/12073/12073.txt>.

[21] Or Rákóczy.

[22] Colin Wilson, The Occult: A History, New York: Random House, 1971, p. 360.

[23] There is a rough – and perhaps prototypical – distinction between “practical” and “speculative” aspects of many occult disciplines, chief examples are alchemy and Jewish Kabbalah.

[24] This coincides with “St. John’s Day,” that is, the Nativity of John the Baptist. Whether deliberately or not, it’s celebrated on what was apparently referred to as “Midsummer Day” in certain pagan contexts. “St. John’s Day,” Wikipedia, Mar. 28, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John%27s_Day>.

[25] See the article by that title: “The First Recorded Initiation in England,” Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon, Dec. 1, 2010, <https://freemasonry.bcy.ca/texts/moray_r.html>; a reproduction of, and citing, Dudley Wright, The Builder, 1921.

[26] “Robert Moray,” Wikipedia, May 13, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moray>. Before his restoration, Charles II was spied upon by agents of Oliver Cromwell. One such spy, Henry Manning (not to be confused with the 19^th-c. Anglican-turned-Catholic Cardinal Henry Edward Manning), reported to spymaster John Thurloe before he was discovered and executed. See John P. Kenyon, The Stuarts: A Study in English Kingship, Glasgow: Fontana Collins, 1979 [London: B.T. Batsford, 1958], p. 103; archived on Google Books, <https://books.google.com/books?id=vdA_AAAAYAAJ>. Relatedly, Cromwell was interfacing with Jewish spies – or “intelligencers” – such as Antonio Fernandez Carvajal (who may have been an agent of Manasseh ben Israel). See Joseph Jacobs, “Carvajal, Antonio Fernandez,” Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906, online, <https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4089-carvajal-antonio-fernandez>.

[27] Moray was also friends with alchemist Thomas Vaughan.

[28] Of course, William of Orange came from the Netherlands (the Dutch Republic). The predecessor of the Bank of England (and, for that matter, the bank of Sweden, est. 1668) was the Bank of Amsterdam (1609).

[29] Portrait artist Richard Cosway also figured in the same Masonic-Swedenborgian circle. Among other subjects, Cosway painted George Augustus Frederick, then the Prince of Wales and the future King George IV. George Augustus Frederick’s father, of course, was King George III, against whom the American Revolutionaries successfully revolted and for whom the Prince of Wales served as regent during George III’s extended periods of mental incapacity. Cosway’s wife, Maria, was also alleged involved with French “Illuminism” and is said to have had a romantic entanglement with American Thomas Jefferson when he was an ambassador to France. See, e.g., “Maria Cosway,” Wikipedia, Sept 22, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Cosway> and “Richard Cosway,” Wikipedia, Jul. 19, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Cosway>.

[30] Born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov.

[31] “Gleb Bokii,” Wikipedia, Sept. 27, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleb_Bokii>.

[32] Literally, “ancestral heritage.”

[33] Kirk H. Beetz, “Dulles, Allen Welsh,” Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, Thematic Series: The 1960s; online at Encyclopedia.com, May 17, 2018, <https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/history/us-history-biographies/allen-welsh-dulles>.

[34] “Allen Dulles,” Wikipedia, Aug. 29, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Dulles>.

[35] “John G. Bennett,” Wikipedia, Aug. 15, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_G._Bennett>.

[36] Alison Broinowski, “Many Happy Returns of al-Qaeda,” Australian Institute of International Affairs (online), Aug. 11, 2018, <https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/many-happy-returns-of-al-qaeda/>.

[37] See “Bennett,” Wikipedia, loc. cit. and “Subud,” Wikipedia, Mar. 5, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subud>.

[38] Others associated with the group’s earliest period include Franz Hartmann and Heinrich Klein.

[39] Gary Lachman, Aleister Crowley: Magick, Rock and Roll, and the Wickedest Man in the World, p. 175. As Lachman later observed, the comingling of occultism and sex (in a European context) had been prefigured by the curious Moravian Nicolas Zinzendorf and the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg.

[40] The Aquarian Conspiracy (Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, 1980).

[41] The Celestine Prophecy: An Adventure (Hoover, Ala.: Satori: 1993).

[42] Some people might include others in this category as well, e.g., Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Neale Donald Walsch, and others.

[43] Born Judith Darlene Hampton, she supposedly channels an entity known as “Ramtha.”

[44] She is responsible for a slew of material communicated to her by a being named “Seth.”

[45] Born Helen Dora Cohn.

[46] Suspiciously, Louis Jolyon West was also active at the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic in San Francisco, California during the height of the 1960s “hippie-countercultural revolution” – at least, as it was depicted by mainstream media outlets like Time-Life. Military psychologist James Sanford Ketchum was also in attendance.

[47] Alexander Cockburn, “We’re Reaping Tragic Legacy From Drugs,” L.A. Times, Jul. 6, 1999, <https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jul-06-me-53482-story.html>.

[48] Jonathan Moreno, “Harvard’s Experiment on the Unabomber, Class of ’62: An odd footnote to Kaczynski’s class reunion,” Matt Huston, reviewer, Psychology Today, May 25, 2012, <https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/impromptu-man/201205/harvards-experiment-the-unabomber-class-62>.

[49] “Timothy Leary: I carried on Aleister Crowley’s work,” interview excerpt, [PBS,] chellow2, YouTube, uploaded May 1, 2008, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2gY3dSqs68A>.

[50] “The Work of Allan H. Frey,” Cell Phone Task Force, <https://cellphonetaskforce.org/the-work-of-allan-h-frey/>.

[51] Another participant in the creative process was a neo-gnostically inclined psychologist named Kenneth Wapnick.

[52] John Carter, Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons, Port Townsend, Wa.: Feral House, 2005, p. 15; online at <https://books.google.com/books?id=TIWoTlHT4xYC>. Another character in the mix was Brooklyn, N.Y.-native Martin Summerfield (1916-1996). Perhaps apropos of nothing, the German intel chief Felix Sommerfeld – whose surname is merely “summer field,” auf Deutsch – has no recorded date of death on his Wikipedia page. The ultimate paragraph of the article on Sommerfeld reads: “In June 1918, Sommerfeld was interned in Fort Oglethorpe, GA as an enemy alien.[19] He was released in 1919. A few trips back and forth to Mexico have been recorded in the 1920s and 30s. However, the German agent disappeared in the 1930s, though he does show up in 1942 at age 63 residing at 117 West 17th Street in New York City,[20] after which his whereabouts remain unknown. …[19] The Washington Post, June 21, 1918, “Held as Enemy Alien.” [20] Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.” All online at: “Felix A. Sommerfeld,” Wikipedia, May 7, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_A._Sommerfeld>.

[53] Sydney Goldstein, “Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society: Theodore Von Kármán, 1881-1963,” Nov. 1, 1966, <https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbm.1966.0016> & <https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbm.1966.0016>.

[54] “Hubbard broke up black magic in America …L. Ron Hubbard was still an officer of the U.S. Navy, because he was well known as a writer and a philosopher and had friends amongst the physicists, he was sent in to handle the situation. He went to live at the house and investigated the black magic rites and the general situation and found them very bad… Hubbard’s mission was successful far beyond anyone’s expectations. The house was torn down. Hubbard rescued a girl they were using. The black magic group was dispersed and destroyed and has never recovered.” Source: “L. Ron Hubbard,” Wikipedia, Oct. 3, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard#cite_note-355>; citing “Scientology: New Light on Crowley,” The Sunday Times (U.K.), Dec. 28, 1969, n.p.

[55] See, e.g., “Police Captain Earle E. Kynette sits in court after being charged with conspiracy to commit murder, Los Angeles, 1938,” archived photograph, Los Angeles Daily News, February 1938; Univ. of Cal., Los Angeles, <https://digital.library.ucla.edu/catalog/ark:/21198/zz0027z90w>. Two others implicated were Fred Browne (ultimately acquitted) and Roy J. Allen (eventually convicted along with Kynette). The name “Allen” is an interesting study in its own right. For example, Ethan Allen Hitchcock was a major general during the American Civil War. He was also interested in – and wrote on the topic of – alchemy. His mother, Lucy Caroline Hitchcock (née Allen), was the daughter of famed militiaman, Ethan Allen, founder of the Green Mountain Boys. The name “Ethan Allen” recurs in the lore surrounding the “Zodiac” killer(s), in that it is the name of the father of suspect Arthur Leigh Allen. According to the dossier on ZodiacKiller.com, “Ethan was a retired, highly decorated naval commander.” “The Arthur Leigh Allen File,” Zodiac Killer, <https://www.zodiackiller.com/AllenFile.html>. Leigh Allen himself had enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1957. Though, again according to the posted biographical data, the official record indicates that “…in 1958 he [Leigh] was less-than-honorably discharged from the Navy after two years of service.” Ibid. Investigators in the Zodiac case pursued leads (specifically, the “wing-walker” shoe prints discovered at the Lake Berryessa crime scene where Cecelia Shepard was murdered, Sept. 27, 1969) suggesting that their killer (or killers) might have had a connexion to the military in general, or the navy in particular.

[56] “Police Captain Earle E. Kynette…,” ibid.

[57] Cf. <https://tessa.lapl.org/cdm/ref/collection/photos/id/16045>.

[58] Around 1518, Trithemius wrote a companion volume, Polygraphia, expanding upon themes introduced in the seminal Steganographia.

[59] John Dee copied Trithemius’s manuscript in his own hand circa 1591.

[60] According to the Google definition.

[61] Hooke was an architect, biologist, geometrician, paleontologist, and member of the Royal Society. Some of his scientific apparatuses helped innovate inventions like microscopes and vacuum pumps. And he assisted and collaborated with the great chemist Sir Robert Boyle, about whom we spoke in the presentation “Top 10 Gold-Making Alchemists of All Time.” The Frenchman Denis Papin also associated with Boyle.

[62] “Johannes Trithemius,” Wikipedia, Jun. 6, 2022; citing Robert Hooke, The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke, London: Richard Waller, 1705, p. 203. Hooke was inclined toward naturalistic explanations. For example, Hooke is credited with prefiguring later theories of biological and geological evolution and with opposing Biblical-literalist calculations for the age of the Earth.

[63] Donald Tyson, ed., ann., Three Books of Occult Philosophy Written by Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, James Freake, transl., Llewellyn’s Sourcebook Series, St. Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn Worldwide, 2004 [1993], p. xvi. <https://books.google.com/books?id=5YjXnoAaYowC&pg=PR16>.

[64] Aaron Leitch, The Essential Enochian Grimoire: An Introduction to Angel Magick from Dr. John Dee to the Golden Dawn, Woodbury, Minn.: Llewellyn Publ., 2014, p. 35. Tho, the two would eventually have something of a falling out. Walsingham assigned agents to tail Dee, and his shady companion Edward Kelley, alias Edward Talbot. (The name is sometimes spelled “Kelly.”) For his part, Dee was frequently able to evade his pursuers. Ibid., p. 36.

[65] Richard Deacon, John Dee: Scientist, Geographer, Astrologer, and Secret Agent to Elizabeth I, London: Muller, 1968, p. 5, <https://books.google.com/books?id=N–2AAAAIAAJ>.

[66] Pseud. for Donald McCormick.

[67] Deacon, loc. cit.

[68] Ibid.

[69] “The Original 007?” weblog post, Univ. of Cambridge, n.d., <https://www.cam.ac.uk/news/the-original-007>.

[70] Ibid.; quoting history researcher Jenny Rampling.

[71] In “Top 10 ‘Sex-Magic’ Cults,” I introduced the curious concept of “Nick”-names. On that wavelength, it is interesting that our statesman’s father’s name was Nicholas Bacon. The elder Sir Bacon was Queen Elizabeth I’s Lord Keeper of the Great Seal.

[72] Heindel was born Carl Louis von Grasshoff.

[73] Anthony Bacon was stationed in France until he became embroiled in a scandal stemming from allegations that he was a homosexual.

[74] La Loge des Neuf Sœurs, also referred to as the “Lodge of the Nine Muses.”

[75] The lodge was, at one time or other, associated with people such as Jean Sylvain Bailly, Jean Pierre Brissot, Nicolas Chamfort, Marquis Nicolas de Condorcet, Georges Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. Franklin was also friends with the likes of Count Mirabeau.

[76] Suffice it here to say that we may distinguish forms of “mysticism” from Enlightenment rationalism, the latter being “occultic” at least in virtue of its political and religious subversiveness.

[77] To trace some of the complex currents of this novel political radicalism, former Librarian of Congress James Billington follows the word “Philadelphia,” meaning brotherly love. Manifestly, the city by that name was Ben Franklin’s American base of operations and became the first capital following the Revolutionary War. According to Billington, “Philadelphia” was also a code word. E.g., various orders sprang up with that label. One stream extended from the 16^th-17^th-c. German mystic Jakob Böhme, to English Hermeticist and minister John Pordage, whose “Behmenists” would create the “Philadelphian Society” under Jane Leade. See “Philadelphians,” McClintock and Strong Biblical Cyclopedia; archived online at: <https://www.biblicalcyclopedia.com/P/philadelphians.html>. The previously named Chevalier Ramsay was influenced by these Philadelphians prior to his conversion to Catholicism. See: Martin I. McGregor, “A Biographical Sketch of Chevalier Andrew Michael Ramsay Including a Full Transcript of his Oration of 1737,” Pietre-Stone’s Review of Freemasonry, Feb. 18, 2008, <http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/ramsay_biography_oration.html>. A second current likewise arose out of Germany, in connexion with (and possible opposition to) Baron Gotthelf von Hund’s “Rite of Strict Observance.” This strand surfaced in Narbonne as the “Primitive Rite of Philadelphians” and led to the formation, in Paris, of the Lodge of the Nine Sisters. See James H. Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith, London: Routledge, 2017, pp. 108f.

[78] Johann Joachim Christian Bode.

[79] See “Philip Wharton, 1^st Duke of Wharton,” Wikipedia, Aug. 20, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Wharton,_1st_Duke_of_Wharton> and “Grand Loge de France,” Wikipedia, Sept. 1, 2022, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grande_Loge_de_France>.

[80] By the way, the then early Scottish Rite met (ca. 1733) in the City of London at the Devil Tavern. Was this locale the setting for the planning stages of use of the key Kabbalistic number “13” in the curious deployment of England’s otherwise ill-fitting New World “thirteen colonies”? The political activism associated with the Devil Tavern goes back at least to the late 17^th-c., when “…some 150 members of the House of Lords, including Sir Thomas Clarges, Heneage Finch …, Sir Robert Sawyer, and Sir Christopher Musgrave, met at the Devil Tavern Club in the City of London… pp. 197, <https://books.google.com/books?id=OWFnAAAAMAAJ>. Among other things, when Parliament passed the “Act of Toleration” in 1688-1689 (which was dutifully signed by William of Orange): “The Devil Tavern Club group was in accord, and William [III] gave his consent on May 24,” ibid., p. 202. There’s this also this tantalizing factoid: “In [the revolutionary year!] 1776 some young lawyers founded there a Pandemonium Club; and after that there is no further record of the ‘Devil’ till it was pulled down and annexed by the neighbouring bankers,” Walter Thornbury, “Fleet Street: General Introduction,” Old and New London: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places, vol. 1, London: Cassell, Petter and Galpin, 1878, pp. 32-53; online at British History Online, <http://www.british-history.ac.uk/old-new-london/vol1/pp32-53>. It was evidently the meeting place of choice for numerous, powerful persons – not all whose actions are matters of public record. And there is a literary tie-in as well. “As well as [Ben] Jonson, members of the club are said to have included William Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope and Dr. Samuel Johnson. Samuel Pepys is also said to have frequented the tavern,” “Lost London – The Devil Tavern…,” Exploring London, Oct. 17, 2014, <https://exploring-london.com/2014/10/17/lost-london-the-devil-tavern/>.

[81] Deacon, op. cit., pp. 23 & 108.

[82] Christian J. Pinto, Secret Mysteries of America’s Beginnings, Volume 1: The New Atlantis, dvd, N.p.: Antiquities Research Films, 2005; citing Michael Howard, The Occult Conspiracy: Secret Societies, Their Influence and Power in World History, Rochester, Vt.: Destiny Books, 1989.

[83] The Americans did have an acknowledged espionage apparatus as seen, for instance, in the Culper Spy Ring which was organized in reaction to intelligence failures (such as the capture and execution of Nathan Hale). Benjamin Tallmadge ran operations for George Washington. Agents included Robert Townsend and Abraham Woodhull – and, possibly Bancroft, Silas Deane, and James Rivington.

[84] Cecil B. Currey, Code Number 72 / Ben Franklin: Patriot or Spy? Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972.

[85] Or …from the Grand Lodge of Scotland. Allegedly, several prominent American families – including the Standishes – had descended from Jacobites who decamped for the “New World” after a series of unsuccessful revolts failed to restore the Stuarts to the throne in the Kingdom of Great Britain.

[86] Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, reprint ed., Bedford, mass.: Applewood Books, n.d. [orig.: Chicago: Lakeside Press; R. R. Donnelley & Sons, Co., 1903], p. 103, <https://books.google.com/books?id=Y32wOLkDz1oC&pg=pa103>.

[87] Quoted by William Ecenbarger, “Ben Franklin’s Dangerous Liaisons,” Chicago Tribune, May 6, 1990, <https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1990-05-06-9002070774-story.html>.

[88] Geoffrey Ashe, The Hell-Fire Clubs: A History of Anti-Morality, Towbridge, Wiltshire [U.K.]: Redwood Books, 2000 [orig.: London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1974], p. 133, <https://archive.org/details/hellfireclubshis0000ashe/page/132/mode/2up>.

[89] Daniel P. Mannix, The Hell-Fire Club, New York: Ballantine, 1959, p. 107.

[90] N.a., “Craven Street Bones,” Benjamin Franklin House, n.d., <https://benjaminfranklinhouse.org/the-house-benjamin-franklin/craven-street-bones/>.

[91] N.a., “Skeletons in the Closet,” The Craven Street Gazette, No. 2, Fall, 1998, p. 1, <http://www.benjaminfranklinhouse.org/site/sections/news/pdf/Issue2.pdf>.

[92] Robin Young, “Remains of Ten Bodies at Ben Franklin’s Home,” The Times (London), Feb. 11, 1998.

[93] Ibid.

[94] “Craven Street Bones,” loc. cit.

[95] Ibid.

[96] Young, loc. cit.

[97] “Benjamin Franklin’s Famous Quotes,” Franklin Inst., n.d., <https://www.fi.edu/benjamin-franklin/famous-quotes>; citing Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1736.

[98] Don C. Shelton, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Vol. 103, No., 2, Feb. 1, 2010, pp. 46-50, <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2813782/>.

[99] Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “What New World Order?” Foreign Affairs, Spring 1992; online, <https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/what-new-world-order>.

[100] Real name: Leslie Lynch King Jr.

[101] Joseph B. Treaster, “A Life That Started out With Much Promise Took Reclusive and Hostile Path,” New York Times, Apr. 1, 1981, p. A19, <https://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/01/us/a-life-that-started-out-with-much-promise-took-reclusive-and-hostile-path.html>.

[102] Russ Baker, “PoppyLeaks, Part 1,” Who What Why, Mov. 16, 2015, <https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/government-integrity/poppyleaks-part-1/>.

[103] “Making of a Misfit,” Time, Oct. 6, 1975, <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0%2C9171%2C913511%2C00.html>; archived at <https://web.archive.org/web/20070930060025/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,913511,00.html>.

[104] These were conducted in 1975-1976 by the Church and Pike Committees in the Senate and House, respectively.

May 23, 2022April 11, 2026

10 Most Famous & Influential Esoterics/Occultists in History

The word “occult” simply means “hidden” or “secret.”¹ Throughout history a number of people have dabbled – or specialized – in disciplines that are arguably characterizable as occultic (even if for different reasons).

For this list, I’m focusing on ten real-life figures who have sometimes been classified as “occultists.”

Some have been involved in the so-called “Hermetic arts” – alchemy, astrology, and magic – while others may be more correctly viewed as esoterics or mystics. One or two were apparently mixed up in practices that were a bit, well… darker.

There is no implication that the sometimes very different beliefs of these people are necessarily related. In other words, although some of these people may have interacted with one another and they bear sometimes interesting relationships, they were unique individuals and each entry stands on its own.

But, without further ado, here are my picks for the top 10 occultists who ever lived.

10. Cagliostro

Source: https://www.faust.com/wp-content/uploads/Alessandro_Cagliostro_apotheosis_611px.jpg

Supposedly born Giuseppe Balsamo in 1743 in Palermo, Italy, the man who would come to be known as “Cagliostro” was surrounded by controversy and mystery for most of his life.

He was praised by admirers as a powerful magician and mesmerist as fervently as he was denounced by detractors as a charlatan or infidel.

Cagliostro appeared on the scene in London in the momentous year 1776 – the same year the United States issued its Declaration of Independence from the British Empire, and the same year the ex-Jesuit Adam Weishaupt, under the name “Spartacus,” started the Bavarian Illuminati.

Cagliosto claimed to have been raised on the cryptopolitically significant Island of Malta – certainly a proverbial “hot spot” in arcane geography.²

And he said that he became a “Knight” in the Catholic religious Order of Malta – which traces its origins back to the crusading Knights Hospitaller, founded in the 11^th century.

But, somehow, Cagliostri made his way to England, which island nation is occasionally referred to by the mystical name “Albion.”

Scattered and possibly unreliable reports suggest that he was subsequently “made” a Freemason, perhaps at the French Loge L’Esperance, then located in London.

Cagliostro himself claimed to be in possession of fantastic occult secrets – such as the formulas for the “Water of Life” and the so-called “Philosopher’s Stone” that had been the fabled goals of alchemy for hundreds of years.

He is noteworthy, in part, because of his introduction of a so-called “Egyptian Rite” into Freemasonry. Though, this association seems to have been more Kabbalistic than Egyptian.

“Kabbalah,” of course, is a stream of mystical and numerological tradition within the religion of Judaism, mainly associated with books such as the Bahir and the Zohar.

Cagliostro’s strange brand of masonry seems to have inspired later offshoots, such as the Rite of Memphis & Mizraim,³ which (in turn) may have motivated some urban planners in the U.S. to confer Egyptian-sounding names to cities like Memphis, Tennessee.⁴

Although Cagliostro held various odd jobs throughout his life, he is best remembered as something of a socialite who traveled across Europe (and possibly the Middle East) hobnobbing with royalty.

This pastime later created a few problems for him, however, as he was implicated (whether falsely or not) in a jewelry swindle involving French King Louis XVI’s wife, Marie Antoinette.

The event, called the “Affair of the Diamond Necklace,” was the subject of a 2001 Warner Brothers film,⁵ featuring Hilary Swank, Jonathan Pryce, and Christopher Walken as Count Cagliostro.

Historically, it was a major scandal and it increased popular resentment for the monarchy – feelings that paved the way to the bloody French Revolution – which some claim Cagliostro predicted.

The scandal was a factor in the growing resentment of the French people for the monarchy and helped lead to la révolution – which bloody event some claim Cagliostro predicted.

Imprisoned in the Bastille, he was eventually acquitted. But, shortly thereafter he ran afoul of the Catholic Church’s Roman Inquisition – which had earlier executed the 16th-century Dominican Hermetic philosopher Giordano Bruno and which should not be confused with the more notorious Spanish Inquisition run by Tomás de Torquemada at the behest of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

Cagliostro is said by some to have died in the Castel Sant’Angelo while serving a sentence on heresy charges. Others maintain that he cracked the secret of immortality and effected a fantastic escape from his tormentors.

Either way, his memory was recently reinvigorated through his incorporation into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Scott Derrickson’s 2016 movie, Dr. Strange, makes several mentions of a mysterious grimoire referred to in the film as the “Book of Cagliostro.”

9. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa

Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/Heinrich_Cornelius_Agrippa00.jpg/800px-Heinrich_Cornelius_Agrippa00.jpg

Born in 1486, Agrippa would become one of the most vilified occult philosophers of the Renaissance. He is frequently represented as having been a “black magician,” and depictions of him often include a black dog – his schwarzer pudel – which beast, in the lingo of witchcraft, was assumed to have been his “familiar spirit.”

“Familiar spirits,” of course, were entities – usually appearing as animals – who were believed really to be demons or other incorporeal beings who did the bidding of magicians and witches.

Ideologically, Agrippa fits broadly into a group of thinkers who lived at a time – after the fall of Byzantine Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire and after the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Catholic Spain – when Catholic Europe was exposed to Greek Neo-Platonism and Jewish mysticism.⁶

A core group of Italians, including Marsilio Ficino, Pico dela Mirandola, and Francesco Giorgi, first began to combine these disparate traditions into a cohesive new system.

On the one hand, they were operating within the umbrella of Roman Christianity which, due to its Platonic heritage, already had some mysticism – particularly as expressed in Franciscan spirituality.

It also displayed a robust Christian “angelology,” or study of angels, inherited from the writings of Pseudo-Dionysus – especially in the books De Coelesti Hierarchia (“On the Celestial Hierarchy”).

These Italians then assumed some of the metaphysical framework of the ancient Neo-Platonists.⁷ To this, starting with Pico della Mirandola, they added elements of Spanish-Jewish Kabbalah.

The way toward this assimilation was partially paved by a growing interest in the languages of Greek and Hebrew⁸ – first by various religious orders, including the Cistercians, Dominicans, and the Franciscans mentioned a moment ago, and, later, by Renaissance Humanists, such as Petrarch, Macropedius, and Erasmus.

Into this “Christian Kabbalah,” Agrippa and others further mixed what they perceived to be the ancient Hermetic traditions of the legendary Hermes Trismegistus – in the form of the newly rediscovered and translated Corpus Hermeticum.

They believed that they were bumping up against a prisca theologia (that is, an “old theology”) – perhaps one that had been delivered to some of Biblical figures such as Enoch or Adam.

The aim was to reconcile all religious traditions and philosophies – including those that promoted the use of magic – a goal later adopted by H.P. Blavatsky.

For Agrippa, magic permeates the entire world, which he divided into three “realms”: the elemental world of earth, the sphere of planets and stars, and the “intellectual” plane of the divine.

Each division of the world has its own associated magic: “natural” or herbal magic at the terrestrial level; mathematical magic at the celestial level, and ceremonial magic at the super-celestial level.

The numerological character of some of this – as seen, for instance, in the use of magic squares – had a decided Pythagorean flavor, borrowed partly from fellow Kabbalist and occultist Johann Reuchlin.

Each of the cosmological levels is superintended by angelic entities – of varying degrees of power; and each type of magic has its own astrological correspondences – which exemplify the alchemical as-above/so-below maxim. Some of this this will be echoed by Aleister Crowley in the 20^th century.

And this represents one of Agrippa’s most biggest contributions to what historian Frances Yates calls the “Hermetic-Cabalist tradition”: namely, Agrippa introduces alchemy into the mix.⁹

Yet, extraordinarily, Agrippa seems to have conceived of all this as a species of Christianity – chiefly because he recognized the name “Jesus” as the highest of the words of power.

Agrippa’s De Occulta Philosophia (“The Occult Philosophy”) was first printed in 1531 and would have a profound effect on later esoterics and would-be magicians – including those like Arthur Edward Waite who comprised the memberships of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

Agrippa is memorialized with references in Christopher Marlowe’s play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (circa 1590), and in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818).

8. John Dee

Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/John_Dee_Ashmolean.jpg/800px-John_Dee_Ashmolean.jpg

If Agrippa represented the migration of Italian occultism to Germany, John Dee represented its arrival in England.

Dee was born in the tumultuous 16^thcentury, when the Reformation seesawed his country back and forth from Catholicism to Protestantism.¹⁰

During this time, partly in the capacity of a “royal astrologer,”¹¹ he was variously in and out of favor with an assortment of well-to-do patrons, including some of the English monarchs of the period.

Widespread belief in his ability to produce or “cast” a horoscope made him a much-sought-after personality during this age of political intrigue.

However, this renown was a double-edged sword. John Dee would spend time in prison and, eventually, die in obscurity, because of his affiliations and views.

During his life, Dee worked closely with an alleged clairvoyant or medium named Edward Kelley.

Sounding a note from Agrippa, together, Dee and Kelley engaged in various alchemical experiments – including the attempt to create gold from base matter.

They also picked up on some of the early-medieval angelology¹² and made various attempts at “scrying,” that is, they tried divination using a crystal ball or similar paraphernalia – such as Dee’s obsidian “spirit mirror.”¹³

But, Dee is mainly remembered as having been something of a sorcerous character. And, indeed, at one time or other he owned several “grimoires” – or books of spells – including the Book of Soyga,¹⁴ the Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy (falsely attributed to Agrippa),¹⁵ and the Sworn Book of Honorius.¹⁶

John Dee entertained socio-religious aspirations of a worldwide occultic-evangelical movement with Queen Elizabeth at the head – a view echoed by English poet Edmund Spenser in his epic The Faerie Queene (published around 1590).

Ostensibly to further this end, Dee visited Europe to spread his new “faith.”¹⁷

In any event, Dee and Kelley first met Polish King – and Transylvanian Prince – Stephen Báthory, uncle of the notorious, accused female serial murderer and torturer, Elizabeth Báthory.

Subsequently, the duo traveled to Prague in the Kingdom of Bohemia – now the capital of the Czech Republic – and visited the court of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II.

Rudolf was well-known as a patron of avant-garde art,¹⁸ alchemy,¹⁹ and astrology.²⁰ These pastimes brought numerous, curious personalities to Rudolf’s court, including alleged “prophet” Nostradamus,²¹ alchemist Michael Sendivogius,²² and Rabbi Judah Loew²³ – who, legend has it, created a soulless, moving creature (called a “Golem”) out of clay.

These forays into geopolitics appear to have been mostly fruitless – possibly because Dee was regarded as an Elizabethan spy. Indeed, British journalist Donald McCormick, writing in 1968 under the pseudonym Richard Deacon, asserted that Dee was involved in espionage for the Crown and that he signed his correspondence “007.”²⁴

However, after the death of Queen Elizabeth, who had been Dee’s faithful protector against lifelong allegations of heresy and sorcery, he fell out of favor with reputed “witch hunter” and Stuart King, James I (namesake of the King James Bible).

As a result, Dee died in poverty and the exact date of his death is unknown. (It was sometime either in 1608 or 1609.)

He was even left largely friendless, as he and Edward Kelley had had a falling out – possibly due to curious instructions they had received from a spirit who told the pair to swap wives (which, apparently, they did).

At the same time, something of his specter lives on.

For example, playwright William Shakespeare incorporated a Dee-like character – Prospero – into The Tempest (first performed in 1611).

On the modern scene, in H. P. Lovecraft’s short story “The Dunwich Horror,” we read that one of the characters possesses a copy of the Necronomicon that was a “priceless but imperfect copy of Dr. Dee’s English version” of that fabled document.²⁵

Another, separate trajectory of Dee’s influence lies in so-called “Enochian magic.”²⁶

This complicated system derives from the efforts of Dee and Kelley who claimed to have obtained it directly from contact with various angels.

It involves the use of a dedicated alphabet, referred to as “celestial speech,” and which was – according to Dee – the language spoken by the biblical Adam up to the time of Enoch.

Fascination with discovering the lingua Adamica (or, “Tongue of Adam”) was not unique to Dee. Other writers of the period, including the French mathematician and philologist Guillaume Postel, also speculated about the language that had been spoken in the Garden of Eden.

Postel, however, seems to have advanced the possibility that either some form of ancient Chaldean or Hebrew had been the mother of all subsequent dialects.

Finally, John Dee’s influence can be traced through the 19^th-c. “occult revival” – for example, as manifested in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which billed itself as a sort of “academy for magicians”²⁷ – and 20^th-c. developments such as the “Chaos Magic,” associated with people like Peter Carroll, Phine Hine, and Austin Osman Spare.

7. Albert Pike

Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Albert_Pike_-*Brady-Handy.jpg/800px-Albert_Pike*-_Brady-Handy.jpg

Albert Pike was a 19^th-c. American Confederate general and lawyer who is best remembered for having served as Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.

Born on the East coast, in Boston, Massachusetts, he spent considerable time in Arkansas – both before and after it was admitted into the United States.

Pike’s politics were a complicated amalgam. On the one hand, he advocated for Native Americans (then referred to as American Indians). On the other hand, he was known to have held anti-Catholic and pro-slavery views²⁸ for much of his life.²⁹

Among Pike’s primary masonic objectives was the reconfiguration of various “rituals” used by the fraternal order for initiatory and other purposes.

In general terms, “masonic ritual” refers to the particulars – including, actions, symbols, and words – pertaining to these ceremonies.

Similarly to John Dee, Pike had an expansive library on esoterica and the occult. Much of this collection was reportedly amassed in order for him to discharge his task of re-imagining freemasonry’s allegorical, historical, and spiritual framework.

The result of this highly influential – and admittedly monumental – effort (or, at least, Pike’s notes regarding his investigations) was the somewhat tedious tome, Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (Charleston, S.C.: n.p.), first published in 1871.

During the course of his investigations, Pike surveyed – and arguably attempted to harmonize – “…the philosophies of the Gnostics, the Hebrews, the Alexandrians, the Druids, …the Essenes, …[and] the mysteries of Egypt, Persia, Greece, and India…”.³⁰ – Quite a hefty undertaking.

His book became so important – at least in the Scottish Rite – that anti-Masons (among others) frequently refer to it as the “Bible of Freemasonry” – though practitioners of the “Craft” may usually be replied upon to disclaim this lofty designation.

Still, it is undoubtedly Pike’s magnum opus, and it would exercise some influence over Manly P. Hall, who would become one of the foremost Masonic theorists in the 20^th century. According to Obadiah Harris,³¹ former director of Hall’s Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles, no less a figure than President Franklin D. Roosevelt – himself a Freemason – was aware of Hall’s work and so, by extension, was influenced by Albert Pike.

6. Madame Blavatsky

Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Helena_Petrovna_Blavatsky.jpg

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky³² was a Russian/Ukrainian-born esoteric and writer who co-founded the Theosophical Society.³³

A key aspect of Blavatsky’s system is its Eastern-mystical flavor.

To her, the kind of Renaissance Kabbalistic Neoplatonism canvassed earlier when discussing Agrippa had not gone quite far enough in trying to excavate and explicate what (she believed) was an ancient wisdom tradition that had once existed all over the earth.

To the end of articulating such a Secret Doctrine – the title of her 1888 multi-volume book – and managing a “Synthesis” of all “Science, Religion and Philosophy,” Blavatsky turned her eyes Eastward and borrowed numerous teachings from the religions of Buddhism Hinduism.³⁴

Her first attempt at articulating her amalgamated Theosophy (which word, of course, means the “wisdom of God”) was in her book Isis Unveiled,³⁵ complete with a subtitle claiming that her system was A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology.³⁶

According to Blavatsky, a hidden group of adepts – sometimes referred to as “Ascended Masters” or “Mahatmas” – are custodians of this arcana and steer humankind from behind the scenes.³⁷

She claimed personal acquaintance with several of these entities and later dropped two curious names: “Kuthumi” and “Morya,” stating that these entities resided in or near Himalayan Tibet.

According to historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Blavatsky’s influence extends both to the Occident and to the Orient.

For example, “…[Mohandas] Gandhi and [Jawaharlal] Nehru…” – both figures in the Indian independence movement – “…were drawn to Theosophy to rediscover their own religious and philosophical heritage.”³⁸

Goodrick-Clarke goes on to say: “In the West, Theosophy was perhaps the single most important factor in the modern occult revival.”³⁹

Blavatsky repackaged the notion of “…Hermetic …correspondences between the macrocosm and microcosm” in contemporary lingo.⁴⁰ For example, she arranged her spiritual principles on an evolutionary framework, aligning Theosophy with prevailing anthropological, biological, and cosmological scientific language.

She maintained that our “individuality” will “…[pass] through all forms of existence …until we achieve complete union with spirit” – the One, Absolute, Monad, etc.⁴¹

Relatedly, Theosophy appears to have a cyclical view of history. Furthermore, at least as communicated by present-day adherents, Blavatsky’s schema teaches a universal “oneness” of all reality in what is probably best described as a form of pantheism – or, the belief that everything is divine.

Additionally, and in line with her syncretism, Blavatsky was committed to the now-pervasive idea that all religions point – to greater or lesser degrees – to a single body of truth.

Her influence can further be seen in the fact that distinctively Buddhist and Hindu religious concepts (which Blavatsky held in high regard) have gained wide acceptance outside of India.

For instance: “Several polls carried out in North America and Europe show that the professed belief in reincarnation is widespread. Roughly twenty percent of the interviewees …state that they have wholly or partly adopted a belief in reincarnation.”⁴² And this was over fifteen years ago!

5. Anton LaVey

Source: By http://www.unexplainedstuff.com/Religious-Phenomena/Anton-LaVey-s-First-Church-of-Satan.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20033361

Born Howard Stanton Levey, the man who would become known as Anton Szandor LaVey is best remembered for founding the Church of Satan in San Francisco, California on April 30, 1966 – which date is regarded as the “Satanic holiday” Walpurgisnacht.

LaVey is a difficult character to get a fix on. More than anything, he seemed to be a performer or showman.

LaVey claimed to have been cast in an uncredited role⁴³ as Satan for the sex scene in Roman Polanski’s demonic horror classic, Rosemary’s Baby.⁴⁴

Although released in 1968, the film was set during the end of 1965 and the beginning of 1966, which latter year LaVey had declared the inaugural year for the “Age of Satan.”

LaVey advanced his points of view in several books, including The Satanic Bible in 1969,⁴⁵ The Compleat Witch in 1971⁴⁶ (which was retitled The Satanic Witch and published by Adam Parfrey in 1989⁴⁷), and The Satanic Rituals in 1972.⁴⁸

At times, his brand of Satanism appears close to endorsing the notion that the “Devil” is to be understood as some hidden enlightening, progressive “force.” Though, representatives are quick to disclaim any belief in any sort of “supernaturalism” – including belief in God or the Devil as personal entities.⁴⁹

At other times, however, one gets the impression that talk about Satan was merely a colorful way of expressing a Do-Your-Own-Thing ethos, in the pattern of Francois Rabelais and Aleister Crowley that we’ll discuss further in a few minutes.

Alternatively, a person might get the impression that some of LaVey’s words and actions were merely intended to lampoon or parody religious belief – particularly the convictions of Catholic-Christians.

In this spirit of mocking jest, LaVey’s writings could be viewed as an extension of the kind of profanity on display in the 12^th-c. Carmina Burana liturgical satires or, later, the bawdy and debauched tomfoolery associated with 18^th-c. English government minister Sir Francis Dashwood’s Hell-Fire Club.

The Hell-Fire Club was a diabolically themed gentleman’s club that counted among its members many British statesmen and even, reportedly, American Founding Father Benjamin Franklin.

In the 20^th century, LaVey’s Satanic church would also attract celebrities – among whom were African-American entertainer and “Rat Pack” member, Sammy Davis, Jr., as well as actress and sexpot Jayne Mansfield.

In any case, and for its part, the current church disclaims illegal or otherwise nefarious goals, stating: “Let us …look at contemporary Satanism for what it really is: a brutal religion of elitism and social Darwinism that seeks to re-establish the reign of the able over the idiotic, of swift justice over injustice, and for a wholesale rejection of egalitarianism as a myth that has crippled the advancement of the human species for the last two thousand years.”⁵⁰

LaVeyan Satanism may be understood as concentrating upon – and exulting – the individual and his or her will. In this way, it may be seen as an outgrowth and modification of the philosophies of thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche’s “will to power,”⁵¹ Arthur Schopenhauer’s Wille,⁵² Ayn Rand’s “Objectivism,”⁵³ and Aleister Crowley’s “Thelema.”⁵⁴

4. Éliphas Lévi

Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Eliphas_Levi.png/320px-Eliphas_Levi.png

However, another of LaVey’s influences – or, at least, another of his precursors – was the 19^th-c. “magus,” Alphonse Louis Constant, more usually referred to as Éliphas Lévi – sometimes pronounced more like /ELL-i-phus LEE-vie/ by anglophones.

He had a peculiar career. For example, he started out on a path towards becoming a Roman Catholic priest, even going as far as taking some of the requisite vows. However, his partiality for Gnosticism put him at odds with church hierarchies dominated by the anti-modernist Popes Gregory XVI⁵⁵ and Pius IX.⁵⁶

Lévi may also have had some fairly politically subversive opinions. This is perhaps not surprising given that he lived at a time characterized by the rise of political liberalism.

That he was viewed as something of a “radical” is evidenced by his imprisonment shortly after the publication of his La bible de la liberté (“The Bible of Liberty”).⁵⁷

Lévi is sometimes said to have been influenced by socialism, perhaps somewhere in between the “New Christianity” of Henri de Saint-Simon and the “Utopianism” of Charles Fourier.

American-born esoteric writer Arthur Edward Waite, one of the preëminent occultists of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, translated and condensed some of Lévi’s system.

Many of these references are still widely available in reprint editions – including Waite’s volume The Mysteries of Magic: A Digest of the Writings of Eliphas Lévi published in London by George Redway in 1886.

Lévi picked up on several, preëxisting undercurrents.

For one thing, his magical system depends heavily on an alleged grimoire known as the “Greater Key of Solomon” – referring to the biblical, Israelite monarch who, according to legend, had knowledge of how to command demons.

Lévi explains the potency of magic in terms of “imagination” and “will” – both concepts traceable to Medieval Scholasticism and found, in modified form, in Renaissance occultism.⁵⁸

Cosmologically, he latches onto the alchemical-Hermetic notion of microcosmic/macrocosmic “correspondences” – a constellation of ideas also found in the Kabbalah.

Lévi seems to have been influenced by a wide range of Jewish-influenced Christian and pseudo-Christian mystics going back to the 13^th-c. Majorcan thinker Ramon Lull and extending through to 18th-c. Swedish philosopher Emmanuel Swedenborg and 18^th-19^th-c. French composer Antoine Fabre d’Olivet (an-TWAN FABRI-dole-ee-vay).

Moreover, he appeared to want to repackage and syncretize the “herbal magic” of Paracelsus – as it had passed through Rosicrucianism – with a modernized version of Agrippa’s “ceremonial magic,” filtered through the 18^th-c. English occultist Francis Barrett, particularly in his book, The Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer.⁵⁹

But Lévi’s real significance arguably lies in the fact that he was the “first to connect the Cabala with fortunetelling Tarot cards.”⁶⁰

From this insight, Lévi extrapolated a complex series of linkages between the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the Tarot “Trumps.” This picks up the linguistic note sounded by John Dee, and others, and is later echoed by Arthur Edward Waite in his famed Rider-Waite Tarot deck, about which I will have more to say in a subsequent video.

On the literary front, among those who “admired” Lévi was Victorian author and politician Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton.⁶¹ Although largely unknown today, Bulwer-Lytton originated several still-used phrases such as “it was a dark and stormy night,” which was the opening line of his 1830 novel, Paul Clifford.⁶²

Lévi’s primary influence was exercised upon subsequent occultists such as Madame Blavatsky, the Golden Dawn, and the Masonic philosopher Manly Palmer Hall.

3. Gerald Gardner

Source: By Published in a wide variety of sources, both online and in print., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36288734

The late-19^th to early 20^th-c. occultist born Gerald Brosseau Gardner was to exercise a tremendous impact on the reintroduction of “witchcraft” – first to the United Kingdom and, later, to the rest of the world.

Although Gardner was born into a fairly well-to-do family that had become prosperous in the lumber business, he appears to have been cast aside and left in the care of a somewhat aloof nursemaid.

After a time, Gardner’s nanny married a man who owned a tea plantation in Sri Lanka, where she moved taking young Gerald with her.

Gardner apparently learned the business and was successful enough at it to have the luxury of extensive travel and, eventually, an early retirement.

While in the east, Gardner familiarized himself Malaysian native religions.

And, although he was never formally educated, over the course of his life he read numerous esoteric-themed books including Charles Godfrey Leland’s folklore collection Aradia; or, The Gospel of the Witches,⁶³ Florence Marryat’s 1891 Spiritualist classic There Is No Death⁶⁴ and Margaret Murray’s seminal, though highly eccentric and heterodox, anthropological treatise The Witch-Cult in Western Europe.⁶⁵

Additionally, at one time or other, he appears to have been a member of various secret societies, including Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism.

The consensus scholarly opinion has it that these resources, along with his own experiences with diverse traditions (from Buddhist and other ceremonial-magic practices on the one hand to folk herbalism and paranormal speculations on the other), coalesced into what became known as Wicca.

However, according to his own account, Gardner had been initiated into an an ancient Anglo paganism by a mysterious witch he referred to as “Old Dorothy.”

Regardless of its source, Gardner popularized Wicca through numerous avenues, for example, by writing about it in several books such as High Magic’s Aid ⁶⁶ (published pseudonymously in 1949, two years before the repeal of the Britain’s Witchcraft and Vagrancy Acts that would have made his practices illegal), as well as Witchcraft Today⁶⁷ in 1954 and The Meaning of Witchcraft⁶⁸ in 1959.

Beyond this, the so-called Book of Shadows – originally Gardner’s working notes – is now also widely available and is held in high regard by some Wiccans.

If recent headlines can be believed,⁶⁹ Gardnerian Wicca itself is among the fastest-growing religions in America and Great Britain, and, in any case, it has helped to give motivate a resurgence of neo-paganism more generally – a broad designation ranging many associations and movements that, besides Wicca, include Druidism, Heathenry, and Odinism.

2. Aleister Crowley

Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Aleister_Crowley%2C_thinker.jpg/800px-Aleister_Crowley%2C_thinker.jpg

Among Gardner’s influences – and one of the larger-than-life figures of the occult, generally – was Edward Alexander “Aleister” Crowley.

Born around the middle of the class-conscious Victorian Era, Crowley was initially given a strict Christian upbringing under the auspices of the Plymouth Brethren. The Brethren were an eschatologically obsessed Protestant group that included ministers, like John Nelson Darby, who had split from Anglicanism.⁷⁰

For Crowley, this apocalyptic environment – combined, when he was only eleven years old, with the death of his father – seems to have galvanized him to embrace the persona of θηρίον (Thērion, the “Beast”) for – what seems in his mind to have been – an epic lifelong battle against Christianity.

He would come (no pun intended) to see this effort as being bound up with sex magic and it would involve him with numerous wives, mistresses, and other sexual partners – both female⁷¹ as well male.⁷²

In a seminal instance of such “magick” (which word Crowley spelled with a final “k”), and revealing something of Crowley’s appreciation of Lévi, he and Victor Neuberg (a young Trinity-College graduate, poet, and student of the occult) supposedly crossed some sort of Kabbalistic “Abyss.”

According to Crowley’s (possibly embellished) account, the duo encountered a destructive “Guardian of the Threshold”⁷³ named “Choronzon” – which entity had previously identified as a demon by John Dee and Edward Kelley.

Crowley, independently wealthy from a substantial trust fund, directed his money and time into accumulating occult knowledge. At various times he joined numerous secret societies, including the Freemasons, “MacGregor” Mathers’ Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and Theodor Reuss’s Ordo Templi Orientis (or the “Order of the Temple of the East”), abbreviated “O.T.O.”⁷⁴

He even created his own order, typically designated only by the characters “A∴A∴.” Numerous possible interpretations of this name have been put forward, with the usual (though disputed) suggestion being that it stands for Argentium Astrum, meaning “Silver Star.”⁷⁵

But, Crowley expressed dissatisfaction with many of these associations – and frequently disparaged fellow members as mere poseurs.

Apparently determined to excavate genuine magical secrets for himself, he embarked on a series of reportedly dangerous rituals in dynamic locations. One such, was the allegedly black-magical Rite of Abramelin that he undertook at Boleskine House on the shore of Loch Ness in Scotland.⁷⁶

Or again, in Egypt, Crowley alleged that, in 1904, while on his honeymoon with first wife Rose Kelly, he channeled a document known as The Book of the Law⁷⁷ from an entity named “Aiwass,” during a ritual referred to as the “Cairo Working.”

In Crowley’s view, The Book of the Law was to serve as a foundation for a new religious and social order, built – in part – atop the maxim “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”

Crowley attempted to model his ideal in Cefalù, on the Island of Sicily.

He styled this Italian-based occultic commune, the “Abbey of Thelema,” after a fictional predecessor⁷⁸ featured in 16^th-c. humanist-monk François Rabelais’s satirical and vulgar Gargantua and Pantagruel novels published in the 1530s.

It was a fairly short-lived experiment, however, as Crowley and his devotees were expelled by Benito Mussolini in 1923 following the death of young Oxford graduate Frederick “Raoul” Loveday, whose widow later reported that her husband had taken ill after drinking animal blood during a black-magical ceremony.

Regardless of the account’s veracity, it helped to cement Crowley’s reputation as the “wickedest man in the world” – as one newspaper headline once stated.

This notoriety was only furthered by his own writings, such as the Diary of a Drug Fiend, published in 1922,⁷⁹ and The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, posthumously published in a full edition in 1969.⁸⁰

Crowley was an inspiration to many of the pop-cultural icons promoting the “sex, drugs, and rock&roll” atmosphere of the 1960s, including John Lennon (who was apparently instrumental in seeing that Crowley’s image was featured on the Beatles’ 8^th album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page (who later acquired Boleskine House), and – for a time – the members of the Rolling Stones (who had been introduced to Crowley via Lucifer Rising director, Kenneth Anger).

Runners up…

Of course, occultism owes much to numerous others. Attempting to list all the relevant names would be an exercise in futility. Suffice it to say that, apart from other actors already mentioned in passing, other characters such as Francis Bacon, the Biblical characters like Enoch and King Solomon, alchemical figures like Nicolas Flamel and Paracelsus, Neo-Platonists Iamblichus and Plotinus, and curious personalities like Hermes Trismegistus and Anton Mesmer – whether historical or fictional – will appear in forthcoming videos. But, for now…

1. Pythagoras

Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e0/Pythagoras_in_the_Roman_Forum%2C_Colosseum.jpg/800px-Pythagoras_in_the_Roman_Forum%2C_Colosseum.jpg

Pythagoras was a truly pioneering Greek thinker who radically impacted the development of numerous important disciplines including cosmology, mathematics, and philosophy – which word, meaning the “love of wisdom,” he is said to have coined.

Blavatsky – true to her form – asserts that “…Pythagoras learned from the Egyptian hierophants” and “Hindu sages,” but also holds that he was the fountainhead of a philosophy that was subsequently delivered through Socrates and Plato.⁸¹

Pythagoras dramatically affected the course of subsequent Western occultism.

He was born on the Greek island of Samos in the Aegean Sea about the year 570 B.C.E. His life after that is something of a question mark.

Chroniclers say that he traveled widely and was initiated into numerous “mystery religions” and wisdom traditions.

Curious stories abound with respect to Pythagoras. He supposedly had magical powers and “a golden thigh; …he had the gift of prophecy; and he could be at different places at the same time. Like Orpheus, he had power over animals… All these characteristics indicate that Pythagoras was no ordinary human being; he was a ‘divine man,’ … or shaman…”.⁸²

Pythagoras eventually founded his own commune in a what is now the Italian city of Crotone.

There, Pythagoras taught his students the secrets he had learned, creating an esoteric body of thought called “Pythagoreanism.”

Evidently, he did nothing to dispel the idea that he was a “miracle worker” and his awe-inspired followers submitted to an almost cult-like system of community regulations and rules – a system in which only a select group would be taught his entire philosophy.

Pythagoreanism seems to have involved numerous, original concepts.

Arguably, three of the most important were a belief in the reincarnation of souls, commitment to the notion that the visible world of objects issued or “emanated” from some ultimate metaphysical reality, and an assertion of the fundamental existence – and magical power – of numbers.

These ideas dovetailed in interesting ways, prompting Pythagoras have discovered noteworthy geometrical and numerical relationships, such as that between the hypotenuse and sides of a right triangle – an insight still conveyed to school children as the Pythagorean Theorem, and given towering mystical and symbolical proportions in Freemasonry.

Beyond contributions to abstract thinking, some observers look to Pythagoras as a precursor to modern science. For instance, he taught that the universe was a rationally ordered cosmos that could be understood mathematically.

But Pythagoreanism also helped shape such occult traditions as alchemy, Gnosticism, Neo-Platonism, Paracelsianism, Rosicrucianism and, much later, the Theosophy and the New-Age Movement.

Aleister Crowley even wrote that “…the Qabalists who invented the Tree of Life were [probably] inspired by Pythagoras, or that both he and they derived their knowledge from a common source in higher antiquity.”⁸³

This link between Kabbalism – and Merkavah mysticism – and Pythagoras is also asserted by Lévi (as translated by Waite), who adds the flourish that this ancient sage is also connected to the mysterious number “666” mentioned in Revelation 13:18.⁸⁴

Finally, would you believe that the Pythagoreans may also have anticipated modern-day Vegans and others by embracing some sort of ancient vegetarianism? Some sources suggest that this was actually the case – either that or Pythagoras at least seems to have adopted and required his followers to observe dietary restrictions, not unlike those associated with Judaism (though, for different reasons).

With such a remarkable impact, it’s no wonder present-day Masons refer to Pythagoras as their “ancient friend and Brother.”

To paraphrase the wander maker, Ollivander, in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter franchise: Some of these esoterics and occultists “…did great things. Terrible? Yes. But… great!”

In your opinion, did I miss anyone? Who would you have added or removed? What’s your own top-10 list?

There are plenty more figures that I could have been included. I intend to remedy some deficits with future lists.

Hope to see you next time!

Notes:

1See Douglas Harper, “Occult,” Online Etymology Dictionary, n.d., <https://www.etymonline.com/word/occult>.

2See, e.g., Stephen Klimczuk and Gerald Warner, Secret Places, Hidden Sanctuaries: Uncovering Mysterious Sites, Symbols, and Societies, London & New York: Sterling Ethos, 2009, pp. 81ff.

3According to the celebrated 18th-19th-c. German playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Cagliostro may actually have been Jewish. If true, this would provide some context for his reputed knowledge of Hebrew tradition. Goethe, Italian Journey, 1786-1788, London: Penguin, 1970, p. 249; online at: <https://books.google.com/books?id=ioXNoJa6qNsC&pg=PA249>.

4See Jim Brandon, “Sirius Rising,” audio recording, ca. 1970s.

5Charles Shyer, The Affair of the Necklace.

6Some of the Western exposure to Eastern/Greek ideas came via the Council of Florence (convoked to discuss the debate between Conciliarists and Papalists and the Great Schism), which was attended by hundreds of delegates, including “Plethon” (Gemistus Pletho). Plethon was noteworthy because he rejected Christianity in favor or a Neo-Platonically tinged version of paganism that was also reportedly a blend of angelology, astrology, and mysticism, seasoned with elements of Stoicism (presumably, some sort of asceticism) as well as Zoroastrianism. This combinatorial exercise will be echoed and repeated by many of the figures appearing on this list.

7This framework had been devised by the Hellenistic philosopher Plotinus and his more magically inclined succssor, Iamblichus.

8Together, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew were sometimes designated the “Three Languages.”

9Frances Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, London: Routledge, 1999, p. 97.

10First under King Henry VIII and Henry’s, son Edward VI (and John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, acting as regent), and then under Queens Mary and Elizabeth I.

11Believe it or not, this was once a respectable position, and it was held by numerous individuals such as famed astronomer Tycho Brahe (for Danish King Frederick II); Hermeticist Giordano Bruno (e.g., for the House of Mocenigo, which ultimately produced Bruno’s accuser, Giovanni Zuane Mocenigo); mathematician Gerolamo Cardano (for English King Edward VI); formulator of the “laws of planetary motion,” Johannes Kepler (for Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II); alleged French seer Nostradamus (for Florentine noblewoman and Queen Consort to French King Henry II, Catherine de Medici); and even scientific hero Galileo (for Tuscan Duke Cosimo II de’Medici).

12Today, Dee’s journal is known as De Heptarchia Mystica (or, “On the Mystical Rule of the Seven Planets,” ca. 1582).

13Since, obsidian is a black, volanic stone, it’s interesting (to this writer) that Charlie Brooker’s Netflix-original show has the title Black Mirror.

14A.k.a., the Aldaraia.

15See <https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fourth_Book_of_Occult_Philosophy>.

16Liber Juratus Honorii.

17In what was once metaphorically referred to by 20th -c. mystic and psychedelic advocate Terence McKenna as an occultic analog to the 1st -c. Christian-missionary journeys undertaken by St. Paul. See Terence McKenna, The Alchemical Dream: Rebirth of the Great Work, Sheldon Rochlin, ed., DVD, Sacred Mysteries Productions; Mystic Fire Productions; 2008.

18Including the “fruit portraiture” of Giuseppe Acrimboldo.

19Ostensibly in an effort to unlock the secrets of the “Philosopher’s Stone” and perhaps to create gold.

20Which had been a respectable European pursuit at least since Ptolemy’s pioneering Tetrabiblos. Though, undoubtedly, the notions go back to Egypt – if not earlier.

21Born Michel de Nostradame.

22This proto-chemist was supposed to have unlocked the transmutation of lead into gold.

23Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, a.k.a., the “Maharal.”

24Richard Deacon, John Dee: Scientist, Geographer, Astrologer and Secret Agent to Elizabeth I, London, Muller, 1968, pp. 5 et passim.

25Weird Tales, Apr., 1929, pp. 481–508; available online at: <https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/dh.aspx>.

26Partly based on Dee’s Liber Loagaeth.

27Russell Adams, Jr., et al., eds., Mysteries of the Unknown: Ancient Wisdom and Secret Sects, Alexandria, Virg.: Time-Life Books, 1989, p. 153.

28It has even been alleged that Pike had something to do with – or, perhaps, held membership or leadership in – the infamous Ku Klux Klan. However, evidence for this appears scant and in in any case, the Klan is more typically associated with Pike’s Confederate colleague, Nathan Bedford Forrest, who indisputably served as the organization’s first “Grand Wizard.”

29Recent attempts have been made to rehabilitate Pike’s image vis-à-vis his “racism.” One such effort appears under the headline “Albert Pike did not found the Ku Klux Klan,” and was published on the website of the Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon (Nov. 26, 2012, <https://freemasonry.bcy.ca/anti-masonry/kkk.html>). The reference is prominent enough to receive a citation in Pike’s entry (“Albert Pike,” Sept. 9, 2021, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Pike>) for the popular internet-based encyclopedia Wikipedia.

In both resources (op. cit.), Pike is excerpted (see full citation for the original source, infra.) to the following effect: “I am not one of those who believe slavery a blessing. I know it is an evil, as great cities are an evil…”. Pike proceeds to compare the evil of slavery to evils of wage labor and military service – presumably because both of which, like slavery, undermine “free-will and individuality”.

However, this opinion did not stop Pike from participating in the institution of slavery. He also wrote, in the sentence preceeding the widely quoted statement (no less): “I have owned only such slaves as I needed for household servants.” (Fred William Allsopp, Albert Pike: A Biography, Little Rock, Ark.: Parke-Harper, 1928, p. 181.)

Thus, even the freemasonic website admits that Pike’s “racism …[is]nothing to be proud of”. (“Albert Pike did not found the Ku Klux Klan,” loc. cit.).

30Robert Lipscomb Duncan, Reluctant General: The Life and Times of Albert Pike, N.Y.: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1961, p. 155.

31Christian Pinto, “Eye of the Phoenix: Secrets of the Dollar Bill,” Secret Mysteries of America’s Beginnings: Volume 3, DVD, N.p.: Antiquities Research Films, 2009.

32Whose origin surname was supposedly “von Hahn.”

33Along with Americans Colonel Henry Steel Olcott and William Judge.

34This conjunction of East and West was part of the Zeitgeist, apparently, as one of the first “interfaith” conventions – called the “World’s Parliament of Religions” – convened, under the auspices of Chicago’s Columbian Exposition, on September 11, 1893.

35London: Theosophical Publ. House,; New York: J.W. Bouton,1877;

36Blavatsky was accused of plagiarism, particularly by William Emmette Coleman. Coleman was a 19^th-c. academic specializing in studies of the Far East and the Near East, then referred to as “Orientalism.” He was also an avid spiritualist, himself. So, prima facie, his criticisms do not seem to have been ideologically motivated. See William Emmette Coleman, “ The Sources of Madame Blavatsky’s Writings,” Vsevolod Sergyeevich Solovyoff, A Modern Priestess of Isis, London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1895, Appendix C, pp. 353-366; reproduced online at: Blavatsky Study Center, 2004, <https://www.blavatskyarchives.com/colemansources1895.htm>.

37Incidentally, Hermetic-Order-of-the-Golden-Dawn head honcho, Samuel Liddell “MacGregor” Mathers, also maintained that he was in contact with a coterie of “Secret Chiefs” who helped him steer his organization and draft its rituals.

38Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Helena Blavatsky, Berkeley, Cal.: North Atlantic Books, 2004, p. 17.

39Ibid., pp. 17-18.

40Ibid.

41See George Lachman, Madame Blavatsky, New York: Penguin, 2012, pp. 254-255.

42“A Case Study: Reincarnation,” Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age, Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2004, p. 455; available online at: <https://brill.com/view/book/9789047403371/BP000008.xml>.

43Whether this story is true or not, I cannot say. But it is accepted – if only prima facie – by some scholars. See, e.g., Bengt Ankarloo, Stuart Clark, eds., Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Twentieth Century, Philadelphia: Univ. of Penn. Press, 1999, p. 96 & Susan Greenwood, The Encyclopedia of Magic & Witchcraft, London: Hermes, 2004, p. 239.

44Paramount, 1968.

45New York: Avon Books.

46New York: Dodd, Mead, & Co.; Lancer Books.

47Los Angeles: Feral House, 1989.

48New York: Avon Books.

49See “Information for Prison Chaplains,” Church of Satan [website], n.d., <https://www.churchofsatan.com/info-for-chaplains/>.

50Peter Gilmore, “Satanism: The Feared Religion,” Church of Satan [website], n.d. [orig. 1992], <https://www.churchofsatan.com/satanism-the-feared-religion/>.

51The phrase owes to Nietzsche (see his aphorism “This world is the Will to Power—and nothing else!” in paragraph 1067 of his Nachlass, loc. cit., infra.), even though the title of the posthumously published Der Wille zur Macht (Leipzig: Naumann, 1901) was the brainchild of his sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche.

52Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (“The World as Will and Representation”), Leipzig: Brodhaus, 1819.

53As articulated, for instance, in her novels The Fountainhead (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs Merrill, 1943) and Atlas Shrugged (New York: Random House, 1957).

54The beginnings of which are found in Liber AL vel Legis (“The Book of the Law”) which Crowley attributed to a spirit or demon called “Aiwass” and which Crowley privately published in 1909. For a bit more, see the section on Crowley, below.

55See his encyclical Mirari vos (on liberalism and religious indifferentism, 1832).

56See Quanta cura (“Condemning Current Errors,” 1864).

57Alphonse-Louis Constant, Paris: Le Gallois, 1841.

58For example, according to him: “Imagination …is like the soul’s eye; …it is the glass of visions and the apparatus of magical life… [I]t is the imagination which exalts the will…”. Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual [orig. Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie], Arthur Edward Waite, ed., transl., Chicago: Occult Publ. House, 1910, pp. 34-35; online at: <https://books.google.com/books?id=XI_kwB0uW10C&pg=PA34>.

59London: Lackington, Allen & Co., 1801 .

60Mysteries of the Unknown: Ancient Wisdom and Secret Sects, Arlington, Virg.: Time-Life, 1989, p. 66.

61Leslie George Mitchell, Bulwer-Lytton: The Rise and Fall of a Victorian Man of Letters, London: Hambledon and London, 2003, p. 142.

62London: John Dicks. More interestingly, the French magus may even have inspired – or informed – Bulwer-Lytton’s The Haunted and the Haunters (N.p.: n.p., 1857 / 1859) and A Strange Story (London: S. Low, Son & Co., 1862), at least, according to uncited information on an occultically themed website. See “Levi, Eliphas,” ca. 2003, <https://occult-world.com/levi-eliphas/>. Incidentally, the publication particulars are a bit difficult to discover through the usual channels (e.g., via WorldCat). It seems that the two publications are sometimes packaged together. E.g., see: A Strange Story And The Haunted & the Haunters (London: G. Routledge and Sons, 1866); available online at: <https://books.google.com/books?id=JHIRAAAAYAAJ>.

63London: D. Nutt, 1899.

64London: Kegan Paul, 1891.

65Oxford: Clarendon, 1921.

66Scire (Gerald Brosseau Gardner), High Magic’s Aid, London: Michael Houghton, 1949.

67London: Rider, 1954. Of course, Rider was the company that published Arthur Edward Waite’s famous Tarot-card deck – now known as the Rider-Waite Tarot.

68London: Aquarian Press, 1959.

69See, e.g., N.a., “Wicca: What’s the Fascination?” CBN, n.d., <https://www1.cbn.com/books/wicca%3A-what%27s-the-fascination%3F>; “It’s a moot point, but Paganism may be the fastest growing religion in Britain,” Yorkshire Post, Oct. 31, 2013, <https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/its-moot-point-paganism-may-be-fastest-growing-religion-britain-1853590>; and Mary Jones, “’Wicca’: The Fastest Growing Belief System in the World Today,” Press Release Log, Nov. 20, 2008, <https://www.prlog.org/10144283-wicca-the-fastest-growing-belief-system-in-the-world-today.html>. Though, admittedly, other sources claim that Islam is growing quicker. Cf. “Islam: The World’s Fast-Growing Religion,” BBC, Mar. 16, 2017, <https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-39279631>.

70Darby is an interesting character in his own right, since he – arguably more than any other person – is responsible for the popularity of so-called “Premillennial Dispensationalism,” an interpretation of the Biblical books of Daniel and Revelation maintaining that much of the apocalyptic and prophetic language describes an “end-times” reign of the “Anti-Christ.” This story line was further developed by Hal Lindsey in his 1970 best seller, The Late, Great Planet Earth, (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan.) and made into a movie based on the Left Behind series of novels written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins (Carol Stream, Ill.: Tyndale House Publ., 1995.).

71Such as Leah Hirsig and Leila Waddell. Crowley apparently referred to these sexual partners as “Scarlet Women,” and thought they were incarnations of the Biblical “Whore of Babylon,” which he designated with the variant spelling, Babalon.

72E.g., Victor Neuburg. See, e.g., James Webb, The Occult Establishment, La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1991, p. 61.

73Also called the “Dweller on the Threshold,” which concept owes to the previously name Baron Bulwer-Lytton. See his Zanoni, London: G. Routledge, 1842.

74Just as Mathers is named along with co-founders William Wynn Westcott and William Robert Woodman, so too is Reuss also associated with two others: Carl Kellner and Franz Hartmann.

75Other suggestions include Arcanum Arcanorum (“Secret of Secrets”) and Argon Astron (“Silver Star” in Greek – alternatively, Asimēnio Astēri).

76According to S.L. “MacGregor” Mathers, citing his friend and fellow occultist Henri Antoine Jules-Bois; see The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Occult, 1975, p. xvi.

77Liber AL vel Legis.

78The Abbaye de Thélème.

79London: Collins.

80London: Cape.

81H. P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, Vol. 1, Wheaton, Ill.: Quest Books, 1994, pp. 7, xx, and xvii.

82According to Georg Luck, Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Collection of Ancient Texts, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2006, p. 42.

83Aleister Crowley, Book of Thoth, reprint ed., Boston: Weiser Books, 2004 [1944], p. 31.

84See Éliphas Lévi, transl., Arthur Edward Waite, Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1938, p. 211.