OCCULT ESPionage:
http://occultespionage.50megs.com
Wayback:
http://web.archive.org/web/20131202235206/http://occultespionage.50megs.com/index.html
by Iona Miller, 2007
When you begin to look, nearly every historical magus of note was also a spy:
Dr. John Dee, Count St. Germain, Cagliostro, Mme. Blavatsky, Aleister Crowley, etc.
Often the occult is used as cover for the even blacker arts.
Even Carl Jung work for OSS as Agent #488
See SCRATCH A MAGUS, FIND A SPY
http://ionamiller.weebly.com/scratch-a-magus-find-a-spy.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20131202235206/http://occultespionage.50megs.com/index.html
by Iona Miller, 2007
When you begin to look, nearly every historical magus of note was also a spy:
Dr. John Dee, Count St. Germain, Cagliostro, Mme. Blavatsky, Aleister Crowley, etc.
Often the occult is used as cover for the even blacker arts.
Even Carl Jung work for OSS as Agent #488
See SCRATCH A MAGUS, FIND A SPY
http://ionamiller.weebly.com/scratch-a-magus-find-a-spy.html
“Nobody will probably ever know how much Prof. Jung contributed to the allied cause during the war.”
--Allen Dulles
--Allen Dulles
Carl Jung: OSS Spy #488, 1942-1945
Iona Miller, (c)2015, Illustration by Iona Miller
In Allen Dulles: Master of Spies (1999), James Scrodes mentions his professional and personal involvement with Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. Deidre Bair reported further on Jung's covert affairs as Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Agent #488 in Jung, a Biography (2003).
During WWII, Carl Jung was recruited by Allen Dulles, through OSS spy Mary Bancroft, to provide strategic psychological profiles on Hitler, Mussolini, and the German psyche for the Allies. She published her Autobiography of a Spy in 1983.
Dulles, who ran the proto-CIA, met on several occasions with Jung, who provided valuable insight into the workings of Hitler's mind. They shared other interests and knew personal secrets about one another. Jung may have sparked an interest in ESP, handwriting analysis and psychic drugs in Dulles, even UFOs.
Jung was an architect of a dynamic model of the psyche that helped him frame actors and potential outcomes. His psychological intuitions and nationalistic heuristics and unique ability to assess HUMINT (human intelligence sources and reports) were useful to the espionage establishment. Human nature is crucial to running assets.
Raw HUMINT has to be process for the intelligence community and battlefield. HUMINT is essential preparation for working in and on cultures as well as character studies and differentiation of subject types for selecting potential sources. Social sciences are critical to cultural intelligence.
Who knows how much crucial information Jung may have imparted to Dulles in their casual talks? Rapport, defenses, and projection are a few of Jung's subjects that may have helped structure modern tradecraft, agent operation and propaganda. Powerful information is created by knowing which archetypes are in play and the primal responses they generate in the targets.
HUMINT has shaped foreign policy decisions throughout history, so insight on how humans operate is useful in recruiting, interviewing, interrogating and debriefing, as well as assessing authenticity, intentions and motivations. General Eisenhower read Jung's report before the final invasion of Germany, when Hitler's machinations, delusional systems, and paranoia were driven by a cocktail of mindbending drugs. Jung successfully predicted that Hitler would kill himself. Jung's profiles of Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini are in C.G. Jung Speaking, Bollingen Press (1978).
We can use Jung's method to free associate about the meaning of Agent 488: Conspiracy-minded qabalists and symbologists might note the Jewish gematria of 488 includes "Truth," "The Mark of the Beast," and "The Great Dragon," "Serpent's Head," "Satan Speaks," "Lord is rising," "Time to break free," "Ancient Bloodlines." It also implies "to open, to throw open, to untie, to loosen or opening, entrance, doorway, gate, portal," etc. All that makes some symbolic sense in relation to Jung's advocacy of the nature of the Collective Unconscious. He certainly opened that portal to the vast Unknown conceptually and experientially, with all its gods, ghosts, spirits and devils.
Curiously, the #55 assigned to Dulles reads, "Everything Comes from The One" which it certainly did in OSS/CIA. It is also the number of the Elohim, the endtime Elijah, called Elias for those with a biblical view. Adding them yields 543, curiously the number for I AM THAT I AM. The less psychological could see the hand of God at work. Naturally, such ruminations might turn your brain to hyperdimensional jello.
Rather than gathering clandestine information, Jung was a profiler, debriefer, and analyst producing assessments of foreign leaders (motivations, capability, plans, and intentions) and political situations for policy makers, targeting opportunities for intelligence operations. Today that would be called Counterterrorism. Bair also reveals that one of Hitler's doctors entreated Jung to observe Hitler in Germany to declare him insane, so he could be ousted by opponents.
Framing Jung
If we "profile the profiler," we find visionaries and spies share some of the same traits that ultimately mold worldviews and events. Jung's introverted thinking and intuition somehow mirrored that of Dulles's powers of observation and analysis. Both mercurial personalities shared the Promethean temperament and were adept at prognostication, quick and accurate anecdotal evidence and network analysis with fast rational solutions to manipulate and define the perceived reality. Both worked sub rosa, beneath the veil of professional confidentiality and realized the occult, or at least belief in the occult, was one key to world events.
Both opportunistic tricksters enjoyed building systems and theoretical frameworks, including vulnerabilities and risk management. "Keying" a strip of activity facilitates its transformation into another pattern. "Fabrication" supports the intentional exploration of scenarios with specific outcomes to manage activity and induce false beliefs about what is going on. There are "benign" and "exploitative" frames in espionage and psychopathic manipulation. By its very nature, espionage creates real and fabricated frames. "Keyed frames" are subject to failure through perceptual errors, intervening natural events, and ambiguity. If the deceived discover the frame they may reorganize their covert activity. The expanded threat frame leads to countermeasure -- counterintelligence.
A frame describes the principles of organizations that govern events and our subjective involvement in them against the spatial and temporal field. Framing, an operational theory, is essential to analysis, as political framing is to espionage. One social framework can transform into others. You must to have a grasp of the threat landscape to frame the right questions. Framed strips of activity feed into tracks or channels of a main story at the center of the frame. Subordinate paths include concealed, overlaid and overlooked lines. Frame analysis can also be viewed as concentric layers, like an onion skin -- a metaphor Jung employed to describe the depths of the psyche.
According to Bair, when Allen Dulles entered Switzerland in November 1942 he was secretly working as an “advance man” for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Switzerland. (Dulles would later head the CIA.) “For some time, Jung became Dulles’s ‘sort of senior advisor on a weekly, if not almost daily, basis.’” The following year, “Jung became ‘Agent 488’ in Dulles’s reports to OSS offices in Washington and London, and 488’s dispatches were considered fact and figured prominently in the agency’s operational policies.” Dulles said Jung “[understood] the characteristics of the sinister leaders of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. His judgment on these leaders and on their likely reactions to passing events was of real help to me in gauging the political situation. His deep antipathy to what Nazism and Fascism stood for was clearly evidenced in these conversations.” In fact, Jung constructed the first in-depth psychological profiles of political enemies such as Hitler. “By 1945 […] Jung’s views on how best to get [German] civilians to accept defeat were being read by the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Jung’s analysis of Nazi propaganda was that it tried ‘to hollow out a moral hole with the hope of eventual collapse.’” Ibid., pp. 492-494. http://www.tygersofwrath.com/00jung2001review.htm
http://clinicalpsychreading.blogspot.com/2013/11/carl-jung-oss-agent.html
During World War II, Allen returned to the Bern embassy, putting his mistress's psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, to work for the Allied cause, recruiting a senior official of the German foreign office, tapping into the ill-fated conspiracy to kill Hitler, and playing a part in the surrender of the Nazi armies in Italy.
Mary Bancroft (October 29, 1903, Boston - January 10, 1997, New York City) was an American novelist and spy and a member of the Bancroft family, which at one time owned Dow Jones & Company. In 1942, while living in Switzerland, Bancroft was recruited by the Office of Strategic Services, and both worked and had a romantic relationship with Allen Dulles. Her most important work was with Hans Bernd Gisevius, a German military intelligence officer who supplied her with details of the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler. After the war, Bancroft settled in New York and became a novelist. She moved to Zurich, Switzerland in 1934, where she learned excellent French and German, and became a close friend and student of Carl Jung, who cured her of chronic attacks of sneezing.
Bancroft, despite appearing to be exceptionally extroverted, suffered silently from asthma and violent sneezing fits. She suspected they were psychosomatic and brought on by emotional turmoil. She sought out the celebrated psychologist Carl Jung, who cured her through analysis and became a lifelong friend. Her relationship with Jung was summarized in her New York Times obituary: "To Jung … her appeal was textbook obvious. In his scheme of things she was an extroverted intuitive, one who had experienced such fierce inter-family battles for her affections as a child that power had become her natural element. She had such an instinctive knack for wielding it, [Jung] told her, that men seeking or holding power would cherish her advice, as indeed they did." The list of Bancroft's male consorts over time included film director Woody Allen, Time, Inc. CEO Henry R. Luce, and Allen Dulles, who laid the foundations of what would become known as the Central Intelligence Agency. Bancroft's interactions with Jung fostered a lifelong interest in psychology, and she often lectured on Jung and others in his field when she had the chance. She also became a trustee of the Jung Foundation in New York after his death, and a contributing editor and writer for Psychological Perspectives , a Jungian academic journal.
Read more: http://www.notablebiographies.com/supp/Supplement-A-Bu-and-Obituaries/Bancroft-Mary.html#ixzz3PcN2ufio
"O.S.S. & the Frankfurt School: Recycling 'the damaged lives of cultural outsiders'
Unformatted Document Text: 6 Kluckhohn Murray Jung Bancroft Dulles Bruce Donovan Benedict Erikson Mellon Mellon Mellon Kris Murray Casey Langer Allport Dulles Hyde* Hyde Hyde Hyde * I interviewed O.S.S.er Henry Baldwin Hyde 1995-1997 weekly.
Schlesinger “I Don’t Want to Be Jung’s Footnote” Jung, Bancroft & Dulles
Socialite Mary Bancroft is the pivot in a Swiss intelligence menage a trois between her two father figure-lovers, Berne-O.S.S. station chief Allen Dulles, and her therapist, Carl Jung. Dulles once impatiently told Mary, “I don’t want to go down in history as a footnote to a case of Jung’s!” In 1944-45, Henry Hyde took four trips to see Allen Dulles in Switzerland to loan Dulles, a POW Czech radio operator named Wally, for Operation Sunrise. On one of these trips, Hyde traveled from Lyon to just inside the Swiss border where he was met by car by Mary Bancroft. Mary got out of the car; kissed Henri on both cheeks, and drove off in another car with a man. Hyde drove Mary’s car to the Geneva Airport, picked up Paul Mellon (O.S.S.-MO) who had just flown in from England. Hyde drove Mellon to a beautiful old hotel overlooking Lausanne where Jung was waiting for him upstairs in a hotel room. Mellon's mission was to hear Jung's psychoanalysis of Hitler's mind and the German collective unconscious. Hyde waited for Mellon in the hotel lobby, then drove Mellon back after his meeting with Jung. Paul and Mary Mellon had been patients of Jung’s since 1938. Mellon wanted to see Jung again during the war; family therapy revisited. Paul and Mary, husband-wife patients of Jung, had raved to their brother-in-law OSS Station Chief London, David Bruce, who had married Paul’s sister Aisle, about Jungian psychoanalysis."
Authors: Cavin, Susan. http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/1/0/1/8/pages110188/p110188-6.php
Iona Miller, (c)2015, Illustration by Iona Miller
In Allen Dulles: Master of Spies (1999), James Scrodes mentions his professional and personal involvement with Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. Deidre Bair reported further on Jung's covert affairs as Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Agent #488 in Jung, a Biography (2003).
During WWII, Carl Jung was recruited by Allen Dulles, through OSS spy Mary Bancroft, to provide strategic psychological profiles on Hitler, Mussolini, and the German psyche for the Allies. She published her Autobiography of a Spy in 1983.
Dulles, who ran the proto-CIA, met on several occasions with Jung, who provided valuable insight into the workings of Hitler's mind. They shared other interests and knew personal secrets about one another. Jung may have sparked an interest in ESP, handwriting analysis and psychic drugs in Dulles, even UFOs.
Jung was an architect of a dynamic model of the psyche that helped him frame actors and potential outcomes. His psychological intuitions and nationalistic heuristics and unique ability to assess HUMINT (human intelligence sources and reports) were useful to the espionage establishment. Human nature is crucial to running assets.
Raw HUMINT has to be process for the intelligence community and battlefield. HUMINT is essential preparation for working in and on cultures as well as character studies and differentiation of subject types for selecting potential sources. Social sciences are critical to cultural intelligence.
Who knows how much crucial information Jung may have imparted to Dulles in their casual talks? Rapport, defenses, and projection are a few of Jung's subjects that may have helped structure modern tradecraft, agent operation and propaganda. Powerful information is created by knowing which archetypes are in play and the primal responses they generate in the targets.
HUMINT has shaped foreign policy decisions throughout history, so insight on how humans operate is useful in recruiting, interviewing, interrogating and debriefing, as well as assessing authenticity, intentions and motivations. General Eisenhower read Jung's report before the final invasion of Germany, when Hitler's machinations, delusional systems, and paranoia were driven by a cocktail of mindbending drugs. Jung successfully predicted that Hitler would kill himself. Jung's profiles of Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini are in C.G. Jung Speaking, Bollingen Press (1978).
We can use Jung's method to free associate about the meaning of Agent 488: Conspiracy-minded qabalists and symbologists might note the Jewish gematria of 488 includes "Truth," "The Mark of the Beast," and "The Great Dragon," "Serpent's Head," "Satan Speaks," "Lord is rising," "Time to break free," "Ancient Bloodlines." It also implies "to open, to throw open, to untie, to loosen or opening, entrance, doorway, gate, portal," etc. All that makes some symbolic sense in relation to Jung's advocacy of the nature of the Collective Unconscious. He certainly opened that portal to the vast Unknown conceptually and experientially, with all its gods, ghosts, spirits and devils.
Curiously, the #55 assigned to Dulles reads, "Everything Comes from The One" which it certainly did in OSS/CIA. It is also the number of the Elohim, the endtime Elijah, called Elias for those with a biblical view. Adding them yields 543, curiously the number for I AM THAT I AM. The less psychological could see the hand of God at work. Naturally, such ruminations might turn your brain to hyperdimensional jello.
Rather than gathering clandestine information, Jung was a profiler, debriefer, and analyst producing assessments of foreign leaders (motivations, capability, plans, and intentions) and political situations for policy makers, targeting opportunities for intelligence operations. Today that would be called Counterterrorism. Bair also reveals that one of Hitler's doctors entreated Jung to observe Hitler in Germany to declare him insane, so he could be ousted by opponents.
Framing Jung
If we "profile the profiler," we find visionaries and spies share some of the same traits that ultimately mold worldviews and events. Jung's introverted thinking and intuition somehow mirrored that of Dulles's powers of observation and analysis. Both mercurial personalities shared the Promethean temperament and were adept at prognostication, quick and accurate anecdotal evidence and network analysis with fast rational solutions to manipulate and define the perceived reality. Both worked sub rosa, beneath the veil of professional confidentiality and realized the occult, or at least belief in the occult, was one key to world events.
Both opportunistic tricksters enjoyed building systems and theoretical frameworks, including vulnerabilities and risk management. "Keying" a strip of activity facilitates its transformation into another pattern. "Fabrication" supports the intentional exploration of scenarios with specific outcomes to manage activity and induce false beliefs about what is going on. There are "benign" and "exploitative" frames in espionage and psychopathic manipulation. By its very nature, espionage creates real and fabricated frames. "Keyed frames" are subject to failure through perceptual errors, intervening natural events, and ambiguity. If the deceived discover the frame they may reorganize their covert activity. The expanded threat frame leads to countermeasure -- counterintelligence.
A frame describes the principles of organizations that govern events and our subjective involvement in them against the spatial and temporal field. Framing, an operational theory, is essential to analysis, as political framing is to espionage. One social framework can transform into others. You must to have a grasp of the threat landscape to frame the right questions. Framed strips of activity feed into tracks or channels of a main story at the center of the frame. Subordinate paths include concealed, overlaid and overlooked lines. Frame analysis can also be viewed as concentric layers, like an onion skin -- a metaphor Jung employed to describe the depths of the psyche.
According to Bair, when Allen Dulles entered Switzerland in November 1942 he was secretly working as an “advance man” for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Switzerland. (Dulles would later head the CIA.) “For some time, Jung became Dulles’s ‘sort of senior advisor on a weekly, if not almost daily, basis.’” The following year, “Jung became ‘Agent 488’ in Dulles’s reports to OSS offices in Washington and London, and 488’s dispatches were considered fact and figured prominently in the agency’s operational policies.” Dulles said Jung “[understood] the characteristics of the sinister leaders of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. His judgment on these leaders and on their likely reactions to passing events was of real help to me in gauging the political situation. His deep antipathy to what Nazism and Fascism stood for was clearly evidenced in these conversations.” In fact, Jung constructed the first in-depth psychological profiles of political enemies such as Hitler. “By 1945 […] Jung’s views on how best to get [German] civilians to accept defeat were being read by the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Jung’s analysis of Nazi propaganda was that it tried ‘to hollow out a moral hole with the hope of eventual collapse.’” Ibid., pp. 492-494. http://www.tygersofwrath.com/00jung2001review.htm
http://clinicalpsychreading.blogspot.com/2013/11/carl-jung-oss-agent.html
During World War II, Allen returned to the Bern embassy, putting his mistress's psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, to work for the Allied cause, recruiting a senior official of the German foreign office, tapping into the ill-fated conspiracy to kill Hitler, and playing a part in the surrender of the Nazi armies in Italy.
Mary Bancroft (October 29, 1903, Boston - January 10, 1997, New York City) was an American novelist and spy and a member of the Bancroft family, which at one time owned Dow Jones & Company. In 1942, while living in Switzerland, Bancroft was recruited by the Office of Strategic Services, and both worked and had a romantic relationship with Allen Dulles. Her most important work was with Hans Bernd Gisevius, a German military intelligence officer who supplied her with details of the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler. After the war, Bancroft settled in New York and became a novelist. She moved to Zurich, Switzerland in 1934, where she learned excellent French and German, and became a close friend and student of Carl Jung, who cured her of chronic attacks of sneezing.
Bancroft, despite appearing to be exceptionally extroverted, suffered silently from asthma and violent sneezing fits. She suspected they were psychosomatic and brought on by emotional turmoil. She sought out the celebrated psychologist Carl Jung, who cured her through analysis and became a lifelong friend. Her relationship with Jung was summarized in her New York Times obituary: "To Jung … her appeal was textbook obvious. In his scheme of things she was an extroverted intuitive, one who had experienced such fierce inter-family battles for her affections as a child that power had become her natural element. She had such an instinctive knack for wielding it, [Jung] told her, that men seeking or holding power would cherish her advice, as indeed they did." The list of Bancroft's male consorts over time included film director Woody Allen, Time, Inc. CEO Henry R. Luce, and Allen Dulles, who laid the foundations of what would become known as the Central Intelligence Agency. Bancroft's interactions with Jung fostered a lifelong interest in psychology, and she often lectured on Jung and others in his field when she had the chance. She also became a trustee of the Jung Foundation in New York after his death, and a contributing editor and writer for Psychological Perspectives , a Jungian academic journal.
Read more: http://www.notablebiographies.com/supp/Supplement-A-Bu-and-Obituaries/Bancroft-Mary.html#ixzz3PcN2ufio
"O.S.S. & the Frankfurt School: Recycling 'the damaged lives of cultural outsiders'
Unformatted Document Text: 6 Kluckhohn Murray Jung Bancroft Dulles Bruce Donovan Benedict Erikson Mellon Mellon Mellon Kris Murray Casey Langer Allport Dulles Hyde* Hyde Hyde Hyde * I interviewed O.S.S.er Henry Baldwin Hyde 1995-1997 weekly.
Schlesinger “I Don’t Want to Be Jung’s Footnote” Jung, Bancroft & Dulles
Socialite Mary Bancroft is the pivot in a Swiss intelligence menage a trois between her two father figure-lovers, Berne-O.S.S. station chief Allen Dulles, and her therapist, Carl Jung. Dulles once impatiently told Mary, “I don’t want to go down in history as a footnote to a case of Jung’s!” In 1944-45, Henry Hyde took four trips to see Allen Dulles in Switzerland to loan Dulles, a POW Czech radio operator named Wally, for Operation Sunrise. On one of these trips, Hyde traveled from Lyon to just inside the Swiss border where he was met by car by Mary Bancroft. Mary got out of the car; kissed Henri on both cheeks, and drove off in another car with a man. Hyde drove Mary’s car to the Geneva Airport, picked up Paul Mellon (O.S.S.-MO) who had just flown in from England. Hyde drove Mellon to a beautiful old hotel overlooking Lausanne where Jung was waiting for him upstairs in a hotel room. Mellon's mission was to hear Jung's psychoanalysis of Hitler's mind and the German collective unconscious. Hyde waited for Mellon in the hotel lobby, then drove Mellon back after his meeting with Jung. Paul and Mary Mellon had been patients of Jung’s since 1938. Mellon wanted to see Jung again during the war; family therapy revisited. Paul and Mary, husband-wife patients of Jung, had raved to their brother-in-law OSS Station Chief London, David Bruce, who had married Paul’s sister Aisle, about Jungian psychoanalysis."
Authors: Cavin, Susan. http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/1/0/1/8/pages110188/p110188-6.php
From Hitler's Doorstep: The Wartime Intelligence Reports of Allen Dulles ... edited by Neal H. Petersen
The Shadow War Against Hitler: The Covert Operations of America's Wartime ... By Christof Mauch
Alliance of Enemies: The Untold Story of the Secret American and German ... By Agostino von Hassell, Sigrid MacRae
Carl Gustav Jung: Avant-Garde Conservative By Jay Sherry (2012)
Carl Gustav Jung By Frank McLynn
Black Terror White Soldiers: Islam, Fascism and the New Age By David Livingstone
Carl Gustav Jung: A Biography By Frank McLynn
A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War ... By H. P. Albarelli
American Intelligence and the German Resistance: A Documentary History edited by Jurgen Heideking, Christof Mauch
Jung the Mystic: The Esoteric Dimensions of Carl Jung's Life and Teachings By Gary Lachman
Eranos: An Alternative Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century By Hans Thomas Hakl, Christopher McIntosh
http://www.webdo.ch/hebdo/hebdo_2000/hebdo_52/52_epoque_1.html
••••••
The “Profiler” of Hitler
The Swiss psychoanalyst of the collective unconscious collaborated with the American secret service between 1942 and 1945, protected by future CIA Director Allen Dulles.
His analyses of Hitler and Mussolini for propaganda purposes interested General Eisenhower.
Jocelyn Rochat
For code 105, Burns [an alias for A. Dulles]. I contacted the famous psychoanalyst, professor C. G Jung. His analyses of the reactions of German leaders, especially of Hitler because of his psychopathic tendencies, should not be underestimated. Jung is persuaded that Hitler will resort until the end with all despaired measurements, but he does “not exclude the possibility of a suicide in one moment from crisis.” Words simple, direct, classified as “secret” and dispatched of Bern in the afternoon of February 3, 1943 to announce a small revolution. Artisanal beginnings of “psychological shaping”, still experimental marriage of espionage and psychoanalysis applied to the highest level. Because the enigmatic “Burns”, the mailer of this telegram (see our exclusive reproduction on page 47) is no other than Allen Dulles, a Master of American espionage entered Switzerland early and was installed in the heart of Bern. As for “105,” the coded recipient of the message, it appears to be colonel David Bruce, one of the heads of the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, ancestor of the current CIA.
How one of the most significant spies of the century (Allen Dulles will be propelled to the head of the CIA in the post-war period) and Carl Gustav Jung, the inventor and explorer of the concept of the collective unconscious, compare their reflexions during WW II and enter the psyché of Hitler? It is the history which tell of the recently declassified American documents and of the new Swiss sources found by “Hebdo”. As many files show this collaboration, as all that touches with the psychoanalysis, thrived in quite disconcerting circumstances.
The mistress
It all begins with the arrival in Bern of Allen Dulles at the end of 1942, a few hours before the complete closing of the borders. Dulles’s mission, as explained in “Underground Germany”, consisted in “making to a report/ratio on the secret movement of anti-Nazies in Germany”. What pushed him to contact Dr. Jung was appreciation of his knowledge of the Germanic heart, shared during a discussion in Harvard in 1936.
Dulles is not satisfied to see Jung collect useful information (as the telegram of February 3, 1943 shows): He also recruits one of Jung’s patients. Was the patient recommended by the psychoanalyst? We are unaware of this. But we know that the American spy “tended to accept the judgement of Dr. Jung of the man” (even an unknown, note) “as long as one had not brought the undeniable proof of the opposite to him” (new letter of March 14, 1950, reproduced below).
The Master spy, who lacks personnel in Switzerland, thus trusts a named beginner, Mary Bancroft, journalist, American and wife of a Swiss citizen, she thentook treatment from professor Jung to rid herself of repetitious sneezes. This 38 years romantic woman is favorably impressed by Dulles, “this 49 year-old pipe smoker with the pink face, a gray tweed and equipped with a pair of piercing blue eyes, with the air of open and merry manners.” She falls under the charm of Dulles and accepts the offer of employment. Here it is the apprentice spy, and soon mistress of her owner.
On the couch
Carl G Jung profits in turn from the confidences of Mary Bancroft and the regular visits of Dulles, as this last in a letter gone back to February 1950 explains it (Allen Dulles Papers, Université of Princeton, Box 39, folder 3): “During my stay in Switzerland, I from time to time had long conversations with Dr. Jung concerning the political news and the characteristics of the disasters leaders of the Nazi Germany and fascistic Italy.”
As many meetings which make it possible to the psychoanalyst to observe the operation of the duet of American spies. Amused, it launches in Mary Bancroft while drawing on its pipe: “Your friend Dulles is hard to cook, I am content that you are his confidante.” Which hastens to encourage Jung to specify its thought: “Of the men like Allen, very ambitious and in stations of being able, need to intend female opinions to give best their judgements and not to exceed the limits.”
The beginner has well sorrow to hold her language. She precipitates at Jung as soon as Dulles entrusts a mission to him which requires greatest discretion, as she explains it in “Autobiography of has spy” (this autobiographical work published in New York in 1983 is unperceived past and is quasi untraceable in Switzerland, note).
Jung learns thus that Allen Dulles required of Mary Bancroft to write a book on the plot missed against Hitler, by tapping a maximum of information to the passage to surviving plotters, Hans Bernd Gisevius, a spy of Abwehr based in Switzerland.
Very quickly informed of the bonds which link Dulles and Bancroft with Jung, Gisevius also requires him to meet the psychoanalyst. It had indeed been impressed by the article of 1936 devoted to “Wotan”, the German god of the war whose Jung announced the alarm clock devastator.
The interview offers a new role to Jung, quickly promoted consulting in interrogations. Having discussed with Gisevius, Jung advises Mary Bancroft on the tone right to adopt with its German interlocutor “to make him spit the piece”: “never ask him a fact! It is of the same psychological type as you: this kind of question would put it out of him and it would be the end of the discussion free, associative, which makes it possible to learn from the things.”
Put at the current of the meetings of the Jung-Bancroft-Gisevius trio, and thus of the indiscretions of sound apprentie, Allen Dulles cille not. But it ends up exploding when Mary evokes its extraordinary capacity to send mental messages to Gisevius, gift which intrigued Jung at the point to require long explanations of him on this subject.
It is that, well before the invention of the gadgets worthy of 007, Mary Bancroft and Gisevius had developed a means of communicating that would not have disavowed Q, the equipment supplier of Jump. Mary Bancroft claims indeed that it was enough for him to think of Gisevius during ten minutes so that this last understands that it was to call it. An anecdote which is not taste of Dulles which launches to its mistress: “I would like that you ceases these enfantillages! I do not make a point of entering the history because I am quoted in a note with the bottom of a page detailing the cases studied by Jung!”
Injustice
The American spy feared that the posterity does not forget its work of the shade not to retain that will have it dazzling of Jung. It is however the reverse which occurred. The specialists in the psychoanalysis spent these five last decades chamailler to know if one were or not to present Jung like a sympathizer Nazi, suspicion that Dulles qualified into 1950 of “gossip” (rumour) and that Jung charges to “its enemies the American freudiens which hate it” (new letter of September 24, 1945 deposited at the polytechnic School of Zurich).
During this time, the specialists in espionage detailed the exploits of Dulles without discovering the discrete traces of its profitable collaboration with Jung. A lapse of memory which should be soon repaired, as the last sums devoted to Dulles show it which start to briefly announce the presence of Jung among its consultants (to read in particular “Allen Dulles” by James Srodes, 1999, “Gentleman spy” by Peter Grose, 1996 and “From Hitler’s doorstep” of Neal Petersen “, 1998). An injustice that the close relations could have repaired more quickly, if they had dared to evoke their memories publicly: “the members of the family knew that Jung had known Dulles, Ulrich Hörni confirms, who takes care on the files of the psychoanalyst in Switzerland, but they never spoke about it openly. You include/understand, this kind of subject was rather secret.” So secret that Jung failed well to carry it in its tomb.
••••••
The “Profiler” of Hitler
The Swiss psychoanalyst of the collective unconscious collaborated with the American secret service between 1942 and 1945, protected by future CIA Director Allen Dulles.
His analyses of Hitler and Mussolini for propaganda purposes interested General Eisenhower.
Jocelyn Rochat
For code 105, Burns [an alias for A. Dulles]. I contacted the famous psychoanalyst, professor C. G Jung. His analyses of the reactions of German leaders, especially of Hitler because of his psychopathic tendencies, should not be underestimated. Jung is persuaded that Hitler will resort until the end with all despaired measurements, but he does “not exclude the possibility of a suicide in one moment from crisis.” Words simple, direct, classified as “secret” and dispatched of Bern in the afternoon of February 3, 1943 to announce a small revolution. Artisanal beginnings of “psychological shaping”, still experimental marriage of espionage and psychoanalysis applied to the highest level. Because the enigmatic “Burns”, the mailer of this telegram (see our exclusive reproduction on page 47) is no other than Allen Dulles, a Master of American espionage entered Switzerland early and was installed in the heart of Bern. As for “105,” the coded recipient of the message, it appears to be colonel David Bruce, one of the heads of the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, ancestor of the current CIA.
How one of the most significant spies of the century (Allen Dulles will be propelled to the head of the CIA in the post-war period) and Carl Gustav Jung, the inventor and explorer of the concept of the collective unconscious, compare their reflexions during WW II and enter the psyché of Hitler? It is the history which tell of the recently declassified American documents and of the new Swiss sources found by “Hebdo”. As many files show this collaboration, as all that touches with the psychoanalysis, thrived in quite disconcerting circumstances.
The mistress
It all begins with the arrival in Bern of Allen Dulles at the end of 1942, a few hours before the complete closing of the borders. Dulles’s mission, as explained in “Underground Germany”, consisted in “making to a report/ratio on the secret movement of anti-Nazies in Germany”. What pushed him to contact Dr. Jung was appreciation of his knowledge of the Germanic heart, shared during a discussion in Harvard in 1936.
Dulles is not satisfied to see Jung collect useful information (as the telegram of February 3, 1943 shows): He also recruits one of Jung’s patients. Was the patient recommended by the psychoanalyst? We are unaware of this. But we know that the American spy “tended to accept the judgement of Dr. Jung of the man” (even an unknown, note) “as long as one had not brought the undeniable proof of the opposite to him” (new letter of March 14, 1950, reproduced below).
The Master spy, who lacks personnel in Switzerland, thus trusts a named beginner, Mary Bancroft, journalist, American and wife of a Swiss citizen, she thentook treatment from professor Jung to rid herself of repetitious sneezes. This 38 years romantic woman is favorably impressed by Dulles, “this 49 year-old pipe smoker with the pink face, a gray tweed and equipped with a pair of piercing blue eyes, with the air of open and merry manners.” She falls under the charm of Dulles and accepts the offer of employment. Here it is the apprentice spy, and soon mistress of her owner.
On the couch
Carl G Jung profits in turn from the confidences of Mary Bancroft and the regular visits of Dulles, as this last in a letter gone back to February 1950 explains it (Allen Dulles Papers, Université of Princeton, Box 39, folder 3): “During my stay in Switzerland, I from time to time had long conversations with Dr. Jung concerning the political news and the characteristics of the disasters leaders of the Nazi Germany and fascistic Italy.”
As many meetings which make it possible to the psychoanalyst to observe the operation of the duet of American spies. Amused, it launches in Mary Bancroft while drawing on its pipe: “Your friend Dulles is hard to cook, I am content that you are his confidante.” Which hastens to encourage Jung to specify its thought: “Of the men like Allen, very ambitious and in stations of being able, need to intend female opinions to give best their judgements and not to exceed the limits.”
The beginner has well sorrow to hold her language. She precipitates at Jung as soon as Dulles entrusts a mission to him which requires greatest discretion, as she explains it in “Autobiography of has spy” (this autobiographical work published in New York in 1983 is unperceived past and is quasi untraceable in Switzerland, note).
Jung learns thus that Allen Dulles required of Mary Bancroft to write a book on the plot missed against Hitler, by tapping a maximum of information to the passage to surviving plotters, Hans Bernd Gisevius, a spy of Abwehr based in Switzerland.
Very quickly informed of the bonds which link Dulles and Bancroft with Jung, Gisevius also requires him to meet the psychoanalyst. It had indeed been impressed by the article of 1936 devoted to “Wotan”, the German god of the war whose Jung announced the alarm clock devastator.
The interview offers a new role to Jung, quickly promoted consulting in interrogations. Having discussed with Gisevius, Jung advises Mary Bancroft on the tone right to adopt with its German interlocutor “to make him spit the piece”: “never ask him a fact! It is of the same psychological type as you: this kind of question would put it out of him and it would be the end of the discussion free, associative, which makes it possible to learn from the things.”
Put at the current of the meetings of the Jung-Bancroft-Gisevius trio, and thus of the indiscretions of sound apprentie, Allen Dulles cille not. But it ends up exploding when Mary evokes its extraordinary capacity to send mental messages to Gisevius, gift which intrigued Jung at the point to require long explanations of him on this subject.
It is that, well before the invention of the gadgets worthy of 007, Mary Bancroft and Gisevius had developed a means of communicating that would not have disavowed Q, the equipment supplier of Jump. Mary Bancroft claims indeed that it was enough for him to think of Gisevius during ten minutes so that this last understands that it was to call it. An anecdote which is not taste of Dulles which launches to its mistress: “I would like that you ceases these enfantillages! I do not make a point of entering the history because I am quoted in a note with the bottom of a page detailing the cases studied by Jung!”
Injustice
The American spy feared that the posterity does not forget its work of the shade not to retain that will have it dazzling of Jung. It is however the reverse which occurred. The specialists in the psychoanalysis spent these five last decades chamailler to know if one were or not to present Jung like a sympathizer Nazi, suspicion that Dulles qualified into 1950 of “gossip” (rumour) and that Jung charges to “its enemies the American freudiens which hate it” (new letter of September 24, 1945 deposited at the polytechnic School of Zurich).
During this time, the specialists in espionage detailed the exploits of Dulles without discovering the discrete traces of its profitable collaboration with Jung. A lapse of memory which should be soon repaired, as the last sums devoted to Dulles show it which start to briefly announce the presence of Jung among its consultants (to read in particular “Allen Dulles” by James Srodes, 1999, “Gentleman spy” by Peter Grose, 1996 and “From Hitler’s doorstep” of Neal Petersen “, 1998). An injustice that the close relations could have repaired more quickly, if they had dared to evoke their memories publicly: “the members of the family knew that Jung had known Dulles, Ulrich Hörni confirms, who takes care on the files of the psychoanalyst in Switzerland, but they never spoke about it openly. You include/understand, this kind of subject was rather secret.” So secret that Jung failed well to carry it in its tomb.
Dulles wrote to his buddy Jung on March 14th, 1950:
Dear Dr. Jung:
… I look back on our days together in Switzerland during the war. I know how ridiculous are the charges which some people have made about you and I took great pleasure in writing a letter to Paul Mellon on the subject a few days ago.
Faithfully yours, A.W. Dulles
Jung wrote back to his pal Dulles on March 21st of that same year:
Dear Mr. Dulles,
Thank you very much for your kind letter and your most valuable help!
I’m glad that you also have taken action in the case of that ridiculous accusation that I’m a Nazi. Well, you know what it is to be in the lime-light!
Yours gratefully,
C.G. Jung.
Derek - http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?p=510908
“Not many people are aware of the fact that Dulles was a close friend of Carl Gustav Jung,” Lloyd expounds, “but knowledge of that relationship is absolutely crucial to an understanding of certain postwar developments in the U.S. intelligence community and our present-day National Security State.”
Allen Welsh Dulles and his elder brother, John Foster Dulles, honed their skills in duplicity as senior partners at the prestigious Manhattan law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell—the lawyers of choice for a long list of Wall Street robber barons and amoral corporations. Both brothers were founding members of the Council on Foreign Relations. John Foster Dulles, the German Kaiser’s personal attorney, was especially adept at helping families like the Rockefellers, DuPonts, Harrimans, Walkers, and Bushs to load up on lucrative German investments between the two World Wars—first, by passing bribes at the Versailles Peace Conference to assure that the treaty would benefit Sullivan & Cromwell’s elite clients; and later, by shielding those same clients from investigation for laundering Nazi funds and otherwise profiting from Hitler’s crimes against humanity.
(Sullivan & Cromwell represented many of the leading banks of Berlin and Bavaria after they came out on the wrong side of World War I. They also handled the legal arrangements for the New York banks of Hitler’s most important financiers, Fritz Thyssen and Baron Kurt von Schroeder. The Dulles brothers were even said to be at Schroeder’s home for an infamous meeting on January 4, 1933, with Hitler and Franz von Papen, during which Papen agreed to secure Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of Germany—and Schroeder pledged to continue bankrolling his private army—in exchange for Hitler’s promise to crush the trade unions.)
On November 8, 1942—just before the Nazis sealed off Switzerland’s borders and occupied all of France in retaliation for the American landings in North Africa—Allen Dulles arrived in Bern to assume his post as Swiss station chief for the Office of Strategic Services. The OSS was America’s overseas spying agency, a forerunner to the CIA, and Bern at the time was a hotbed of espionage and financial intrigues. Dulles soon became the über-spider at the center of that intelligence web. He was said to have millions of dollars at his disposal and a direct line to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He also had a wife named Clover back at home in the States, but that didn’t prevent him from starting up a convenient romance with one of his early spy recruits, Mary Bancroft.
Bancroft came from a family of Boston Brahmins who’d inherited The Wall Street Journal. Her father, Hugh, a Harvard-educated lawyer, had been publisher of the Journal for five years until his suicide in 1933. Bancroft was a dilettante journalist in her own right and she spoke fluent German. Dulles had been impressed by her insightful analyses of German news articles and speeches that she’d prepared for his Bern advance man in the OSS, Gerry Mayer. She met with Dulles for dinner not long after his move to Bern. They discovered that they had many mutual friends and a lot of other things in common. At thirty-nine, Bancroft was outgoing, well-connected, highly intelligent and intuitive, and sexually voracious outside of her blatantly “open” marriage to a Zurich businessman; Dulles, ten years older, was much the same (except for the part about the Zurich businessman).
As Bancroft explained in her 1983 book, Autobiography of a Spy, when Dulles needed a translator for a memoir being written by Hans Bernd Gisevius—a senior agent in the Nazi Abwehr (the German intelligence service) who was in Switzerland to ostensibly develop contacts with the Allies so they could provide support for an Abwehr plot to depose Hitler—Dulles decided Bancroft was the right woman for the job. Gisevius hoped to have his memoir published simultaneously in English and German as soon as the war ended, thinking he’d be hailed as a hero if the plot to kill Hitler succeeded. Dulles, not completely trusting Gisevius, wanted Bancroft to spy on him while she worked on the translation, but he warned her that if she couldn’t keep the project a secret “five thousand people will be dead.”
(The assassination attempt—Operation Valkyrie—failed on July 20, 1944. Dulles was uncannily right about the number of lives at stake: According to the records of the Führer Conference on Naval Affairs, Hitler retaliated by ordering the execution of 4,980 German conspirators believed responsible for the July Plot.)
Anxious about the number of lives she might be putting at risk, Bancroft, a self-described “blabber,” immediately booked an appointment with Professor Jung to see if he thought she could keep her mouth shut. Jung laughed and assured her that she could indeed keep such a secret, “Although probably only the prospect of five thousand corpses if you didn’t would ever make you do it!” He thought her relationship with Dulles might prove interesting and he encouraged her to pursue it.
Bancroft soon settled into a regular routine during her weekly visits to Bern, spying for Dulles by day and jumping his bones by night—or engaging in “a bit of dalliance,” as she coyly described her bestial rutting with the legendary spymaster. Their pillow talk often revolved around Jung, whom Dulles knew mostly by reputation at that point (they had met only once, at the Harvard Tercentenary in 1936).
One of Jung’s early popularizers in America had been Aleister Crowley, who’d written a lightly mocking and widely-read article about Jung in the December 1916 edition of Vanity Fair titled, “An Improvement on Psychoanalysis: The Psychology of the Unconscious (For Dinner-Table Consumption).” In that article, Crowley had decreed: “Jung’s great work has been to analyze the race-myths, and to find in them the expression of the unconscious longings of humanity.” That aspect of Jung’s work—so different from Freud’s sex-drenched repression theories—was what had initially impressed both Dulles and Bancroft. As she wrote in Autobiography of a Spy:
“In 1936 Jung had published an article entitled ‘Wotan,’ which had caused a great deal of controversy. But I felt that his thesis, namely that the archetypes of the old, primitive, Teutonic gods had broken loose and were affecting the behavior of the entire German nation, was valid. In other words, a whole country had been seized by madness in very much the same way an individual goes insane. This seemed to me then—and still seems to me today—the only possible explanation of such an otherwise incomprehensible and tragic phenomenon.”
Dulles wanted Jung to provide psychological profiles of Hitler, Mussolini, and other Nazi-Fascist leaders; he was also interested in Jung’s opinion on the effectiveness of Allied propaganda campaigns. In fact, he wanted Bancroft to ask Jung so many questions that her analytical sessions with him eventually became devoted to getting Dulles his answers. Then, early in 1943, Jung and Dulles finally met in Zurich at Jung’s house on the lake at Seestrasse 228, where they embarked an experimental “marriage between espionage and psychology” and an intimate friendship that would last until Jung’s death on 6/6/61.
From that first meeting onward, Jung became a sort of senior advisor to Dulles on a weekly, if not almost daily, basis. In Dulles’ reports to OSS headquarters in Washington, Jung became known as Agent 488. Dulles made sure that special attention was paid to Agent 488’s analyses of how German leaders might react to the war’s events, especially Hitler, “in view of his psychopathic characteristics.” Jung had predicted that Hitler would resort to desperate measures in the end, including the possibility of suicide.
By 1945, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, was reading Agent 488’s views on the best way to persuade the German population to accept defeat, while Dulles was setting the stage for Operation Sunrise—a series of secret negotiations with Waffen-SS General Karl Wolff that resulted in the early surrender of German forces in northern Italy.
Dear Dr. Jung:
… I look back on our days together in Switzerland during the war. I know how ridiculous are the charges which some people have made about you and I took great pleasure in writing a letter to Paul Mellon on the subject a few days ago.
Faithfully yours, A.W. Dulles
Jung wrote back to his pal Dulles on March 21st of that same year:
Dear Mr. Dulles,
Thank you very much for your kind letter and your most valuable help!
I’m glad that you also have taken action in the case of that ridiculous accusation that I’m a Nazi. Well, you know what it is to be in the lime-light!
Yours gratefully,
C.G. Jung.
Derek - http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?p=510908
“Not many people are aware of the fact that Dulles was a close friend of Carl Gustav Jung,” Lloyd expounds, “but knowledge of that relationship is absolutely crucial to an understanding of certain postwar developments in the U.S. intelligence community and our present-day National Security State.”
Allen Welsh Dulles and his elder brother, John Foster Dulles, honed their skills in duplicity as senior partners at the prestigious Manhattan law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell—the lawyers of choice for a long list of Wall Street robber barons and amoral corporations. Both brothers were founding members of the Council on Foreign Relations. John Foster Dulles, the German Kaiser’s personal attorney, was especially adept at helping families like the Rockefellers, DuPonts, Harrimans, Walkers, and Bushs to load up on lucrative German investments between the two World Wars—first, by passing bribes at the Versailles Peace Conference to assure that the treaty would benefit Sullivan & Cromwell’s elite clients; and later, by shielding those same clients from investigation for laundering Nazi funds and otherwise profiting from Hitler’s crimes against humanity.
(Sullivan & Cromwell represented many of the leading banks of Berlin and Bavaria after they came out on the wrong side of World War I. They also handled the legal arrangements for the New York banks of Hitler’s most important financiers, Fritz Thyssen and Baron Kurt von Schroeder. The Dulles brothers were even said to be at Schroeder’s home for an infamous meeting on January 4, 1933, with Hitler and Franz von Papen, during which Papen agreed to secure Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of Germany—and Schroeder pledged to continue bankrolling his private army—in exchange for Hitler’s promise to crush the trade unions.)
On November 8, 1942—just before the Nazis sealed off Switzerland’s borders and occupied all of France in retaliation for the American landings in North Africa—Allen Dulles arrived in Bern to assume his post as Swiss station chief for the Office of Strategic Services. The OSS was America’s overseas spying agency, a forerunner to the CIA, and Bern at the time was a hotbed of espionage and financial intrigues. Dulles soon became the über-spider at the center of that intelligence web. He was said to have millions of dollars at his disposal and a direct line to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He also had a wife named Clover back at home in the States, but that didn’t prevent him from starting up a convenient romance with one of his early spy recruits, Mary Bancroft.
Bancroft came from a family of Boston Brahmins who’d inherited The Wall Street Journal. Her father, Hugh, a Harvard-educated lawyer, had been publisher of the Journal for five years until his suicide in 1933. Bancroft was a dilettante journalist in her own right and she spoke fluent German. Dulles had been impressed by her insightful analyses of German news articles and speeches that she’d prepared for his Bern advance man in the OSS, Gerry Mayer. She met with Dulles for dinner not long after his move to Bern. They discovered that they had many mutual friends and a lot of other things in common. At thirty-nine, Bancroft was outgoing, well-connected, highly intelligent and intuitive, and sexually voracious outside of her blatantly “open” marriage to a Zurich businessman; Dulles, ten years older, was much the same (except for the part about the Zurich businessman).
As Bancroft explained in her 1983 book, Autobiography of a Spy, when Dulles needed a translator for a memoir being written by Hans Bernd Gisevius—a senior agent in the Nazi Abwehr (the German intelligence service) who was in Switzerland to ostensibly develop contacts with the Allies so they could provide support for an Abwehr plot to depose Hitler—Dulles decided Bancroft was the right woman for the job. Gisevius hoped to have his memoir published simultaneously in English and German as soon as the war ended, thinking he’d be hailed as a hero if the plot to kill Hitler succeeded. Dulles, not completely trusting Gisevius, wanted Bancroft to spy on him while she worked on the translation, but he warned her that if she couldn’t keep the project a secret “five thousand people will be dead.”
(The assassination attempt—Operation Valkyrie—failed on July 20, 1944. Dulles was uncannily right about the number of lives at stake: According to the records of the Führer Conference on Naval Affairs, Hitler retaliated by ordering the execution of 4,980 German conspirators believed responsible for the July Plot.)
Anxious about the number of lives she might be putting at risk, Bancroft, a self-described “blabber,” immediately booked an appointment with Professor Jung to see if he thought she could keep her mouth shut. Jung laughed and assured her that she could indeed keep such a secret, “Although probably only the prospect of five thousand corpses if you didn’t would ever make you do it!” He thought her relationship with Dulles might prove interesting and he encouraged her to pursue it.
Bancroft soon settled into a regular routine during her weekly visits to Bern, spying for Dulles by day and jumping his bones by night—or engaging in “a bit of dalliance,” as she coyly described her bestial rutting with the legendary spymaster. Their pillow talk often revolved around Jung, whom Dulles knew mostly by reputation at that point (they had met only once, at the Harvard Tercentenary in 1936).
One of Jung’s early popularizers in America had been Aleister Crowley, who’d written a lightly mocking and widely-read article about Jung in the December 1916 edition of Vanity Fair titled, “An Improvement on Psychoanalysis: The Psychology of the Unconscious (For Dinner-Table Consumption).” In that article, Crowley had decreed: “Jung’s great work has been to analyze the race-myths, and to find in them the expression of the unconscious longings of humanity.” That aspect of Jung’s work—so different from Freud’s sex-drenched repression theories—was what had initially impressed both Dulles and Bancroft. As she wrote in Autobiography of a Spy:
“In 1936 Jung had published an article entitled ‘Wotan,’ which had caused a great deal of controversy. But I felt that his thesis, namely that the archetypes of the old, primitive, Teutonic gods had broken loose and were affecting the behavior of the entire German nation, was valid. In other words, a whole country had been seized by madness in very much the same way an individual goes insane. This seemed to me then—and still seems to me today—the only possible explanation of such an otherwise incomprehensible and tragic phenomenon.”
Dulles wanted Jung to provide psychological profiles of Hitler, Mussolini, and other Nazi-Fascist leaders; he was also interested in Jung’s opinion on the effectiveness of Allied propaganda campaigns. In fact, he wanted Bancroft to ask Jung so many questions that her analytical sessions with him eventually became devoted to getting Dulles his answers. Then, early in 1943, Jung and Dulles finally met in Zurich at Jung’s house on the lake at Seestrasse 228, where they embarked an experimental “marriage between espionage and psychology” and an intimate friendship that would last until Jung’s death on 6/6/61.
From that first meeting onward, Jung became a sort of senior advisor to Dulles on a weekly, if not almost daily, basis. In Dulles’ reports to OSS headquarters in Washington, Jung became known as Agent 488. Dulles made sure that special attention was paid to Agent 488’s analyses of how German leaders might react to the war’s events, especially Hitler, “in view of his psychopathic characteristics.” Jung had predicted that Hitler would resort to desperate measures in the end, including the possibility of suicide.
By 1945, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, was reading Agent 488’s views on the best way to persuade the German population to accept defeat, while Dulles was setting the stage for Operation Sunrise—a series of secret negotiations with Waffen-SS General Karl Wolff that resulted in the early surrender of German forces in northern Italy.
Mary Bancroft, Spy Master Allen Dulles and Dr. Jung Submitted by Observer on Sun, 30/10/2011
Mary Bancroft was just beginning her spy work for her new lover, Spy Master Allen Dulles. Her counselor, friend and subject of academic writing, psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, had not yet met Dulles but was quite interested in him.
Jung was deep into his theories of abstract consciousness and metaphysics, but he was no stranger to power politics. Men like Dulles, even Hitler, fascinated him from his theoretical perspectives. He would like to have Dulles as a case study, and his close friendship with Mary could lead to that.
He told Mary, “Your friend Dulles is quite a tough nut, isn’t he? I’m glad you’ve got his ear.” Jung said that men like Dulles, very ambitious and holding positions of power, needed to listen to what women were saying in order to exercise their best judgment and not go off the deep end.
Jung had already formally written that: “Women…always has been a source of information about things for which a man has no eyes. She can be his inspiration; her intuitive capacity, often superior to man’s, can give him timely warning, and her feelings, always directed toward the personal, can show him ways which his own less personally accented feeling would never have discovered.”
Jung knew that Mary would assist Dulles in this regard, but he would also find Dulles a remarkable blend of gender traits in that, while on the job of spy master, he would have an unexpected intuitive capacity and ability to play ever so subtly on the personal feelings of those working for him. This was Jung’s notion of woman. Away from spy work, Dulles acted as the Jungian man, having no eyes for things of which a woman is clearly conscious.
Dr. Jung had told Mary it would not be easy to get such a man’s ear. To the contrary, it was easy for Mary Bancroft, under the natural covers of work and romance. http://03775f0.netsolhost.com/mary-bancroft/mary-bancroft-spy-master-allen-dulles-and-dr-jung/
Mary Bancroft was just beginning her spy work for her new lover, Spy Master Allen Dulles. Her counselor, friend and subject of academic writing, psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, had not yet met Dulles but was quite interested in him.
Jung was deep into his theories of abstract consciousness and metaphysics, but he was no stranger to power politics. Men like Dulles, even Hitler, fascinated him from his theoretical perspectives. He would like to have Dulles as a case study, and his close friendship with Mary could lead to that.
He told Mary, “Your friend Dulles is quite a tough nut, isn’t he? I’m glad you’ve got his ear.” Jung said that men like Dulles, very ambitious and holding positions of power, needed to listen to what women were saying in order to exercise their best judgment and not go off the deep end.
Jung had already formally written that: “Women…always has been a source of information about things for which a man has no eyes. She can be his inspiration; her intuitive capacity, often superior to man’s, can give him timely warning, and her feelings, always directed toward the personal, can show him ways which his own less personally accented feeling would never have discovered.”
Jung knew that Mary would assist Dulles in this regard, but he would also find Dulles a remarkable blend of gender traits in that, while on the job of spy master, he would have an unexpected intuitive capacity and ability to play ever so subtly on the personal feelings of those working for him. This was Jung’s notion of woman. Away from spy work, Dulles acted as the Jungian man, having no eyes for things of which a woman is clearly conscious.
Dr. Jung had told Mary it would not be easy to get such a man’s ear. To the contrary, it was easy for Mary Bancroft, under the natural covers of work and romance. http://03775f0.netsolhost.com/mary-bancroft/mary-bancroft-spy-master-allen-dulles-and-dr-jung/
Bancroft spent the next four years getting to know the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung and developing a lifelong interest in his work.169 She also made friends at this time with two American Women: Mary Briner and Carly Goetze.170
Mary and Jean went to Venice, Italy in early summer 1938, staying until early August 1938. During their absence the Queen of Rumania had died. "I would eventually become much more familiar with her country and her people because of Jean's many trips to Rumania during the war, as well as by meeting his Rumanian friends who came to visit us on their way to Paris or other European capitals."171
After Pearl Harbor, Bancroft, through her friend Don Bigelow, the First Secretary at the American Legation, met and began writing articles on Switzerland and Germany for Gerald Mayer, a representative of the Office of Coordinator of Information172 [predecessor to the OSS].173 Through Mayer, after working for him for several months, M.B. met Allen Dulles, who was posing as assistant to the American Minister, in early December, 1942. Mayer was actually an OSS recruiter and Dulles was head of U.S. intelligence in Switzerland. A few days later over dinner at Dulles' apartment in Bern, they "...discovered [they] had many mutual friends and talked about them for a while." Prior to this meeting M.B. had learned that Dulles had held various positions in the State Department and that his uncle, Robert Lansing, had been Wilson's Secretary of State.174
Wilson also had several powerful University of Texas personalities in his cabinet: Colonel Edward M. House, David Franklyn Houston, Albert Sidney Burleson, and Thomas Watt Gregory. House, then a kingmaker in Texas politics was the man principally responsible for Wilson being nominated for and elected President.175
Dulles asked M.B. to continue to analyze the speeches of Hitler, Goering, and Goebels and send them to him rather than Gerald Mayer. "He'd also like me to see some people coming from adjacent countries who had to be careful where they went and whom they saw because they would be returning to occupied territories. Switzerland was riddled with enemy agents. Officially, mine was a Swiss household where such people could visit with a minimum of risk. Or, if I had to meet them in public, I was a journalist and that was an excellent cover.... Useful was a word that was constantly on his [Dulles'] lips. He judged everyone and everything by the yardstick of its usefulness in the war effort....176 It is speculated that such techniques and personality traits would also have been useful if Bancroft had to relay information from Dulles to Ruth and Michael Paine in 1963.
Dulles said of Howard Burris' close friend, Richard Helms, that he was "useful," and he "knew how to keep his mouth shut." According to Helms biographer Thomas Powers, "When Dulles undertook the delicate job of getting a Postmaster General's okay for an illegal mail-opening program, it was Helms he picked to go with him."177
Considering that Helms "had a certain slippery ability to avoid crisis situations in which failure might wreck a career..." and considering "...his skepticism of covert action," the reason he worked on this delicate job might have been due to another trait of Allen Dulles. As Bancroft describes it: "One of his greatest strengths was the devotion he was able to evoke in those who worked for him and this kind of devotion on my part began on that very first evening in Bern."178
Mary Bancroft and Allen Dulles fell in love. For M.B. it was much deeper than her feeling for Leopold had been. M.B. did not like Allen's attitude toward John Foster, however. When their father was dying he told all his children to regard Foster as the head of the family. M.B. thought the American people should have made more of a fuss "over the constellation of power resulting from Foster at State and Allen at the CIA."179 She probably knew about their conflicts of interest with the United Fruit Company.
M.B. noticed that Dulles was annoyed with the wrongness of facts in Hitler's speeches and found herself having to explain the Nazi theory of propaganda, "how it had nothing to do with presenting facts accurately but solely with an appeal to the emotions of the German people."180 To do this she translated passages on the subject from Mein Kampf for Dulles. M.B.'s work included comparing articles in the most respected German newspaper with the contents of Goebbel's weekly and issues of the Nazi party paper. She summarized significant articles in each "and also reported on the obituaries -- how many deaths were of the military or seemed significant in connection with specific bombings."181
While she never mentions the term "editorial intelligence" in her book, Bancroft, nevertheless, gives a good definition of it: "But intelligence is a mosaic. General material about background and people's interrelationships can be both illuminating and important. Quite often missing pieces of the mosaic emerge that make a previously incomprehensible picture unexpectedly clear."182 Indeed.
Toward the end of May, 1943, M.B. was asked by Dulles to translate a book on the Third Reich by Hans Bernd Gisevius, a member of the Canaris organization -- the Abwehr -- stationed under the diplomatic cover of vice-consul at the German consulate in Zurich. His book was about the July 20 plot against Hitler, being coordinated by Admiral Canaris' subordinate, Colonel Hans Oster. M.B. reported: "I told Allen it all made sense to me. Difficult as it might be to believe, the conspirators actually hoped that if they got rid of Hitler they would be able to take over the whole country and to negotiate peace with the Anglo-Americans. Their hopes went even further: They envisaged the western Allies joining them in a crusade against Russia -- and communism. Gisevius had been sent to Switzerland to get in touch with the western Allies. Other emissaries were making similar contacts in Sweden and elsewhere."183
Bancroft reveals more about Dulles' background: "In addition to Rumanians, I was also meeting with a considerable number of Yugoslavs....Allen was already thoroughly familiar with both the history and present conditions in Yugoslavia, having at one point in his State Department career been in charge of the desk that dealt with the affairs of that part of the world. He apparently knew the names of every city, town, river, bridge, railway line, and personality in the entire country."184
Gisevius told M.B. that the Rumanians, Bulgarians, and Hungarians were watching how the U.S. treated Italy after the fall of Mussolini in the summer of 1943. He said we should have made peace with them and followed it with peace offers to the Balkan countries, who would have jumped at the chance. This, he said would have destroyed German morale enough that Germany would have collapsed "within seventy-two hours."185
Gisevius claimed that the Allies behavior in Italy was proof they were not interested in fighting fascism. He also felt that Allied bombing strategy and the demand for an unconditional surrender would drive the German's toward "an eastern solution" being offered by the Russians and their Freies Deutschland ("Free Germany") committee established in Moscow after Stalingrad and headed by Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus and General von Seydlitz. "This was causing difficulties for the conspiracy of civilians and officers who wanted to get rid of Hitler -- particularly the older men who, like Gisevius himself, favored `a western solution.'" Gisevius felt that if we "disappointed" the Germans "they might well fling themselves in the arms of the Russians, and the resultant terror would mean `the end of Western Civilization.'" M.B. felt this phrase was overused to promote ones menace of choice -- in this case the menace of Russian communism. The July 20 plotters were both anti-Nazi and anti-communist, but not necessarily anti-fascist.186
Concerning intelligence which would have been of certain interest to Rostow, Mary tells us, "Allen had been beside himself with eagerness for Jean's return. On August 1, Allied planes had raided the Rumanian oil fields at Ploesti, and Allen, realizing that the railroad ran by these fields, knew Jean would be able to give him a firsthand report of the damage caused by the raid....The Rumanians were greatly upset by the bombing of Sofia. They couldn't understand why Sofia had been bombed and not Bucharest. Their pride had been hurt!" Although the Rumanians loved the Americans and hated the Germans, they preferred German over Russian occupation.187
In early July, 1944, Gisevius left for Germany to prepare for the coup. M.B. and Mary Jane left for Ascona for six weeks. Gisevius' friend and Abwehr colleague, Eddie Waetjen, also attached to the German consulate in Zurich, also spent the summer in Ascona with his family. On July 20, the coup failed. M.B. and Mary Jane returned to Zurich on September 1, 1944. Jean spent the summer traveling.188
In late January, 1945, Gisevius returned to Zurich and eventually moved to a rented house on Lake Geneva. In the weeks preceding July 20, Gisevius had been constantly on the move between Basel, Bern, Geneva, the Grisons, and Zurich.189
On July 13, Gisevius met with General Beck who wanted to put the whole plan down on paper. "Men of Beck's generation had no conception of how, under a terror, everyone, including one's own children, must be regarded as potentially dangerous spies. Nor did it occur to such old school gentlemen that any slip of paper, even if only written for ones own private information, might find its way into the hands of the Gestapo with devastating results for all concerned. Gisevius was only too aware of this problem." One detail of the putsch was that "Immediately after the bomb exploded, the headquarters' communications center would be put out of commission. This would insure that headquarters would be cut off from the outside world for several hours and prevent the issuance of counter-orders should there be any survivor with the authority to issue them." This never happened and allowed not only counter-orders but verification of Hitler's survival.190
It is recalled here that Kennedy's entire cabinet was out of the country at the time he was killed. Also, for an hour after the JFK assassination, phone service in Washington was sporadic at best.191 Whether or not this was due to deliberate tampering can be researched by checking the memories of people in other cities with large populations about whether their phone system was having problems during that hour.
By July 23 Gisevius had managed to find a hiding place where he waited for Dulles to smuggle false papers to him. On January 20, 1945 the papers mysteriously appeared at the house where he was staying. "The papers included a special pass and a letter from Gestapo headquarters signed by Himmler (a perfect forgery), instructing all government officials to assist said Hoffman [his new identity] on an important secret mission to Switzerland." Still, he was lucky to make it back.192
After analyzing Gisevius, Carl Jung told M.B., "`Of course, he still has rather grandiose ideas, and if he goes to the United States, he might attach himself to some current of power there that would permit him to realize at least some of them.'"193 Prior to this comment, the only contact Bancroft had established between Gisevius and the United States was with Dulles through Bancroft herself. Did Gisevius wish to continue his work in anti-communist assassination plots? As we shall see, Gisevius did go to the U.S. He "spent some time in Texas, then returned to Germany...."
In another statement that overlaps with the interests of Ransom and Rostow M.B. writes that among Dulles' achievements cited in his Medal for Merit is "...his reports on damage inflicted by the Allied Air Forces as a result of raids on Berlin and other German, Italian, and Balkan cities, which were forwarded within two or three days of the operations."194
On her relationship with Dulles, M.B. says, "He knew that there was nothing he could say or do that would affect in the slightest my deep affection for him. He was also aware that I knew his dark side and that it didn't bother me in the least." Again we see personality traits that were and would remain useful in the business of assassination plotting.
Dulles went to Germany in the spring of 1945 to head the OSS mission there.195 When the Russians learned of the secret negotiations for the first great German surrender, from which they were excluded, they protested to Washington. "So Allen withdrew personally from the negotiations, but indicated, without saying so in so many words, that it would be quite all right for others to proceed as long as he didn't know anything about what they were doing. This was an old trick, similar to the one practiced by Admiral Canaris in connection with the July 20 conspiracy."196 And again we see techniques that were and would remain useful in the business of assassination plotting.
http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/17th_Issue/rambler2.html
Mary and Jean went to Venice, Italy in early summer 1938, staying until early August 1938. During their absence the Queen of Rumania had died. "I would eventually become much more familiar with her country and her people because of Jean's many trips to Rumania during the war, as well as by meeting his Rumanian friends who came to visit us on their way to Paris or other European capitals."171
After Pearl Harbor, Bancroft, through her friend Don Bigelow, the First Secretary at the American Legation, met and began writing articles on Switzerland and Germany for Gerald Mayer, a representative of the Office of Coordinator of Information172 [predecessor to the OSS].173 Through Mayer, after working for him for several months, M.B. met Allen Dulles, who was posing as assistant to the American Minister, in early December, 1942. Mayer was actually an OSS recruiter and Dulles was head of U.S. intelligence in Switzerland. A few days later over dinner at Dulles' apartment in Bern, they "...discovered [they] had many mutual friends and talked about them for a while." Prior to this meeting M.B. had learned that Dulles had held various positions in the State Department and that his uncle, Robert Lansing, had been Wilson's Secretary of State.174
Wilson also had several powerful University of Texas personalities in his cabinet: Colonel Edward M. House, David Franklyn Houston, Albert Sidney Burleson, and Thomas Watt Gregory. House, then a kingmaker in Texas politics was the man principally responsible for Wilson being nominated for and elected President.175
Dulles asked M.B. to continue to analyze the speeches of Hitler, Goering, and Goebels and send them to him rather than Gerald Mayer. "He'd also like me to see some people coming from adjacent countries who had to be careful where they went and whom they saw because they would be returning to occupied territories. Switzerland was riddled with enemy agents. Officially, mine was a Swiss household where such people could visit with a minimum of risk. Or, if I had to meet them in public, I was a journalist and that was an excellent cover.... Useful was a word that was constantly on his [Dulles'] lips. He judged everyone and everything by the yardstick of its usefulness in the war effort....176 It is speculated that such techniques and personality traits would also have been useful if Bancroft had to relay information from Dulles to Ruth and Michael Paine in 1963.
Dulles said of Howard Burris' close friend, Richard Helms, that he was "useful," and he "knew how to keep his mouth shut." According to Helms biographer Thomas Powers, "When Dulles undertook the delicate job of getting a Postmaster General's okay for an illegal mail-opening program, it was Helms he picked to go with him."177
Considering that Helms "had a certain slippery ability to avoid crisis situations in which failure might wreck a career..." and considering "...his skepticism of covert action," the reason he worked on this delicate job might have been due to another trait of Allen Dulles. As Bancroft describes it: "One of his greatest strengths was the devotion he was able to evoke in those who worked for him and this kind of devotion on my part began on that very first evening in Bern."178
Mary Bancroft and Allen Dulles fell in love. For M.B. it was much deeper than her feeling for Leopold had been. M.B. did not like Allen's attitude toward John Foster, however. When their father was dying he told all his children to regard Foster as the head of the family. M.B. thought the American people should have made more of a fuss "over the constellation of power resulting from Foster at State and Allen at the CIA."179 She probably knew about their conflicts of interest with the United Fruit Company.
M.B. noticed that Dulles was annoyed with the wrongness of facts in Hitler's speeches and found herself having to explain the Nazi theory of propaganda, "how it had nothing to do with presenting facts accurately but solely with an appeal to the emotions of the German people."180 To do this she translated passages on the subject from Mein Kampf for Dulles. M.B.'s work included comparing articles in the most respected German newspaper with the contents of Goebbel's weekly and issues of the Nazi party paper. She summarized significant articles in each "and also reported on the obituaries -- how many deaths were of the military or seemed significant in connection with specific bombings."181
While she never mentions the term "editorial intelligence" in her book, Bancroft, nevertheless, gives a good definition of it: "But intelligence is a mosaic. General material about background and people's interrelationships can be both illuminating and important. Quite often missing pieces of the mosaic emerge that make a previously incomprehensible picture unexpectedly clear."182 Indeed.
Toward the end of May, 1943, M.B. was asked by Dulles to translate a book on the Third Reich by Hans Bernd Gisevius, a member of the Canaris organization -- the Abwehr -- stationed under the diplomatic cover of vice-consul at the German consulate in Zurich. His book was about the July 20 plot against Hitler, being coordinated by Admiral Canaris' subordinate, Colonel Hans Oster. M.B. reported: "I told Allen it all made sense to me. Difficult as it might be to believe, the conspirators actually hoped that if they got rid of Hitler they would be able to take over the whole country and to negotiate peace with the Anglo-Americans. Their hopes went even further: They envisaged the western Allies joining them in a crusade against Russia -- and communism. Gisevius had been sent to Switzerland to get in touch with the western Allies. Other emissaries were making similar contacts in Sweden and elsewhere."183
Bancroft reveals more about Dulles' background: "In addition to Rumanians, I was also meeting with a considerable number of Yugoslavs....Allen was already thoroughly familiar with both the history and present conditions in Yugoslavia, having at one point in his State Department career been in charge of the desk that dealt with the affairs of that part of the world. He apparently knew the names of every city, town, river, bridge, railway line, and personality in the entire country."184
Gisevius told M.B. that the Rumanians, Bulgarians, and Hungarians were watching how the U.S. treated Italy after the fall of Mussolini in the summer of 1943. He said we should have made peace with them and followed it with peace offers to the Balkan countries, who would have jumped at the chance. This, he said would have destroyed German morale enough that Germany would have collapsed "within seventy-two hours."185
Gisevius claimed that the Allies behavior in Italy was proof they were not interested in fighting fascism. He also felt that Allied bombing strategy and the demand for an unconditional surrender would drive the German's toward "an eastern solution" being offered by the Russians and their Freies Deutschland ("Free Germany") committee established in Moscow after Stalingrad and headed by Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus and General von Seydlitz. "This was causing difficulties for the conspiracy of civilians and officers who wanted to get rid of Hitler -- particularly the older men who, like Gisevius himself, favored `a western solution.'" Gisevius felt that if we "disappointed" the Germans "they might well fling themselves in the arms of the Russians, and the resultant terror would mean `the end of Western Civilization.'" M.B. felt this phrase was overused to promote ones menace of choice -- in this case the menace of Russian communism. The July 20 plotters were both anti-Nazi and anti-communist, but not necessarily anti-fascist.186
Concerning intelligence which would have been of certain interest to Rostow, Mary tells us, "Allen had been beside himself with eagerness for Jean's return. On August 1, Allied planes had raided the Rumanian oil fields at Ploesti, and Allen, realizing that the railroad ran by these fields, knew Jean would be able to give him a firsthand report of the damage caused by the raid....The Rumanians were greatly upset by the bombing of Sofia. They couldn't understand why Sofia had been bombed and not Bucharest. Their pride had been hurt!" Although the Rumanians loved the Americans and hated the Germans, they preferred German over Russian occupation.187
In early July, 1944, Gisevius left for Germany to prepare for the coup. M.B. and Mary Jane left for Ascona for six weeks. Gisevius' friend and Abwehr colleague, Eddie Waetjen, also attached to the German consulate in Zurich, also spent the summer in Ascona with his family. On July 20, the coup failed. M.B. and Mary Jane returned to Zurich on September 1, 1944. Jean spent the summer traveling.188
In late January, 1945, Gisevius returned to Zurich and eventually moved to a rented house on Lake Geneva. In the weeks preceding July 20, Gisevius had been constantly on the move between Basel, Bern, Geneva, the Grisons, and Zurich.189
On July 13, Gisevius met with General Beck who wanted to put the whole plan down on paper. "Men of Beck's generation had no conception of how, under a terror, everyone, including one's own children, must be regarded as potentially dangerous spies. Nor did it occur to such old school gentlemen that any slip of paper, even if only written for ones own private information, might find its way into the hands of the Gestapo with devastating results for all concerned. Gisevius was only too aware of this problem." One detail of the putsch was that "Immediately after the bomb exploded, the headquarters' communications center would be put out of commission. This would insure that headquarters would be cut off from the outside world for several hours and prevent the issuance of counter-orders should there be any survivor with the authority to issue them." This never happened and allowed not only counter-orders but verification of Hitler's survival.190
It is recalled here that Kennedy's entire cabinet was out of the country at the time he was killed. Also, for an hour after the JFK assassination, phone service in Washington was sporadic at best.191 Whether or not this was due to deliberate tampering can be researched by checking the memories of people in other cities with large populations about whether their phone system was having problems during that hour.
By July 23 Gisevius had managed to find a hiding place where he waited for Dulles to smuggle false papers to him. On January 20, 1945 the papers mysteriously appeared at the house where he was staying. "The papers included a special pass and a letter from Gestapo headquarters signed by Himmler (a perfect forgery), instructing all government officials to assist said Hoffman [his new identity] on an important secret mission to Switzerland." Still, he was lucky to make it back.192
After analyzing Gisevius, Carl Jung told M.B., "`Of course, he still has rather grandiose ideas, and if he goes to the United States, he might attach himself to some current of power there that would permit him to realize at least some of them.'"193 Prior to this comment, the only contact Bancroft had established between Gisevius and the United States was with Dulles through Bancroft herself. Did Gisevius wish to continue his work in anti-communist assassination plots? As we shall see, Gisevius did go to the U.S. He "spent some time in Texas, then returned to Germany...."
In another statement that overlaps with the interests of Ransom and Rostow M.B. writes that among Dulles' achievements cited in his Medal for Merit is "...his reports on damage inflicted by the Allied Air Forces as a result of raids on Berlin and other German, Italian, and Balkan cities, which were forwarded within two or three days of the operations."194
On her relationship with Dulles, M.B. says, "He knew that there was nothing he could say or do that would affect in the slightest my deep affection for him. He was also aware that I knew his dark side and that it didn't bother me in the least." Again we see personality traits that were and would remain useful in the business of assassination plotting.
Dulles went to Germany in the spring of 1945 to head the OSS mission there.195 When the Russians learned of the secret negotiations for the first great German surrender, from which they were excluded, they protested to Washington. "So Allen withdrew personally from the negotiations, but indicated, without saying so in so many words, that it would be quite all right for others to proceed as long as he didn't know anything about what they were doing. This was an old trick, similar to the one practiced by Admiral Canaris in connection with the July 20 conspiracy."196 And again we see techniques that were and would remain useful in the business of assassination plotting.
http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/17th_Issue/rambler2.html
First published as
'Wotan, Neue Schweizer Rundschau' (Zurich).
III March, 1936
Carl Gustav Jung
When we look back to the time before 1914, we find ourselves living in a world of events which would have been inconceivable before the war. We were even beginning to regard war between civilized nations as a fable, thinking that such an absurdity would become less and less possible in our rational, internationally organized world. And what came after the war was a veritable witches’ Sabbath. Everywhere fantastic revolutions, violent alterations of the map, reversions in politics to medieval or even antique prototypes, totalitarian states that engulf their neighbours and outdo all previous theocracies in their absolutist claims, persecutions of Christians and Jews, wholesale political murder, and finally we have witnessed a light-hearted piratical raid on a peaceful, half-civilized people. With such goings on in the wide world it is not in the least surprising that there should be equally curious manifestations on a smaller scale in other spheres. In the realm of philosophy we shall have to wait some time before anyone is able to assess the kind of age that we are living in. But in the sphere of religion we can see at once that some very significant things have been happening. We need feel no surprise that in Russia the colourful splendours of the Eastern Orthodox Church have been superseded by the 'Movement of the Godless' – indeed, one breathed a sigh of relief oneself when one emerged from the haze of an Orthodox church with its multitude of lamps and entered an honest mosque, where the sublime and invisible omnipresence of God was not crowded out by a superfluity of sacred paraphernalia. Tasteless and pitiably unintelligent as it is, and however deplorable the low spiritual level of the “Scientific” reaction, it was inevitable that nineteenth-century “scientific” enlightenment should one day dawn in Russia. But what is more than curious – indeed, piquant to a degree – is that an ancient God of storm and frenzy, the long quiescent Wotan, should awake, like an extinct volcano, to new activity.
We have seen him come to life in the 'German Youth Movement', and right at the beginning the blood of several sheep was shed in honour of his resurrection. Armed with rucksack and lute, blond youths, and sometimes girls as well, were to be seen as restless wanderers on every road from North Cape to Sicily, faithful votaries of the roving god. Later, towards the end of the Weimar Republic, the wandering role was taken over by thousands of unemployed, who were to be met with everywhere on their aimless journeys.
By 1933 they wandered no longer, but marched in their hundreds of thousands. The Hitler movement literally brought the whole of Germany to its feet, from five-year-olds to veterans, and produced a spectacle of a nation migrating from one place to another. Wotan the wanderer was on the move. He could be seen, looking rather shamefaced, in the meeting-house of a sect of simple folk in North Germany, disguised as Christ sitting on a white horse. I do not know if these people were aware of Wotan’s ancient connection with the figures of Christ and Dionysus, but it is not very probable. Wotan is a restless wanderer who creates unrest and stirs up strife, now here, now there, and works magic.
Wotan
He was soon changed by Christianity into the devil, and only lived on in fading local traditions as a ghostly hunter who was seen with his retinue, flickering like a will o’ the wisp through the stormy night. The German youths who celebrated the solstice with sheep-sacrifices were not the first to hear the rustling in the primeval forest of unconsciousness.
They were anticipated by Nietzsche, Schuler, Stefan George, and Ludwig Klages. The literary tradition of the Rhineland and the country south of the Main has a classical stamp that cannot easily be got rid of; every interpretation of intoxication and exuberance is apt to be taken back to classical models, to Dionysus, to the peur aeternus and the cosmogonic Eros. No doubt it sounds better to academic ears to interpret these things as Dionysus, but Wotan might be a more correct interpretation. He is the god of the storm and frenzy, the unleasher of passions and the lust of battle; moreover he is superlative magician and artist in illusion who is versed in all secrets of an occult nature. Nietzsche’s case is certainly a peculiar one.
He had no knowledge of Germanic literature; he discovered the “cultural Philistine”; and the announcement that “God is dead” led to Zarathustra’s meeting with an unknown god in unexpected form, who approached him sometimes as an enemy and sometimes disguised as Zarathustra himself. Zarathustra, too, was a soothsayer, a magician, and the storm-wind. 'And like a wind shall I come to blow among them, and with my spirit shall take away the breath of their spirit; thus my future wills it. Truly, a strong wind is Zarathustra to all that are low; and this counsel gives he to his enemies and to all that spit and spew: “Beware of spitting against the wind.” And when Zarathustra dreamed that he was guardian of the graves in the “lone mountain forest of death,” and was making a mighty effort to open the gates, suddenly a roaring wind tore the gates asunder; whistling, shrieking, and keening, it cast a black coffin before me. And amid the roaring and whistling and shrieking the coffin burst open and spouted a thousand peals of laughter. The disciple who interpreted the dream said to Zarathustra: Are you not yourself the wind with shrill whistling, which bursts open the gates of the fortress of death? Are you not yourself the coffin filled with life’s gay malice and angel-grimaces ?'
In 1863 or 1864, in his poem: 'To the Unknown God', Nietzsche had written: 'I shall and will know thee, Unknown One, Who searchest out the depths of my soul, And blowest through my life like a storm, Ungraspable, and yet my kinsman! I shall and will know thee, and serve thee. Twenty years later, in his Mistral Song, he wrote: Mistral wind, chaser of clouds, Killer of gloom, sweeper of the skies, Raging storm-wind, how I love thee! Are we not both the first-fruits Of the same womb, forever predestined To the same fate ?'
In the dithyramb known as Ariadne’s Lament, Nietzsche is completely the victim of the hunter-god: 'Stretched out, shuddering, Like a half-dead thing whose feet are warmed, Shaken by unknown fevers, Shivering with piercing icy frost arrows Hunted by thee, O thought, Unutterable! Veiled! Horrible one! Thou huntsman behind the cloud. Struck down by thy lightening bolt, Thou mocking eye that stares at me from the dark! Thus I lie. Writhing, twisted, tormented With all eternal tortures. Smitten By thee, cruel huntsman, Thou unknown – God !'
This remarkable image of the 'hunter-god' is not a mere dithyrambic figure of speech but is based on an experience which Nietzsche had when he was fifteen years old, at Pforta. It is described in a book by Nietzsche’s sister, Elizabeth Foerster-Nietzsche. As he was wandering in a gloomy wood at night, he was terrified by a “blood-curdling shriek from a neighbouring lunatic asylum,” and soon afterwards he came face to face with a huntsman whose “features were wild and uncanny.” Setting his whistle to his lips “in a valley surrounded by wild scrub,” the huntsman “blew such as a shrill blast” that Nietzsche lost consciousness – but woke up again in Pforta. It was a nightmare. It is significant that in his dream Nietzsche, who in reality intended to go to Eisleben, Luther’s town, discussed with the huntsman the question of going instead to “Teutschenthal” (Valley of the Germans).
Richard Wagner No one with ears can misunderstand the shrill whistling of the storm-god in the nocturnal wood. Was it really only the classical philologist in Nietzsche that led to the god being called Dionysus instead of Wotan – or was it perhaps due to his fateful meeting with Wagner ? In his 'Reich ohne Raum', which was first published in 1919, Bruno Goetz saw the secret of coming events in Germany in the form of a very strange vision. I have never forgotten this little book, for it struck me at the time as a forecast of the German weather. It anticipates the conflict between the realm of ideas and life, between Wotan’s dual nature as a god of storm and a god of secret musings. Wotan disappeared when his oaks fell and appeared again when the Christian God proved too weak to save Christendom from fratricidal slaughter.
When the Holy Father at Rome could only impotently lament before God the fate of the grex segregatus (separated flock), the one-eyed old hunter, on the edge of the German forest, laughed and saddled Sleipnir.
In Norse mythology, Sleipnir is an eight-legged horse. Sleipnir is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. In both sources, Sleipnir is Odin's steed, is the child of Loki and Svaðilfari, is described as the best of all horses, and is sometimes ridden to the location of Hel. The Prose Edda contains extended information regarding the circumstances of Sleipnir's birth, and details that he is grey in color.
We are always convinced that the modern world is a reasonable world, basing our opinion on economic, political, and psychological factors, but if we may forget for a moment and lay aside our well-meaning, all-too human reasonableness, may burden God or the gods with the responsibility for contemporary events instead of man, we would find Wotan quite suitable as a casual hypothesis. In fact, I venture the heretical suggestion that the unfathomable depths of Wotan’s character explain more of Völkisch philosophy than all three reasonable factors put together.
There is no doubt that each of these factors explains an important aspect of what is going on in Germany, but Wotan explains yet more. He is particularly enlightening in regard to a general phenomenon, which is so strange to anybody not a German that it remains incomprehensible, even after the deepest reflection. Perhaps we may sum up this general phenomenon as 'Ergriffenheit' – a state of being seized or possessed. The term postulates not only an 'Ergriffener' (one who is seized) but, also, an 'Ergreifer' (one who seizes).
Wotan is an 'Ergreifer' of men, and, unless one wishes to deify Hitler – which has indeed actually happened – he is really the only explanation. It is true that Wotan shares this quality with his cousin Dionysus, but Dionysus seems to have exercised his influence mainly on women. The maenads were a species of female 'storm-troopers', and, according to mythical reports, were dangerous enough. Wotan confined himself to the 'berserkers', who found their vocation as the Blackshirts of mythical kings. A mind that is still childish thinks of the gods as metaphysical entities existing in their own right, or else regards them as playful or superstitious inventions. From either point of view the parallel between 'Wotan redivivus' (come back to life; revived) and the social, political, and psychic storm that is shaking Germany might have at least the value of parable. But since the 'gods' are without doubt personifications of psychic forces, to assert their metaphysical existence is as much an intellectual presumption as the opinion that they could ever be invented. Not that “psychic forces” have anything to do with the conscious mind, fond as we are of playing with the idea that consciousness and psyche are identical. This is only another piece of intellectual presumption.
“Psychic forces” have far more to do with the realm of the unconscious. Our mania for rational explanations obviously has its roots in our fear of metaphysics, for the two were always hostile brothers. Hence, anything unexpected that approaches us from the dark realm is regarded either as coming from outside and, therefore, as real, or else as a hallucination and, therefore, not true.
The idea that anything could be real or true which does not come from outside has hardly begun to dawn on contemporary man. For the sake of better understanding and to avoid prejudice, we could of course dispense with the name “Wotan” and speak instead of the 'furor Teutonicus' (furor - violent anger or frenzy; a state of intense excitement). But we should only be saying the same thing and not as well, for the furor in this case is a mere psychologizing of Wotan and tells us no more than that the Germans are in a state of “fury.” We thus lose sight of the most peculiar feature of this whole phenomenon, namely, the dramatic aspect of the 'Ergreifer' and the 'Ergriffener'. The impressive thing about the German phenomenon is that one man, who is obviously “possessed,” has infected a whole nation to such an extent that everything is set in motion and has started rolling on its course towards perdition. It seems to me that Wotan hits the mark as an hypothesis. Apparently he really was only asleep in the Kyffhauser mountain until the ravens called him and announced the break of day.
Kyffhäuser Berg The Kyffhäuser is a range of hills located on the border of the German state of Thuringia with Saxony-Anhalt. It stands on the southern edge of the Harz. The range has a length of 19 kilometres (12 mi) and a width of 7 kilometres (4.3 mi). It reaches its highest point at the Kulpenberg (473.4 metres (1,553 ft)), situated in Thuringia. The Kyffhäuser has significance in German traditional mythology as the resting place of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who drowned on June 10, 1190 in the Göksu River near Silifke during the Third Crusade.
He is a fundamental attribute of the German psyche, an irrational psychic factor which acts on the high pressure of civilization like a cyclone and blows it away. Despite their apparent crankiness, the Wotan-worshippers seem to have judged things more correctly than the worshippers of reason. Apparently everyone had forgotten that Wotan is a Germanic 'datum' of first importance, the trust expression and unsurpassed personification of a fundamental quality that is particularly characteristic of the Germans. Houston Stewart Chamberlain is a symptom which arouses suspicion that other veiled gods may be sleeping elsewhere.
The emphasis on the German race – commonly called “Aryan” – the Germanic heritage, blood and soil, the Wagalaweia songs, the ride of the Valkyries, Jesus as a blond and blue-eyed hero, the Greek mother of St. Paul, the devil as an international Alberich in Jewish or Masonic guise, the Nordic aurora borealis as the light of civilization, the inferior Mediterranean races – all this is the indispensable scenery for the drama that is taking place and at the bottom they all mean the same thing: a god has taken possession of the Germans and their house is filled with a “mighty rushing wind.” It was soon after Hitler seized power that a cartoon appeared in Punch of a raving berserker tearing himself free from his bonds. A hurricane has broken loose in Germany while we still believe it is fine weather.
Things are comparatively quite in Switzerland, though occasionally there is a puff of wind from the north or south. Sometimes it has a slightly ominous sound, sometimes it whispers so harmlessly or even idealistically that no one is alarmed. “Let the sleeping dogs lie” – we manage to get along pretty well with this proverbial wisdom. It is sometimes said that the Swiss are singularly averse to making a problem of themselves. I must rebut this accusation: the Swiss do have their problems, but they would not admit it for anything in the world, even though they see which way the wind is blowing. We thus pay our tribute to the time of storm and stress in Germany, but we never mention it, and this enables us to feel vastly superior. It is above all the Germans who have an opportunity, perhaps unique in history, to look into their own hearts and to learn what those perils of the soul were from which Christianity tried to rescue mankind. Germany is a land of spiritual catastrophes, where nature never makes more than a pretence of peace with the world-ruling reason.
The disturber of the peace is a wind that blows into Europe from Asia’s vastness, sweeping in on a wide front from Thrace to the Baltic, scattering the nations before it like dry leaves, or inspiring thoughts that shake the world to its foundations.
It is an elemental Dionysus breaking into the Apollonian order.
The rouser of this Tempest is named Wotan, and we can learn a good deal about him from the political confusion and spiritual upheaval he has caused throughout history. For a more exact investigation of his character, however, we must go back to the age of myths, which did not explain everything in terms of man and his limited capabilities, but sought the deeper cause in the psyche and its autonomous powers. Man’s earliest intuitions personified these powers as 'gods', and described them in the myths with great care and circumstantiality, according to their various characters.
This could be done the more readily on account of the firmly established primordial types or images which are innate in the unconscious of many races and exercise a direct influence upon them. Because the behaviour of a race takes on its specific character from its underlying images, we can speak of an archetype “Wotan.”
An archetype is a universally understood symbol, term, statement, or pattern of behaviour, - a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated. Archetypes are often used in myths and storytelling across different cultures.
In Jung's psychological framework, archetypes are innate, universal prototypes for ideas and may be used to interpret observations. A group of memories and interpretations associated with an archetype is a complex ( e.g. a mother complex associated with the mother archetype). Jung treated the archetypes as psychological organs, analogous to physical ones in that both are morphological constructs that arose through evolution.
As an autonomous psychic factor, Wotan produces effects in the collective life of a people and thereby reveals his own nature. For Wotan has a peculiar biology of his own, quite apart from the nature of man. It is only from time to time that individuals fall under the irresistible influence of this unconscious factor. When it is quiescent, one is no more aware of the archetype Wotan than of a latent epilepsy. Could the Germans who were adults in 1914 have foreseen what they would be today ?
Such amazing transformations are the effect of the god of wind, that “bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth.” It seizes everything in its path and overthrows everything that is not firmly rooted. When the wind blows it shakes everything that is insecure, whether without or within.
Martin Ninck has recently published a monograph which is a most welcome addition to our knowledge of Wotan’s nature. The reader need not fear that this book is nothing but a scientific study written with academic aloofness from the subject. Certainly the right to scientific objectivity is fully preserved, and the material has been collected with extraordinary thoroughness and presented in unusually clear form. But, over and above all this, one feels that the author is vitally interested in it, that the chord of Wotan is vibrating in him, too.
This is no criticism – on the contrary, it is one of the chief merits of the book, which without this enthusiasm might easily have degenerated into a tedious catalogue. Ninck sketches a really magnificent portrait of the German archetype Wotan. He describes him in ten chapters, using all the available sources, as the berserker, the god of storm, the wanderer, the warrior, the Wunsch- (wish) and Minne -god, the lord of the dead and of the Einherjar, the master of secret knowledge, the magician, and the god of the poets. Neither the Valkyries nor the Fylgja (a supernatural being or creature which accompanies a person in connection to their fate or fortune) are forgotten, for they form part of the mythological background and fateful significance of Wotan. Ninck’s inquiry into the name and its origin is particularly instructive.
Mercury
He shows that Wotan is not only a god of rage and frenzy, who embodies the instinctual and emotional aspect of the unconscious. Its intuitive and inspiring side, also, manifests itself in him, for he understands the runes and can interpret fate. The Romans identified Wotan with Mercury, but his character does not really corresponded to any Roman or Greek god, although there are certain resemblances. He is a wanderer like Mercury, for instance, he rules over the dead like Pluto and Kronos, and is connected with Dionysus by his emotional frenzy, particularly in its mantic aspect.
It is surprising that Ninck does not mention Hermes, the god of revelation, who as 'pneuma' (ancient Greek for breath, spirit or soul) and 'nous' (Greek - intellect or intelligence) is associated with the wind.
He would be the connecting-link with the Christian 'pneuma' and the miracle of Pentecost. As Poimandres (the shepherd of men), Hermes is an 'Ergreifer' like Wotan. Ninck rightly points out that Dionysus and the other Greek gods always remained under the supreme authority of Zeus, which indicates a fundamental difference between the Greek and Germanic temperament.
Ninck assumes an inner affinity between Wotan and Kronos, and the latter’s defeat may perhaps be a sign that the Wotan-archetype was once overcome and split up in prehistoric times. At all events, the Germanic god represents a totality on a very primitive level, - a psychological condition in which man’s will was almost identical with the god’s and entirely at his mercy. But the Greeks had gods who helped man against other gods; indeed, 'All-Father' Zeus himself is not far from the ideal of a benevolent, enlightened despot.
It was not in Wotan’s nature to linger on, and show signs of old age. He simply disappeared when the times turned against him, and remained invisible for more than a thousand years, working anonymously and indirectly.
Archetypes are like riverbeds which dry up when the water deserts them, but which it can find again at any-time.
An archetype is like an old watercourse along which the water of life has flowed for centuries, digging a deep channel for itself.
The longer it has flowed in this channel the more likely it is that sooner or later the water will return to its old bed.
The life of the individual as a member of society and particularly as a part of the state may be regulated like a canal, but the life of nations is a great rushing river which is utterly beyond human control, in the hands of 'One' who has always been stronger than men.
The League of Nations, which was supposed to possess supernatural authority, is regarded by some as a child in need of care and protection, by others as an abortion. Thus, the life of nations rolls on unchecked, without guidance, unconscious of where it is going, like a rock crashing down the side of a hill, until it is stopped by an obstacle stronger than itself. Political events move from one impasse to the next, like a torrent caught in gullies, creeks and marshes.
All human control comes to an end when the individual is caught in a mass movement.
Then, the archetypes begin to function, as happens, also, in the lives of individuals when they are confronted with situations that cannot be dealt with in any of the familiar ways. But what a so-called Führer does with a mass movement can plainly be seen if we turn our eyes to the north or south of our country. The ruling archetype does not remain the same forever, as is evident from the temporal limitations that have been set to the hoped-for reign of peace, the “thousand-year Reich.”
The Mediterranean father-archetype of the just, order-loving, benevolent ruler had been shattered over the whole of northern Europe, as the present fate of the Christian churches bears witness. Fascism in Italy and the civil war in Spain show that in the south as well the cataclysm has been far greater than one expected. Even the Catholic Church can no longer afford trials of strength. The nationalist God has attacked Christianity on a broad front.
Deutsche Glaubensbewegung In Russia, he is called technology and science, in Italy, 'Duce' (leader), and in Germany, 'Deutsch Glaube' (German Faith), 'German Christianity', or the State. “The German Christians” are a contradiction in many terms, and would do better to join Hauer’s 'Deutsche Glaubensbewegung' (German Faith Movement). These are decent and well-meaning people who honestly admit their 'Ergriffenheit' and try to come to terms with this new and undeniable fact.
They go to an enormous amount of trouble to make it look less alarming by dressing it up in a conciliatory historical garb and giving us consoling glimpses of great figures such as Meister Eckhart, who was, also, a German and, also, 'ergriffen'. In this way the awkward question of who the Ergreifer is is circumvented. He was always “God.”
But the more Hauer restricts the world-wide sphere of Indo-European culture to the “Nordic” in general and to the 'Edda' in particular, and the more “German” this faith becomes as a manifestation of 'Ergriffenheit', the more painfully evident it is that the “German” god is the god of the Germans. One cannot read Hauer’s book without emotion, if one regards it as the tragic and really heroic effort of a conscientious scholar who, without knowing how it happened to him, was violently summoned by the inaudible voice of the 'Ergreifer' and is now trying with all his might, and with all his knowledge and ability, to build a bridge between the dark forces of life and the shining world of historical ideas.
But what do all the beauties of the past from totally different levels of culture mean to the man of today, when confronted with a living and unfathomable tribal god such as he has never experienced before ?
They are sucked like dry leaves into the roaring whirlwind, and the rhythmic alliterations of the 'Edda' became inextricably mixed up with Christian mystical texts, German poetry and the wisdom of the Upanishads. Hauer himself is 'ergriffen' by the depths of meaning in the primal words lying at the root of the Germanic languages, to an extent that he certainly never knew before. Hauer the Indologist is not to blame for this, nor yet the 'Edda'; it is rather the fault of kairos – 'the present moment in time' – whose name on closer investigation turns out to be Wotan.
I would, therefore, advise the 'German Faith Movement' to throw aside their scruples. Intelligent people will not confuse them with the crude Wotan-worshipers whose faith is a mere pretense.
The Deutsche Glaubensbewegung was closely associated with Jakob Wilhelm Hauer during the Third Reich (1933–1945), and sought to move Germany away from Christianity towards a religion based on "immediate experience" of God. Hauer was a professor at the University of Tübingen.
Instead of the Bible, a combination of Indian (Hindu) and German literature was used as scripture. Hauer had worked as a missionary in India and was influenced in particular by the Bhagavad Gita. Ceremonies of the movement involved sermons, German classical music and political hymns. Hauer was considered by contemporary observers as a genuinely religious man, though his political sentiments were also commented on. The movement had around 200,000 followers at its height. Following the Nazi accession to power, it obtained rights of civil tolerance from Rudolf Hess, but never the preferential treatment from the Third Reich, for which Hauer campaigned. The development of the German Faith Movement revolved around four main themes:
the propagation of the 'blood and soil' ideology
the replacement of Christian ceremonies by pagan equivalents; the most favoured pagan deity being the sun, as can be seen from the flag of the faith movement
the rejection of Christian ethics
the cult of Hitler's personality.
Similar movements have remained active in Germany since 1945 outside mainstream educational and social structures.
There are people in the 'German Faith Movement' who are intelligent enough not only to believe, but to know, that the god of the Germans is Wotan and not the Christian God. This is a tragic experience and no disgrace. It has always been terrible to fall into the hands of a living god.
Yahweh was no exception to this rule, and the Philistines, Edomites, Amorites, and the rest, who were outside the Yahweh experience, must certainly have found it exceedingly disagreeable. The Semitic experience of Allah was for a long time an extremely painful affair for the whole of Christendom. We who stand outside judge the Germans far too much, as if they were responsible agents, but perhaps it would be nearer the truth to regard them, also, as victims.
If we apply our admittedly peculiar point of view consistently, we are driven to conclude that Wotan must, in time, reveal not only the restless, violent, stormy side of his character, but, also, his ecstatic and mantic qualities (relating to, or having the power of divination) – a very different aspect of his nature.
If this conclusion is correct, National Socialism would not be the last word. Things must be concealed in the background which we cannot imagine at present, but we may expect them to appear in the course of the next few years or decades. Wotan’s reawakening is stepping into the past; the stream was dammed up and has broken into its old channel. But the Obstruction will not last forever; it is rather a reculer pour mieux sauter, (go back to have a better jump) and the water will over-leap the obstacle.
Then, at last, we shall know what Wotan is saying when he “murmurs with Mimir’s head.” Mímir (Old Norse "The rememberer, the wise one") is a figure in Norse mythology renowned for his knowledge and wisdom, who is beheaded during the Æsir-Vanir War. Afterward, the god Odin carries around Mímir's head, and it recites secret knowledge and counsel to him.
'Wotan, Neue Schweizer Rundschau' (Zurich).
III March, 1936
Carl Gustav Jung
When we look back to the time before 1914, we find ourselves living in a world of events which would have been inconceivable before the war. We were even beginning to regard war between civilized nations as a fable, thinking that such an absurdity would become less and less possible in our rational, internationally organized world. And what came after the war was a veritable witches’ Sabbath. Everywhere fantastic revolutions, violent alterations of the map, reversions in politics to medieval or even antique prototypes, totalitarian states that engulf their neighbours and outdo all previous theocracies in their absolutist claims, persecutions of Christians and Jews, wholesale political murder, and finally we have witnessed a light-hearted piratical raid on a peaceful, half-civilized people. With such goings on in the wide world it is not in the least surprising that there should be equally curious manifestations on a smaller scale in other spheres. In the realm of philosophy we shall have to wait some time before anyone is able to assess the kind of age that we are living in. But in the sphere of religion we can see at once that some very significant things have been happening. We need feel no surprise that in Russia the colourful splendours of the Eastern Orthodox Church have been superseded by the 'Movement of the Godless' – indeed, one breathed a sigh of relief oneself when one emerged from the haze of an Orthodox church with its multitude of lamps and entered an honest mosque, where the sublime and invisible omnipresence of God was not crowded out by a superfluity of sacred paraphernalia. Tasteless and pitiably unintelligent as it is, and however deplorable the low spiritual level of the “Scientific” reaction, it was inevitable that nineteenth-century “scientific” enlightenment should one day dawn in Russia. But what is more than curious – indeed, piquant to a degree – is that an ancient God of storm and frenzy, the long quiescent Wotan, should awake, like an extinct volcano, to new activity.
We have seen him come to life in the 'German Youth Movement', and right at the beginning the blood of several sheep was shed in honour of his resurrection. Armed with rucksack and lute, blond youths, and sometimes girls as well, were to be seen as restless wanderers on every road from North Cape to Sicily, faithful votaries of the roving god. Later, towards the end of the Weimar Republic, the wandering role was taken over by thousands of unemployed, who were to be met with everywhere on their aimless journeys.
By 1933 they wandered no longer, but marched in their hundreds of thousands. The Hitler movement literally brought the whole of Germany to its feet, from five-year-olds to veterans, and produced a spectacle of a nation migrating from one place to another. Wotan the wanderer was on the move. He could be seen, looking rather shamefaced, in the meeting-house of a sect of simple folk in North Germany, disguised as Christ sitting on a white horse. I do not know if these people were aware of Wotan’s ancient connection with the figures of Christ and Dionysus, but it is not very probable. Wotan is a restless wanderer who creates unrest and stirs up strife, now here, now there, and works magic.
Wotan
He was soon changed by Christianity into the devil, and only lived on in fading local traditions as a ghostly hunter who was seen with his retinue, flickering like a will o’ the wisp through the stormy night. The German youths who celebrated the solstice with sheep-sacrifices were not the first to hear the rustling in the primeval forest of unconsciousness.
They were anticipated by Nietzsche, Schuler, Stefan George, and Ludwig Klages. The literary tradition of the Rhineland and the country south of the Main has a classical stamp that cannot easily be got rid of; every interpretation of intoxication and exuberance is apt to be taken back to classical models, to Dionysus, to the peur aeternus and the cosmogonic Eros. No doubt it sounds better to academic ears to interpret these things as Dionysus, but Wotan might be a more correct interpretation. He is the god of the storm and frenzy, the unleasher of passions and the lust of battle; moreover he is superlative magician and artist in illusion who is versed in all secrets of an occult nature. Nietzsche’s case is certainly a peculiar one.
He had no knowledge of Germanic literature; he discovered the “cultural Philistine”; and the announcement that “God is dead” led to Zarathustra’s meeting with an unknown god in unexpected form, who approached him sometimes as an enemy and sometimes disguised as Zarathustra himself. Zarathustra, too, was a soothsayer, a magician, and the storm-wind. 'And like a wind shall I come to blow among them, and with my spirit shall take away the breath of their spirit; thus my future wills it. Truly, a strong wind is Zarathustra to all that are low; and this counsel gives he to his enemies and to all that spit and spew: “Beware of spitting against the wind.” And when Zarathustra dreamed that he was guardian of the graves in the “lone mountain forest of death,” and was making a mighty effort to open the gates, suddenly a roaring wind tore the gates asunder; whistling, shrieking, and keening, it cast a black coffin before me. And amid the roaring and whistling and shrieking the coffin burst open and spouted a thousand peals of laughter. The disciple who interpreted the dream said to Zarathustra: Are you not yourself the wind with shrill whistling, which bursts open the gates of the fortress of death? Are you not yourself the coffin filled with life’s gay malice and angel-grimaces ?'
In 1863 or 1864, in his poem: 'To the Unknown God', Nietzsche had written: 'I shall and will know thee, Unknown One, Who searchest out the depths of my soul, And blowest through my life like a storm, Ungraspable, and yet my kinsman! I shall and will know thee, and serve thee. Twenty years later, in his Mistral Song, he wrote: Mistral wind, chaser of clouds, Killer of gloom, sweeper of the skies, Raging storm-wind, how I love thee! Are we not both the first-fruits Of the same womb, forever predestined To the same fate ?'
In the dithyramb known as Ariadne’s Lament, Nietzsche is completely the victim of the hunter-god: 'Stretched out, shuddering, Like a half-dead thing whose feet are warmed, Shaken by unknown fevers, Shivering with piercing icy frost arrows Hunted by thee, O thought, Unutterable! Veiled! Horrible one! Thou huntsman behind the cloud. Struck down by thy lightening bolt, Thou mocking eye that stares at me from the dark! Thus I lie. Writhing, twisted, tormented With all eternal tortures. Smitten By thee, cruel huntsman, Thou unknown – God !'
This remarkable image of the 'hunter-god' is not a mere dithyrambic figure of speech but is based on an experience which Nietzsche had when he was fifteen years old, at Pforta. It is described in a book by Nietzsche’s sister, Elizabeth Foerster-Nietzsche. As he was wandering in a gloomy wood at night, he was terrified by a “blood-curdling shriek from a neighbouring lunatic asylum,” and soon afterwards he came face to face with a huntsman whose “features were wild and uncanny.” Setting his whistle to his lips “in a valley surrounded by wild scrub,” the huntsman “blew such as a shrill blast” that Nietzsche lost consciousness – but woke up again in Pforta. It was a nightmare. It is significant that in his dream Nietzsche, who in reality intended to go to Eisleben, Luther’s town, discussed with the huntsman the question of going instead to “Teutschenthal” (Valley of the Germans).
Richard Wagner No one with ears can misunderstand the shrill whistling of the storm-god in the nocturnal wood. Was it really only the classical philologist in Nietzsche that led to the god being called Dionysus instead of Wotan – or was it perhaps due to his fateful meeting with Wagner ? In his 'Reich ohne Raum', which was first published in 1919, Bruno Goetz saw the secret of coming events in Germany in the form of a very strange vision. I have never forgotten this little book, for it struck me at the time as a forecast of the German weather. It anticipates the conflict between the realm of ideas and life, between Wotan’s dual nature as a god of storm and a god of secret musings. Wotan disappeared when his oaks fell and appeared again when the Christian God proved too weak to save Christendom from fratricidal slaughter.
When the Holy Father at Rome could only impotently lament before God the fate of the grex segregatus (separated flock), the one-eyed old hunter, on the edge of the German forest, laughed and saddled Sleipnir.
In Norse mythology, Sleipnir is an eight-legged horse. Sleipnir is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. In both sources, Sleipnir is Odin's steed, is the child of Loki and Svaðilfari, is described as the best of all horses, and is sometimes ridden to the location of Hel. The Prose Edda contains extended information regarding the circumstances of Sleipnir's birth, and details that he is grey in color.
We are always convinced that the modern world is a reasonable world, basing our opinion on economic, political, and psychological factors, but if we may forget for a moment and lay aside our well-meaning, all-too human reasonableness, may burden God or the gods with the responsibility for contemporary events instead of man, we would find Wotan quite suitable as a casual hypothesis. In fact, I venture the heretical suggestion that the unfathomable depths of Wotan’s character explain more of Völkisch philosophy than all three reasonable factors put together.
There is no doubt that each of these factors explains an important aspect of what is going on in Germany, but Wotan explains yet more. He is particularly enlightening in regard to a general phenomenon, which is so strange to anybody not a German that it remains incomprehensible, even after the deepest reflection. Perhaps we may sum up this general phenomenon as 'Ergriffenheit' – a state of being seized or possessed. The term postulates not only an 'Ergriffener' (one who is seized) but, also, an 'Ergreifer' (one who seizes).
Wotan is an 'Ergreifer' of men, and, unless one wishes to deify Hitler – which has indeed actually happened – he is really the only explanation. It is true that Wotan shares this quality with his cousin Dionysus, but Dionysus seems to have exercised his influence mainly on women. The maenads were a species of female 'storm-troopers', and, according to mythical reports, were dangerous enough. Wotan confined himself to the 'berserkers', who found their vocation as the Blackshirts of mythical kings. A mind that is still childish thinks of the gods as metaphysical entities existing in their own right, or else regards them as playful or superstitious inventions. From either point of view the parallel between 'Wotan redivivus' (come back to life; revived) and the social, political, and psychic storm that is shaking Germany might have at least the value of parable. But since the 'gods' are without doubt personifications of psychic forces, to assert their metaphysical existence is as much an intellectual presumption as the opinion that they could ever be invented. Not that “psychic forces” have anything to do with the conscious mind, fond as we are of playing with the idea that consciousness and psyche are identical. This is only another piece of intellectual presumption.
“Psychic forces” have far more to do with the realm of the unconscious. Our mania for rational explanations obviously has its roots in our fear of metaphysics, for the two were always hostile brothers. Hence, anything unexpected that approaches us from the dark realm is regarded either as coming from outside and, therefore, as real, or else as a hallucination and, therefore, not true.
The idea that anything could be real or true which does not come from outside has hardly begun to dawn on contemporary man. For the sake of better understanding and to avoid prejudice, we could of course dispense with the name “Wotan” and speak instead of the 'furor Teutonicus' (furor - violent anger or frenzy; a state of intense excitement). But we should only be saying the same thing and not as well, for the furor in this case is a mere psychologizing of Wotan and tells us no more than that the Germans are in a state of “fury.” We thus lose sight of the most peculiar feature of this whole phenomenon, namely, the dramatic aspect of the 'Ergreifer' and the 'Ergriffener'. The impressive thing about the German phenomenon is that one man, who is obviously “possessed,” has infected a whole nation to such an extent that everything is set in motion and has started rolling on its course towards perdition. It seems to me that Wotan hits the mark as an hypothesis. Apparently he really was only asleep in the Kyffhauser mountain until the ravens called him and announced the break of day.
Kyffhäuser Berg The Kyffhäuser is a range of hills located on the border of the German state of Thuringia with Saxony-Anhalt. It stands on the southern edge of the Harz. The range has a length of 19 kilometres (12 mi) and a width of 7 kilometres (4.3 mi). It reaches its highest point at the Kulpenberg (473.4 metres (1,553 ft)), situated in Thuringia. The Kyffhäuser has significance in German traditional mythology as the resting place of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who drowned on June 10, 1190 in the Göksu River near Silifke during the Third Crusade.
He is a fundamental attribute of the German psyche, an irrational psychic factor which acts on the high pressure of civilization like a cyclone and blows it away. Despite their apparent crankiness, the Wotan-worshippers seem to have judged things more correctly than the worshippers of reason. Apparently everyone had forgotten that Wotan is a Germanic 'datum' of first importance, the trust expression and unsurpassed personification of a fundamental quality that is particularly characteristic of the Germans. Houston Stewart Chamberlain is a symptom which arouses suspicion that other veiled gods may be sleeping elsewhere.
The emphasis on the German race – commonly called “Aryan” – the Germanic heritage, blood and soil, the Wagalaweia songs, the ride of the Valkyries, Jesus as a blond and blue-eyed hero, the Greek mother of St. Paul, the devil as an international Alberich in Jewish or Masonic guise, the Nordic aurora borealis as the light of civilization, the inferior Mediterranean races – all this is the indispensable scenery for the drama that is taking place and at the bottom they all mean the same thing: a god has taken possession of the Germans and their house is filled with a “mighty rushing wind.” It was soon after Hitler seized power that a cartoon appeared in Punch of a raving berserker tearing himself free from his bonds. A hurricane has broken loose in Germany while we still believe it is fine weather.
Things are comparatively quite in Switzerland, though occasionally there is a puff of wind from the north or south. Sometimes it has a slightly ominous sound, sometimes it whispers so harmlessly or even idealistically that no one is alarmed. “Let the sleeping dogs lie” – we manage to get along pretty well with this proverbial wisdom. It is sometimes said that the Swiss are singularly averse to making a problem of themselves. I must rebut this accusation: the Swiss do have their problems, but they would not admit it for anything in the world, even though they see which way the wind is blowing. We thus pay our tribute to the time of storm and stress in Germany, but we never mention it, and this enables us to feel vastly superior. It is above all the Germans who have an opportunity, perhaps unique in history, to look into their own hearts and to learn what those perils of the soul were from which Christianity tried to rescue mankind. Germany is a land of spiritual catastrophes, where nature never makes more than a pretence of peace with the world-ruling reason.
The disturber of the peace is a wind that blows into Europe from Asia’s vastness, sweeping in on a wide front from Thrace to the Baltic, scattering the nations before it like dry leaves, or inspiring thoughts that shake the world to its foundations.
It is an elemental Dionysus breaking into the Apollonian order.
The rouser of this Tempest is named Wotan, and we can learn a good deal about him from the political confusion and spiritual upheaval he has caused throughout history. For a more exact investigation of his character, however, we must go back to the age of myths, which did not explain everything in terms of man and his limited capabilities, but sought the deeper cause in the psyche and its autonomous powers. Man’s earliest intuitions personified these powers as 'gods', and described them in the myths with great care and circumstantiality, according to their various characters.
This could be done the more readily on account of the firmly established primordial types or images which are innate in the unconscious of many races and exercise a direct influence upon them. Because the behaviour of a race takes on its specific character from its underlying images, we can speak of an archetype “Wotan.”
An archetype is a universally understood symbol, term, statement, or pattern of behaviour, - a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated. Archetypes are often used in myths and storytelling across different cultures.
In Jung's psychological framework, archetypes are innate, universal prototypes for ideas and may be used to interpret observations. A group of memories and interpretations associated with an archetype is a complex ( e.g. a mother complex associated with the mother archetype). Jung treated the archetypes as psychological organs, analogous to physical ones in that both are morphological constructs that arose through evolution.
As an autonomous psychic factor, Wotan produces effects in the collective life of a people and thereby reveals his own nature. For Wotan has a peculiar biology of his own, quite apart from the nature of man. It is only from time to time that individuals fall under the irresistible influence of this unconscious factor. When it is quiescent, one is no more aware of the archetype Wotan than of a latent epilepsy. Could the Germans who were adults in 1914 have foreseen what they would be today ?
Such amazing transformations are the effect of the god of wind, that “bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth.” It seizes everything in its path and overthrows everything that is not firmly rooted. When the wind blows it shakes everything that is insecure, whether without or within.
Martin Ninck has recently published a monograph which is a most welcome addition to our knowledge of Wotan’s nature. The reader need not fear that this book is nothing but a scientific study written with academic aloofness from the subject. Certainly the right to scientific objectivity is fully preserved, and the material has been collected with extraordinary thoroughness and presented in unusually clear form. But, over and above all this, one feels that the author is vitally interested in it, that the chord of Wotan is vibrating in him, too.
This is no criticism – on the contrary, it is one of the chief merits of the book, which without this enthusiasm might easily have degenerated into a tedious catalogue. Ninck sketches a really magnificent portrait of the German archetype Wotan. He describes him in ten chapters, using all the available sources, as the berserker, the god of storm, the wanderer, the warrior, the Wunsch- (wish) and Minne -god, the lord of the dead and of the Einherjar, the master of secret knowledge, the magician, and the god of the poets. Neither the Valkyries nor the Fylgja (a supernatural being or creature which accompanies a person in connection to their fate or fortune) are forgotten, for they form part of the mythological background and fateful significance of Wotan. Ninck’s inquiry into the name and its origin is particularly instructive.
Mercury
He shows that Wotan is not only a god of rage and frenzy, who embodies the instinctual and emotional aspect of the unconscious. Its intuitive and inspiring side, also, manifests itself in him, for he understands the runes and can interpret fate. The Romans identified Wotan with Mercury, but his character does not really corresponded to any Roman or Greek god, although there are certain resemblances. He is a wanderer like Mercury, for instance, he rules over the dead like Pluto and Kronos, and is connected with Dionysus by his emotional frenzy, particularly in its mantic aspect.
It is surprising that Ninck does not mention Hermes, the god of revelation, who as 'pneuma' (ancient Greek for breath, spirit or soul) and 'nous' (Greek - intellect or intelligence) is associated with the wind.
He would be the connecting-link with the Christian 'pneuma' and the miracle of Pentecost. As Poimandres (the shepherd of men), Hermes is an 'Ergreifer' like Wotan. Ninck rightly points out that Dionysus and the other Greek gods always remained under the supreme authority of Zeus, which indicates a fundamental difference between the Greek and Germanic temperament.
Ninck assumes an inner affinity between Wotan and Kronos, and the latter’s defeat may perhaps be a sign that the Wotan-archetype was once overcome and split up in prehistoric times. At all events, the Germanic god represents a totality on a very primitive level, - a psychological condition in which man’s will was almost identical with the god’s and entirely at his mercy. But the Greeks had gods who helped man against other gods; indeed, 'All-Father' Zeus himself is not far from the ideal of a benevolent, enlightened despot.
It was not in Wotan’s nature to linger on, and show signs of old age. He simply disappeared when the times turned against him, and remained invisible for more than a thousand years, working anonymously and indirectly.
Archetypes are like riverbeds which dry up when the water deserts them, but which it can find again at any-time.
An archetype is like an old watercourse along which the water of life has flowed for centuries, digging a deep channel for itself.
The longer it has flowed in this channel the more likely it is that sooner or later the water will return to its old bed.
The life of the individual as a member of society and particularly as a part of the state may be regulated like a canal, but the life of nations is a great rushing river which is utterly beyond human control, in the hands of 'One' who has always been stronger than men.
The League of Nations, which was supposed to possess supernatural authority, is regarded by some as a child in need of care and protection, by others as an abortion. Thus, the life of nations rolls on unchecked, without guidance, unconscious of where it is going, like a rock crashing down the side of a hill, until it is stopped by an obstacle stronger than itself. Political events move from one impasse to the next, like a torrent caught in gullies, creeks and marshes.
All human control comes to an end when the individual is caught in a mass movement.
Then, the archetypes begin to function, as happens, also, in the lives of individuals when they are confronted with situations that cannot be dealt with in any of the familiar ways. But what a so-called Führer does with a mass movement can plainly be seen if we turn our eyes to the north or south of our country. The ruling archetype does not remain the same forever, as is evident from the temporal limitations that have been set to the hoped-for reign of peace, the “thousand-year Reich.”
The Mediterranean father-archetype of the just, order-loving, benevolent ruler had been shattered over the whole of northern Europe, as the present fate of the Christian churches bears witness. Fascism in Italy and the civil war in Spain show that in the south as well the cataclysm has been far greater than one expected. Even the Catholic Church can no longer afford trials of strength. The nationalist God has attacked Christianity on a broad front.
Deutsche Glaubensbewegung In Russia, he is called technology and science, in Italy, 'Duce' (leader), and in Germany, 'Deutsch Glaube' (German Faith), 'German Christianity', or the State. “The German Christians” are a contradiction in many terms, and would do better to join Hauer’s 'Deutsche Glaubensbewegung' (German Faith Movement). These are decent and well-meaning people who honestly admit their 'Ergriffenheit' and try to come to terms with this new and undeniable fact.
They go to an enormous amount of trouble to make it look less alarming by dressing it up in a conciliatory historical garb and giving us consoling glimpses of great figures such as Meister Eckhart, who was, also, a German and, also, 'ergriffen'. In this way the awkward question of who the Ergreifer is is circumvented. He was always “God.”
But the more Hauer restricts the world-wide sphere of Indo-European culture to the “Nordic” in general and to the 'Edda' in particular, and the more “German” this faith becomes as a manifestation of 'Ergriffenheit', the more painfully evident it is that the “German” god is the god of the Germans. One cannot read Hauer’s book without emotion, if one regards it as the tragic and really heroic effort of a conscientious scholar who, without knowing how it happened to him, was violently summoned by the inaudible voice of the 'Ergreifer' and is now trying with all his might, and with all his knowledge and ability, to build a bridge between the dark forces of life and the shining world of historical ideas.
But what do all the beauties of the past from totally different levels of culture mean to the man of today, when confronted with a living and unfathomable tribal god such as he has never experienced before ?
They are sucked like dry leaves into the roaring whirlwind, and the rhythmic alliterations of the 'Edda' became inextricably mixed up with Christian mystical texts, German poetry and the wisdom of the Upanishads. Hauer himself is 'ergriffen' by the depths of meaning in the primal words lying at the root of the Germanic languages, to an extent that he certainly never knew before. Hauer the Indologist is not to blame for this, nor yet the 'Edda'; it is rather the fault of kairos – 'the present moment in time' – whose name on closer investigation turns out to be Wotan.
I would, therefore, advise the 'German Faith Movement' to throw aside their scruples. Intelligent people will not confuse them with the crude Wotan-worshipers whose faith is a mere pretense.
The Deutsche Glaubensbewegung was closely associated with Jakob Wilhelm Hauer during the Third Reich (1933–1945), and sought to move Germany away from Christianity towards a religion based on "immediate experience" of God. Hauer was a professor at the University of Tübingen.
Instead of the Bible, a combination of Indian (Hindu) and German literature was used as scripture. Hauer had worked as a missionary in India and was influenced in particular by the Bhagavad Gita. Ceremonies of the movement involved sermons, German classical music and political hymns. Hauer was considered by contemporary observers as a genuinely religious man, though his political sentiments were also commented on. The movement had around 200,000 followers at its height. Following the Nazi accession to power, it obtained rights of civil tolerance from Rudolf Hess, but never the preferential treatment from the Third Reich, for which Hauer campaigned. The development of the German Faith Movement revolved around four main themes:
the propagation of the 'blood and soil' ideology
the replacement of Christian ceremonies by pagan equivalents; the most favoured pagan deity being the sun, as can be seen from the flag of the faith movement
the rejection of Christian ethics
the cult of Hitler's personality.
Similar movements have remained active in Germany since 1945 outside mainstream educational and social structures.
There are people in the 'German Faith Movement' who are intelligent enough not only to believe, but to know, that the god of the Germans is Wotan and not the Christian God. This is a tragic experience and no disgrace. It has always been terrible to fall into the hands of a living god.
Yahweh was no exception to this rule, and the Philistines, Edomites, Amorites, and the rest, who were outside the Yahweh experience, must certainly have found it exceedingly disagreeable. The Semitic experience of Allah was for a long time an extremely painful affair for the whole of Christendom. We who stand outside judge the Germans far too much, as if they were responsible agents, but perhaps it would be nearer the truth to regard them, also, as victims.
If we apply our admittedly peculiar point of view consistently, we are driven to conclude that Wotan must, in time, reveal not only the restless, violent, stormy side of his character, but, also, his ecstatic and mantic qualities (relating to, or having the power of divination) – a very different aspect of his nature.
If this conclusion is correct, National Socialism would not be the last word. Things must be concealed in the background which we cannot imagine at present, but we may expect them to appear in the course of the next few years or decades. Wotan’s reawakening is stepping into the past; the stream was dammed up and has broken into its old channel. But the Obstruction will not last forever; it is rather a reculer pour mieux sauter, (go back to have a better jump) and the water will over-leap the obstacle.
Then, at last, we shall know what Wotan is saying when he “murmurs with Mimir’s head.” Mímir (Old Norse "The rememberer, the wise one") is a figure in Norse mythology renowned for his knowledge and wisdom, who is beheaded during the Æsir-Vanir War. Afterward, the god Odin carries around Mímir's head, and it recites secret knowledge and counsel to him.
Occult Espionage
OCCULT ESPionage:
Aleister Crowley as Intelligence Agent 666
Magician John Dee spied, spelled and encrypted for Queen Elizabeth I; St. Germain spied in England, Scotland, France, Belgium, Holland and throughout his travels; Cagliostro is accused of being a Jesuit spy; Blavatsky a Russian spy; Aleister Crowley a double agent who Ian Fleming used to pattern LeChifre, and on it goes...
OCCULT ESPionage:
http://occultespionage.50megs.com
“Semper Occultus” (“Always Secret”)
Paranormal *Altered States * Sex Magick * Espionage * SpyFi * Digital Drugs * Occulture * Subliminazis * Neurohacking * Psi Wars * Mind Control * Transformation * Psychotronics * Manipulation * Countermeasures * Persuasion *Gnosis * Charisma * Personality Cults * Arcana * PsiFi *Wizards, Spooks & Psiwarriors * Mind Reading * Spiritual Warfare * Thought Injection * Psy-Strat * Invisible War * Soft Kill * Intelligence * High Weirdness
Tales From the Darkside
Is it Crowleyanity or Truth? In the world of Aleister Crowley, it is impossible to say definitively, but the notorious legends surrounding Crowley are nothing if not wildly entertaining. In OCCULT ESPionage we follow the meandering path of Crowley's magickal journey into the shadowlands of psychic warfare, occult spies and occult power visions. The daisy chain connects the worlds of irregular freemasonry to the political machinations of both Hitler and the Bush family.
It is a circuitous route, a widdershins spiral of weird coincidence into a vortex of implausible synchronicity. There is little doubt that Crowley's larger than life occult philosophy and writing influenced virtually all of his contemporary occultists and many of those to follow, as well as artists and musicians. Magick isn't outlawed but it is suppressed through ridicule. Yet it is successfully practiced by the elite (Skull & Bones; Bohemian Club), governments and organized crime.
Crowley's Charisma
Many of his ideas had their roots in the minds of other deep thinkers, but no one executed them with more "energized enthusiasm." Sex Magician, "Wickedest Man on Earth," was he a spy and even possible double-agent, besides? Was Barbara Bush his love child? Was Hitler his doppelganger? Are L. Ron Hubbard and Tim Leary his legacy? Was he Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land?" Was he a culture-jamming crypto-anarchist? The first edge-celeb? Decide for yourself.
SIGMA 666
Crowley was a mercurial character. A Hermetic scholar and practitioner, he wrote "The Book of the Law," "Magick In Theory & Practice," "The Book of Lies"and commissioned his own tarot deck, "The Book of Thoth." Thoth, Hermes, and Mercury are all the same archetypal force or godform.
In ancient Egypt, Thoth was the deity of scribes or writers and magicians, and such a force seems to have blessed Crowley with its particular gifts. Hermes is also an androgyne, the original hermaphrodite, and Crowley wasn't beyond a bit of gender bending with his ceremonial psychodramas ~ he embodied both High Priest and Priestess. In Tarot, the corresponding trump of the Major Arcana is The Magician, The Juggler, The Magus...and he was all that, and more.
The Secret: To Dare, To Will, To Know, To Keep Silent
Intelligence is the key to understanding the world today. What spies have in common with magicians is an uncanny ability to connect the seemingly unconnected, to notice what goes on behind the scenes and to see through misdirection ~ it takes one to know one. Both have learned to synthesize and interpret data, how to pace and lead people (hypno-patsies) with rapport. The opening gambit of psychological warfare and mind control is flattery.
As trained observers, magicians and spies are adept at people-reading and keeping secrets; both are actors -- performers. Both are in secret societies that rely on craft and often use collaborators or confederates, and mentors. How much different is stealth and surveillance than a spell of invisibility? Each have their rules of engagement in the Great Work and the Great Game.
Clandestine Craft
Even some of the elements of tradecraft are the same. Both are cryptic, using encryptions and codes. Each has its own arcane language, symbols and rituals veiled from the profane. Remote Viewing or psychic spying is virtually identical with clairvoyance. Ceremonial psychodrama is played out in public, in personality cults and "ritual" murders.
Both use passwords and slogans for security. Cryptography is now ubiquitous. All domestic and foreign electronic communication is monitored by programs like Echelon. Spies and magicians both are cracking the Brain Code, the wetware of humanity.
Cryptocracy refers to a type of government where the real leaders are hidden. There may possibly be a fake government that appears to be in charge and this fake government might not know themselves that they are not in charge. It can also be used when referring to similar arrangements in organisations, orders, sects and cults.
Everywhere is Ground Zero
In military terms psychic operations are called psychotronics. Adversaries are rogue psi operatives, psiwarriors who battle like sorcerers. Psychic self defense employs thought disruption, shielding techniques, mind drain and energy manipulation. Psionics is scientific magic ~ magecraft, the product of extraordinary human potential. Precogs, like analysts, are attuned to the future.
Deep Cover
They understand viscerally that things are often not what they seem. Both are masters of disguise, the hidden environment, intelligence, espionage, and covert action. Both aim to 'tweak the timeline' with small perturbations that pump up to macroscopic results, setting up currents of intentional influence. They also tweak minds by controlling the environment. No one can resist what they cannot detect.
Both are Inside Outsiders, working at the fringes of the System. The "outsider" aesthetic is charged by a desire to break free from the contrivances of tradition. They look boldly outside the system and deep within themselves for inspiration that arises directly from Creative Source.
Both work sub rosa. This phrase comes from the Latin meaning 'under the rose' for confidentiality, black ops. It comes from the Masonic fraternal tradition. The rose is the emblem of Horus, God of Silence and Secrecy, Crowley's "Crowned & Conquering Child."
Wise Guys
The Magnum Opus, the Great Work of alchemy, is the utter transformation of oneself into a being of light, an energy body. Crowley lived larger than life. If his webpresence is any indicator, his legend and influence is bigger than ever. He may have just been lurking in the Astral Plane, waiting for this psychic rebirth. Perhaps, cutting through spacetime, he made a leap of faith into the electronic Astral Plane.
Aleister Crowley is a Conspiracy of One - the number of THE MAGUS.
VIDEO CLIP:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAcmnW4Sn-k
Pentagram
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_5YdXO1VT8&mode=related&search
Aleister Crowley as Intelligence Agent 666
Magician John Dee spied, spelled and encrypted for Queen Elizabeth I; St. Germain spied in England, Scotland, France, Belgium, Holland and throughout his travels; Cagliostro is accused of being a Jesuit spy; Blavatsky a Russian spy; Aleister Crowley a double agent who Ian Fleming used to pattern LeChifre, and on it goes...
OCCULT ESPionage:
http://occultespionage.50megs.com
“Semper Occultus” (“Always Secret”)
Paranormal *Altered States * Sex Magick * Espionage * SpyFi * Digital Drugs * Occulture * Subliminazis * Neurohacking * Psi Wars * Mind Control * Transformation * Psychotronics * Manipulation * Countermeasures * Persuasion *Gnosis * Charisma * Personality Cults * Arcana * PsiFi *Wizards, Spooks & Psiwarriors * Mind Reading * Spiritual Warfare * Thought Injection * Psy-Strat * Invisible War * Soft Kill * Intelligence * High Weirdness
Tales From the Darkside
Is it Crowleyanity or Truth? In the world of Aleister Crowley, it is impossible to say definitively, but the notorious legends surrounding Crowley are nothing if not wildly entertaining. In OCCULT ESPionage we follow the meandering path of Crowley's magickal journey into the shadowlands of psychic warfare, occult spies and occult power visions. The daisy chain connects the worlds of irregular freemasonry to the political machinations of both Hitler and the Bush family.
It is a circuitous route, a widdershins spiral of weird coincidence into a vortex of implausible synchronicity. There is little doubt that Crowley's larger than life occult philosophy and writing influenced virtually all of his contemporary occultists and many of those to follow, as well as artists and musicians. Magick isn't outlawed but it is suppressed through ridicule. Yet it is successfully practiced by the elite (Skull & Bones; Bohemian Club), governments and organized crime.
Crowley's Charisma
Many of his ideas had their roots in the minds of other deep thinkers, but no one executed them with more "energized enthusiasm." Sex Magician, "Wickedest Man on Earth," was he a spy and even possible double-agent, besides? Was Barbara Bush his love child? Was Hitler his doppelganger? Are L. Ron Hubbard and Tim Leary his legacy? Was he Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land?" Was he a culture-jamming crypto-anarchist? The first edge-celeb? Decide for yourself.
SIGMA 666
Crowley was a mercurial character. A Hermetic scholar and practitioner, he wrote "The Book of the Law," "Magick In Theory & Practice," "The Book of Lies"and commissioned his own tarot deck, "The Book of Thoth." Thoth, Hermes, and Mercury are all the same archetypal force or godform.
In ancient Egypt, Thoth was the deity of scribes or writers and magicians, and such a force seems to have blessed Crowley with its particular gifts. Hermes is also an androgyne, the original hermaphrodite, and Crowley wasn't beyond a bit of gender bending with his ceremonial psychodramas ~ he embodied both High Priest and Priestess. In Tarot, the corresponding trump of the Major Arcana is The Magician, The Juggler, The Magus...and he was all that, and more.
The Secret: To Dare, To Will, To Know, To Keep Silent
Intelligence is the key to understanding the world today. What spies have in common with magicians is an uncanny ability to connect the seemingly unconnected, to notice what goes on behind the scenes and to see through misdirection ~ it takes one to know one. Both have learned to synthesize and interpret data, how to pace and lead people (hypno-patsies) with rapport. The opening gambit of psychological warfare and mind control is flattery.
As trained observers, magicians and spies are adept at people-reading and keeping secrets; both are actors -- performers. Both are in secret societies that rely on craft and often use collaborators or confederates, and mentors. How much different is stealth and surveillance than a spell of invisibility? Each have their rules of engagement in the Great Work and the Great Game.
Clandestine Craft
Even some of the elements of tradecraft are the same. Both are cryptic, using encryptions and codes. Each has its own arcane language, symbols and rituals veiled from the profane. Remote Viewing or psychic spying is virtually identical with clairvoyance. Ceremonial psychodrama is played out in public, in personality cults and "ritual" murders.
Both use passwords and slogans for security. Cryptography is now ubiquitous. All domestic and foreign electronic communication is monitored by programs like Echelon. Spies and magicians both are cracking the Brain Code, the wetware of humanity.
Cryptocracy refers to a type of government where the real leaders are hidden. There may possibly be a fake government that appears to be in charge and this fake government might not know themselves that they are not in charge. It can also be used when referring to similar arrangements in organisations, orders, sects and cults.
Everywhere is Ground Zero
In military terms psychic operations are called psychotronics. Adversaries are rogue psi operatives, psiwarriors who battle like sorcerers. Psychic self defense employs thought disruption, shielding techniques, mind drain and energy manipulation. Psionics is scientific magic ~ magecraft, the product of extraordinary human potential. Precogs, like analysts, are attuned to the future.
Deep Cover
They understand viscerally that things are often not what they seem. Both are masters of disguise, the hidden environment, intelligence, espionage, and covert action. Both aim to 'tweak the timeline' with small perturbations that pump up to macroscopic results, setting up currents of intentional influence. They also tweak minds by controlling the environment. No one can resist what they cannot detect.
Both are Inside Outsiders, working at the fringes of the System. The "outsider" aesthetic is charged by a desire to break free from the contrivances of tradition. They look boldly outside the system and deep within themselves for inspiration that arises directly from Creative Source.
Both work sub rosa. This phrase comes from the Latin meaning 'under the rose' for confidentiality, black ops. It comes from the Masonic fraternal tradition. The rose is the emblem of Horus, God of Silence and Secrecy, Crowley's "Crowned & Conquering Child."
Wise Guys
The Magnum Opus, the Great Work of alchemy, is the utter transformation of oneself into a being of light, an energy body. Crowley lived larger than life. If his webpresence is any indicator, his legend and influence is bigger than ever. He may have just been lurking in the Astral Plane, waiting for this psychic rebirth. Perhaps, cutting through spacetime, he made a leap of faith into the electronic Astral Plane.
Aleister Crowley is a Conspiracy of One - the number of THE MAGUS.
VIDEO CLIP:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAcmnW4Sn-k
Pentagram
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_5YdXO1VT8&mode=related&search
The Occult Grail
THE MAGUS
Arcana
The occult is one of the keys to world events; reality is also defined by politics. Like nature, history is cyclic. Drug companies are as powerful as banks and oil. Corporate feudalism has replaced democracy as the new elitist rule. Corporations compete with nation-states and international mafia-style crime rings.
It takes intelligence to be a magician, but a magician can also be an active agent of intelligence, figuratively and literally.The real question is, rather, how and why and who and what do these things serve?
Restoring self and society is the essential wisdom of the Grail.But this quest can be coopted for narcissistic or pathological ends.The Secret Doctrine can introduce both positive and negative praeternatural forces.
Secret Missions
Who is served by the Holy Grail of occult knowledge? What is the Grail, and who does it serve?The secret is in the power and the power is in The Secret.It is a meaningless metaphor without the experiential process of self-transformation to back it up.That’s why it can’t be told.It is the panacea, a personal path of recovery for “what ails thee.”The Grail is a metaphor for connection to the mystical Source of everything, the ever-renewing Fount of all manifestation. All paths lead toward a personal journey of transformation and enlightenment, though not all journeys fulfill the total potential of creativity, compassion, engagement, and spirituality. On a classical “hero’s journey” like Parcival, when you find the Grail, and are called to its service, no knowledge remains hidden for long.Magick was the first transdisciplinarian occupation, drawing on all areas of knowledge.Before science divorced the occult arts it was called Natural Philosophy.
Trump Card
A Magus is a “worker of magic” which eludes rational definition.The Magus is both a symbol of enlightenment and deception (disinformation)-- just like the Tarot card, The Magician, is a card of duality: Wisdom and Folly.
"Now you see it; now you don't" is the forte of the illusionist, the juggler of realities, who is master of Orwellian double-think – holding the tension of the opposites.You alternate between faith and skepticism until you go beyond the ordinary boundaries of both - "slay each thought with its opposite." Myths present themselves as systems of antinomies, or opposites: heaven/hell, good/evil, life/death. The Magus lives at the Paradox.
Traditionally, the Magus is one who can demonstrate hands-on magic: healing, transformative rituals, metaphor therapy, alchemical transmutations, charging of talismans, spirit comm, etc. Magick works on the principle that man is a microcosm.
Arts Magian
A modern Magus is any person who completes the circuit between heaven and Earth, one who seeks to bring forth the divine 'gold' within her or himself.He or she is also a Mentor, an Initiator, divining and reading the signs and revealing deeper purpose and meaning in “the godgame.”
But that is how the outer world sees it. Every Magus has a foot in both worlds.Their inner life is mercurial, a complex psychic layer-cake of inner planes of transcendent experience where quantum leaps of consciousness are possible and messages are exchanged with the Great Unknown.
Metaphysician
Perception of what is real and what is not dims and vanishes in a whirlwind of synchronicities. Imagination is reality. Magicians understand the world we live in, or think we live in, is an illusion, a construct of our own perceptual apparatus and a malleable interpretation of our brains.
But the hyperdimensional gifts of the Spirit come at a price.The magician taps into, becomes one with, an essence that pop culture calls The Force.Photons and phonons are quantized modes of vibration. This subatomic vibration of Light and Sound is the enlivening force, which feeds creation and allegedly responds to focused intention.Information controls and patterns energy.
Hermetics is a Spiritual Technology
For masters of the Hermetic Arts, all magick is wrought through this impressionable ether – the Astral Light --a plenum of potential, using true properties of nature, it's laws, forces, and principles.Science now describes it as the scalar physics of subspace.The mage seeks to selectively establish an internal order out of this chaos, then externalize it, according to his vision.He is the soul guide who initiates the transformation process.
The Hermetica included works on magic, alchemy, astrology, healing, gnosis, theurgy, ritual and philosophy. Sympathetic magic contends that like substances sharing an essence can influence one another through resonance effects. Likewise the hypnotic and magnetic qualities of charismatic individuals can create rapport with others to influence them.
The Great Work
The magnum opus is pre-eminently the creation of man by himself, that is, the full and complete conquest which he can make of his faculties and his future; it is pre-eminently the perfect emancipation of his will.
Whip Me; Beat Me; Call Me Thelema
In Thelema the Great Work is viewed as the individual quest for Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. Aleister Crowley, the self-styled prophet of Thelema, believed that the individual Great Work contributes ultimately to the Great Work of the Universe:
The first condition of membership of the A.'.A.'. is that one is sworn to identify one's own Great Work with that of raising mankind to higher levels, spiritually, and in every other way. (Magick Without Tears, ch. 9)
According to Thelemic philosophy, the accomplishment of the Great Work is the discovery of one's True Will the practitioner's Secret Self Hadit in the universe of infinite possibilities Nuit.
According to Thelemic doctrine, it may take many incarnations for one to achieve this Supreme Goal. Each Thelemite finds for himself or herself a unique method for accomplishing the Great Work. Crowley cautions against the "lust of result" for such desire reveals limitations which hinder one's development.
Crowley's occult system initially focuses on attaining the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, which will (by assumption) help the practitioner to achieve his or her True Will. The system does not give any absolute rule for reaching this point, nor any certain way to test another person's Holy Guardian Angel.
Professor William James, in his "Varieties of Religious Experience," has well classified religion as the "once-born" and the "twice-born"; but the religion now proclaimed in Liber Legis harmonizes these by transcending them. There is no attempt to get rid of death by denying it, as among the once-born; nor to accept death as the gate of a new life, as among the twice-born. With the A.'. A.'. life and death are equally incidents in a career, very much like day and night in the history of a planet. But, to pursue the simile, we regard this planet from afar. A Brother of A.'. A.'. looks at (what another person would call) "himself", as one --- or, rather, some --- among a group of phenomena. He is that "nothing" whose consciousness is in one sense the universe considered as a single phenomenon in time and space, and in another sense is the negation of that consciousness. The body and mind of the man are only important (if at all) as the telescope of the astronomer to him. If the telescope were destroyed it would make no appreciable difference to the Universe which that telescope reveals.
*******
.....Who makes a good spy or a good liar?
I don’t think there’s any one answer to that. Being a good actor, being a good poker player. Being a good con man. Con men are people who are sociopathic, who do not feel remorse, and who are very attuned, strangely, to other people and can read them very well. If I know what you really want to hear and what is in your heart of hearts, your fondest desire, because I’m good at reading you and I’m street-smart about assessing you, then I can feed you what you want to hear. A good con man does that. A good magician does that. You also have to have a good memory.....(Discover Magazine)
MIND PHREAK
Magick Metaprograms
This power card also represents the fine line dividing white magic from black magic, toxic or malignant black ops. Sensory deprivation, loss of equilibrium, confusion techniques, social isolation, physiological stress, severe shock and ceremonial terror tactics were the forerunners of brainwashing techniques.
This is the realm of psychic attack and psychic self defense, of sorcerers stealthily vying with one another for power. Weaponized ESP can affect the body, mind and soul of one's opponent. But it can boomerang back on the sender 3-fold, according to the cautionary prescription.
Undercover
Power can be used in either a self-serving manner, or one in service to the All. In order for The Magus to achieve his aims, there must be constant awareness and self-examination, pressing on and exploring one’s boundaries, breaking through into the boundless realms.
This is also the Trump of discernment.The Magus can discriminate between various realities and fantasies, between various points of view, without buying into any belief system, literally.The sorcerer orchestrates and works within others’ belief systems.
By molding worldviews, a magician creates the perception, manipulates and defines the perceived reality, creates the structure for self-organizing transformation.He believes no metanarratives but orchestrates them for others.He is an opportunistic paradigm shifter, shapeshifter, chameleon, trickster.If you assume a role does that make it real?If not, fake it till you make it.Better to be an inspired lunatic than uninspired, or so Crowley’s arc implies.
Legacy
Another magnetic mercurial personality, Tim Leary, took notes on Crowley's cult of personality. Leary admitted Crowley inspired him and bootstrapped his book 'The Game of Life' (Part 4 of his Future-History Series) from the scientific-occult philosophy of Aleister Crowley and Tarot.He understood Crowley was on a similar path, only using different language. He called Crowley an 'Agent of Evolution.'
LSD rascal-guru Timothy Leary was a Crowley enthusiast. He said: “I’ve been an admirer of Aleister Crowley. I think that I’m carrying on much of the work that he started over a hundred years ago … He was in favor of finding yourself, and ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law’ under love. It was a very powerful statement. I’m sorry he isn’t around now to appreciate the glories he started.” (Late Night America, Public Broadcasting Network, cited by Hells Bells, Reel to Real Ministries). Leary also had his own relationship with both the mystic arts and the CIA. One of his famous early books was called HIGH PRIEST. He was called "the Pope of Dope.". Both fearlessly explored the outer limits of human potential. Psychologists - essentially psychic engineers - exert both local and remote control on human minds and behavior.
Arcana
The occult is one of the keys to world events; reality is also defined by politics. Like nature, history is cyclic. Drug companies are as powerful as banks and oil. Corporate feudalism has replaced democracy as the new elitist rule. Corporations compete with nation-states and international mafia-style crime rings.
It takes intelligence to be a magician, but a magician can also be an active agent of intelligence, figuratively and literally.The real question is, rather, how and why and who and what do these things serve?
Restoring self and society is the essential wisdom of the Grail.But this quest can be coopted for narcissistic or pathological ends.The Secret Doctrine can introduce both positive and negative praeternatural forces.
Secret Missions
Who is served by the Holy Grail of occult knowledge? What is the Grail, and who does it serve?The secret is in the power and the power is in The Secret.It is a meaningless metaphor without the experiential process of self-transformation to back it up.That’s why it can’t be told.It is the panacea, a personal path of recovery for “what ails thee.”The Grail is a metaphor for connection to the mystical Source of everything, the ever-renewing Fount of all manifestation. All paths lead toward a personal journey of transformation and enlightenment, though not all journeys fulfill the total potential of creativity, compassion, engagement, and spirituality. On a classical “hero’s journey” like Parcival, when you find the Grail, and are called to its service, no knowledge remains hidden for long.Magick was the first transdisciplinarian occupation, drawing on all areas of knowledge.Before science divorced the occult arts it was called Natural Philosophy.
Trump Card
A Magus is a “worker of magic” which eludes rational definition.The Magus is both a symbol of enlightenment and deception (disinformation)-- just like the Tarot card, The Magician, is a card of duality: Wisdom and Folly.
"Now you see it; now you don't" is the forte of the illusionist, the juggler of realities, who is master of Orwellian double-think – holding the tension of the opposites.You alternate between faith and skepticism until you go beyond the ordinary boundaries of both - "slay each thought with its opposite." Myths present themselves as systems of antinomies, or opposites: heaven/hell, good/evil, life/death. The Magus lives at the Paradox.
Traditionally, the Magus is one who can demonstrate hands-on magic: healing, transformative rituals, metaphor therapy, alchemical transmutations, charging of talismans, spirit comm, etc. Magick works on the principle that man is a microcosm.
Arts Magian
A modern Magus is any person who completes the circuit between heaven and Earth, one who seeks to bring forth the divine 'gold' within her or himself.He or she is also a Mentor, an Initiator, divining and reading the signs and revealing deeper purpose and meaning in “the godgame.”
But that is how the outer world sees it. Every Magus has a foot in both worlds.Their inner life is mercurial, a complex psychic layer-cake of inner planes of transcendent experience where quantum leaps of consciousness are possible and messages are exchanged with the Great Unknown.
Metaphysician
Perception of what is real and what is not dims and vanishes in a whirlwind of synchronicities. Imagination is reality. Magicians understand the world we live in, or think we live in, is an illusion, a construct of our own perceptual apparatus and a malleable interpretation of our brains.
But the hyperdimensional gifts of the Spirit come at a price.The magician taps into, becomes one with, an essence that pop culture calls The Force.Photons and phonons are quantized modes of vibration. This subatomic vibration of Light and Sound is the enlivening force, which feeds creation and allegedly responds to focused intention.Information controls and patterns energy.
Hermetics is a Spiritual Technology
For masters of the Hermetic Arts, all magick is wrought through this impressionable ether – the Astral Light --a plenum of potential, using true properties of nature, it's laws, forces, and principles.Science now describes it as the scalar physics of subspace.The mage seeks to selectively establish an internal order out of this chaos, then externalize it, according to his vision.He is the soul guide who initiates the transformation process.
The Hermetica included works on magic, alchemy, astrology, healing, gnosis, theurgy, ritual and philosophy. Sympathetic magic contends that like substances sharing an essence can influence one another through resonance effects. Likewise the hypnotic and magnetic qualities of charismatic individuals can create rapport with others to influence them.
The Great Work
The magnum opus is pre-eminently the creation of man by himself, that is, the full and complete conquest which he can make of his faculties and his future; it is pre-eminently the perfect emancipation of his will.
Whip Me; Beat Me; Call Me Thelema
In Thelema the Great Work is viewed as the individual quest for Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. Aleister Crowley, the self-styled prophet of Thelema, believed that the individual Great Work contributes ultimately to the Great Work of the Universe:
The first condition of membership of the A.'.A.'. is that one is sworn to identify one's own Great Work with that of raising mankind to higher levels, spiritually, and in every other way. (Magick Without Tears, ch. 9)
According to Thelemic philosophy, the accomplishment of the Great Work is the discovery of one's True Will the practitioner's Secret Self Hadit in the universe of infinite possibilities Nuit.
According to Thelemic doctrine, it may take many incarnations for one to achieve this Supreme Goal. Each Thelemite finds for himself or herself a unique method for accomplishing the Great Work. Crowley cautions against the "lust of result" for such desire reveals limitations which hinder one's development.
Crowley's occult system initially focuses on attaining the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, which will (by assumption) help the practitioner to achieve his or her True Will. The system does not give any absolute rule for reaching this point, nor any certain way to test another person's Holy Guardian Angel.
Professor William James, in his "Varieties of Religious Experience," has well classified religion as the "once-born" and the "twice-born"; but the religion now proclaimed in Liber Legis harmonizes these by transcending them. There is no attempt to get rid of death by denying it, as among the once-born; nor to accept death as the gate of a new life, as among the twice-born. With the A.'. A.'. life and death are equally incidents in a career, very much like day and night in the history of a planet. But, to pursue the simile, we regard this planet from afar. A Brother of A.'. A.'. looks at (what another person would call) "himself", as one --- or, rather, some --- among a group of phenomena. He is that "nothing" whose consciousness is in one sense the universe considered as a single phenomenon in time and space, and in another sense is the negation of that consciousness. The body and mind of the man are only important (if at all) as the telescope of the astronomer to him. If the telescope were destroyed it would make no appreciable difference to the Universe which that telescope reveals.
*******
.....Who makes a good spy or a good liar?
I don’t think there’s any one answer to that. Being a good actor, being a good poker player. Being a good con man. Con men are people who are sociopathic, who do not feel remorse, and who are very attuned, strangely, to other people and can read them very well. If I know what you really want to hear and what is in your heart of hearts, your fondest desire, because I’m good at reading you and I’m street-smart about assessing you, then I can feed you what you want to hear. A good con man does that. A good magician does that. You also have to have a good memory.....(Discover Magazine)
MIND PHREAK
Magick Metaprograms
This power card also represents the fine line dividing white magic from black magic, toxic or malignant black ops. Sensory deprivation, loss of equilibrium, confusion techniques, social isolation, physiological stress, severe shock and ceremonial terror tactics were the forerunners of brainwashing techniques.
This is the realm of psychic attack and psychic self defense, of sorcerers stealthily vying with one another for power. Weaponized ESP can affect the body, mind and soul of one's opponent. But it can boomerang back on the sender 3-fold, according to the cautionary prescription.
Undercover
Power can be used in either a self-serving manner, or one in service to the All. In order for The Magus to achieve his aims, there must be constant awareness and self-examination, pressing on and exploring one’s boundaries, breaking through into the boundless realms.
This is also the Trump of discernment.The Magus can discriminate between various realities and fantasies, between various points of view, without buying into any belief system, literally.The sorcerer orchestrates and works within others’ belief systems.
By molding worldviews, a magician creates the perception, manipulates and defines the perceived reality, creates the structure for self-organizing transformation.He believes no metanarratives but orchestrates them for others.He is an opportunistic paradigm shifter, shapeshifter, chameleon, trickster.If you assume a role does that make it real?If not, fake it till you make it.Better to be an inspired lunatic than uninspired, or so Crowley’s arc implies.
Legacy
Another magnetic mercurial personality, Tim Leary, took notes on Crowley's cult of personality. Leary admitted Crowley inspired him and bootstrapped his book 'The Game of Life' (Part 4 of his Future-History Series) from the scientific-occult philosophy of Aleister Crowley and Tarot.He understood Crowley was on a similar path, only using different language. He called Crowley an 'Agent of Evolution.'
LSD rascal-guru Timothy Leary was a Crowley enthusiast. He said: “I’ve been an admirer of Aleister Crowley. I think that I’m carrying on much of the work that he started over a hundred years ago … He was in favor of finding yourself, and ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law’ under love. It was a very powerful statement. I’m sorry he isn’t around now to appreciate the glories he started.” (Late Night America, Public Broadcasting Network, cited by Hells Bells, Reel to Real Ministries). Leary also had his own relationship with both the mystic arts and the CIA. One of his famous early books was called HIGH PRIEST. He was called "the Pope of Dope.". Both fearlessly explored the outer limits of human potential. Psychologists - essentially psychic engineers - exert both local and remote control on human minds and behavior.
Were Golden Dawn Members Spying?
The Golden Dawn a "Front" for Anti-British Fascist Sympathizers & Collaborators?
In both the Celtic Magical Revival and the French Magical Revival (both nominally Catholic), the politics of their key players, in their "day jobs," is far more important than their favorite pastime, passing off their occult-themed amateur theatricals as "ceremonial magic" rituals ... In Paris, the tartan-clad "MacGregor" Mathers spent most of his time trying to win the good graces of aristocrats associated with French-Catholic Jacobite pretenders to the British throne and, playing "secret agent" every bit as much as Crowley would later, was always looking over his shoulder, supposedly "dodging assassins" (according to his Inner Order letters).
The same politicking even figured into Westcott's and Mathers' phony "charter" letters from "Fraulein Anna Sprengel" authorizing their founding of the Golden Dawn as a foreign lodge of an older Rosicrucian order in Germany, since she was understood (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Sprengel) to be the illegitimate daughter of Lola Montez (an Irish woman!) and "mad King" Ludwig I of Bavaria -- a Wittelsbach descended from the original patron of the true Rosicrucians, 1612's would-be "Protestant Emperor," Frederick V of the Palatinate (about whom historian Frances Yates has written much). In short, Mathers expected that, hidden behind his "secret chiefs," he would be serving the "rightful heir" to the British throne, a living Wittelsbach whose pedigree incorporated the "illegally" deposed Stuarts, outwardly Catholic in faith but peculiarly so ("holier than the Pope"), as seen in the Priory of Sion and among Elipha Levi's "Rosicrucian" disciples ...
On the principle of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," the leading lights of the Golden Dawn --during the time when Crowley publicly took Mathers' side against them-- were not only closely linked to violent Irish nationalists (including the IRA) but were also personally acquainted with, and sympathetic to, French fascists and Italian revolutionaries. (À la Blavatsky, who fought for Garibaldi and joined Mazzini's Carbonari, acting as their liaison with revolutionary Freemasons* in Russia.) Inevitably, those same links led some in the Golden Dawn directly to Mussolini and Hitler, something of which only Crowley gets accused.
Freemasonry in Russia began with Lord James Keith (1696 - 1758), a descendent of Scottish nobility, banished in 1715 for his support of the Stuart Pretender. He served in the Spanish Army, before moving to Russia in 1728 with the recommendation of Phillip V. Russian Empress Anna appointed him military governor of the Ukraine. In 1740, Keith was made Provincial Grand Master of Russian Freemasonry by the Grand Master of England, who also happened to be Keith's cousin ...
"The appointment of James Keith as Provincial Grand Master of Russian Freemasonry, of course, was only two years after the general suppression of the Craft by the Papal Bull of Pope Clement XIII. It is likely that Keith, as a Jacobite, only paid lip service to the English jurisdiction during the one-year Grand Mastership of his cousin and thereafter influenced Russian Freemasonry towards Germany as the inspirational source for ritual ... One of the powerful influences on Russian Freemasonry was the Rite of Strict Observance. This Rite was sponsored by Baron Karl Gotthelf von Hund (1722-1776), Provincial Grand Master of the Craft in Germany. This system, so-called because of its vows of unquestioned obedience to "Unknown Superiors," was based on the myth that Templar secrets had survived the suppression of the Order in 1312 by fleeing to Scotland. It is interesting to note that von Hund, a man of integrity, was convinced that the unknown Grand Master was Charles Edward Stuart. In about 1744, von Hund claimed that he had been received into the Order of the Temple in Paris in the presence of William, fourth and last Earl of Kilmarnock, who was also Grand Master Mason of Scotland in 1742-1743. Earl Kilmarnock was executed in 1746 for his support of Charles Edward Stuart (Smythe, pp.14-15). So, with all these links to the Stuart cause, you may see how attractive this Rite was to the Jacobites ...
"In August 1822, [Czar] Alexander I closed all Masonic lodges in Russia. There must have remained an underground movement since the five Decembrist leaders are said to have been Freemasons and the Decembrist incident did not take place until 3 years later. {"The failure of the Decembrists’ attempted revolution in 1825 led to both an increase in Czarist secret police terrorism and the spread of revolutionary activity among the educated classes."} That Freemasonry continued in spite of the ban seems likely because Nicholas I, successor to Alexander I, confirmed the decree prohibiting all Freemasonry on April 21, 1826 ...
"In 1906 fifteen members of the [Russian] Constitutional Democratic Party joined Lodges in France, and on returning to Russia they formed two Provincial Lodges, The Polar Star in St. Petersburg and Regeneration in Moscow. Both were opened in May 1908 by representatives from the High Council of the Grand Orient of France, sent especially for that purpose. For some number of years prior to the first Russian Revolution (1917), the Grand Orient of France (considered irregular since 1877) attempted to recreate its own style of political Freemasonry in the last days of the Russian Empire. As early as 1908, Polar Star Lodge in St Petersburg and two other lodges (in Moscow and Warsaw respectively) followed the Grand Orient's political agenda. In 1909 the authorities became aware of the revitalised existence of these lodges and their activities were driven underground until 1911 ... The Craft came to be regarded as a vipers' nest of atheist revolutionaries and/or Jewish conspirators against Christianity, ready to overthrow any lawful government and foster any revolt.
> "In 1911, the Grand Orient of France acknowledged the creation of a new "Grand Orient of the Peoples of Russia". Due to their affiliation and overt political activity, this "Grand Lodge" was not recognised by Freemasonry's Regular Jurisdictions. By 1913-1914 there were about forty "Lodges" operating but with increasing political disputes raging between their members who belonged primarily to the Constitutional Democratic Party. On the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, twenty-eight lodges existed.
> "An independent lodge of the so-called Martinist Rite was formed among the entourage of Czar Nicholas II under the name of 'The Cross and the Star'. Nicholas himself was said to have been a member of this lodge. Other Martinist lodges soon opened: 'Apollonius' in St Petersburg (1910), 'St John' in Moscow (1911), 'St Andrew' in Kiev (1912). Among them, a [counter-revolutionary] lodge calling itself 'Philalethes,' probably in connection with its mother lodge in Paris, defended the monarchy ...
> "With Russia losing the war against the Axis powers, and food riots rapidly spreading throughout Petrograd and Moscow, on March 2, 1917 the Czar abdicated in favour of a provisional government under the initial control of Prince Lvov. On July 16, Alexander Kerensky, a [Grand Orient] Freemason, acquired control of the provisional government. Amid the confusion, Lenin, who had returned from exile with the help of German intelligence, made his momentous move and the Bolsheviks seized control of the government in October. Kerensky fled the country."
http://www.casebook.org/dissertations/freemasonry/russianfm.html
Isabella Augusta, LADY GREGORY (15 March 1852 – 22 May 1932), born Isabella Augusta Persse, was an Irish dramatist, folklorist and theatre manager. With William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre. Her home served as an important meeting place for leading Celtic Revival figures.
> Lady Gregory's mother, Frances Barry, was related to Standish O'Grady, 1st Viscount Guillamore, and her family home, Roxborough, was a 6,000-acre (24 km²) estate, burnt down during the Irish Civil War. In Dublin on 4 March 1880 she married Sir William Henry Gregory, who had just retired from his position of Governor of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), having previously served several terms as Member of Parliament for Galway County. He was a well-educated man with many literary and artistic interests, and had a house in London at which a weekly salon was held, frequented by many of the leading literary and artistic figures of the day, including John Everett Millais and Henry James.
> The Gregorys travelled in Ceylon, India, Spain, Italy and Egypt. (While in Egypt, Lady Gregory had an affair with the English poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt.) In 1882 she pubished a pamphlet --originally a letter to The Times-- in support of Ahmed Orabi Pasha, leader of an 1879 Egyptian nationalist revolt against British domination of Egypt.
> Towards the end of 1894, while researching Irish history, she came to support Irish nationalism and Republicanism, from what she was later to describe as "a dislike and distrust of England".
> Edward Martyn was a neighbour of Lady Gregory, and it was during a visit to his Tullira Castle that she first met W. B. Yeats.
>
> Edward Martyn (30 January 1859 – 5 December 1923) was an Irish political and cultural activist and playwright. Martyn began writing fiction and plays in the 1880s. Martyn was renowned as a networker and was pivotal in introducing William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory. The three founded the Irish Literary Theatre, for whom Martyn wrote his best and most popular plays. He covered the costs of the company's first three seasons, which proved crucial to establishing the company and the future of the Abbey Theatre. He later parted ways with Yeats and Gregory, something he later regretted, but remained on warm terms with Lady Gregory till the end of his life.
Martyn was descended from Richard Óge Martyn (c.1604-1648), a leading Irish Confederate, and Oliver Óge Martyn (c.1630-c.1709), a Jacobite who fought in the Williamite War in Ireland. In the 1880s Martyn came out as an Irish nationalist when he famously refused to allow God Save The Queen to be sung after a dinner party.
By this stage he was involved with the political work of Maude Gonne and Arthur Griffith* (the founder of Sinn Féin), and was a vocal opponent of the visit of Queen Victoria to Ireland in 1897. He likewise protested the visit of Edward VII in 1903.
> The fundamental principles on which Sinn Féin was founded were outlined in an article published in 1904 by Griffith called The Resurrection of Hungary, in which, noting how Hungary went from being part of the Austrian Empire to a separate co-equal kingdom in Austria-Hungary. Though not a monarchist himself, Griffith advocated that Ireland should become a separate kingdom alongside Great Britain, the two forming a dual monarchy with a shared monarch but separate governments. He believed that this solution would be more palatable to the British. However, the idea was never really embraced by separatist leaders and never came to anything.
>
> The charge of anti-semitism has often been levelled at [Arthur] Griffith. He published articles signed by 'The Home Secretary' in his newspaper, the United Irishman, during the Dreyfus Affair that displayed clear hatred for Jews. In 1899 he wrote in the United Irishman:
>
> I have often declared that the Three Evil Influences of the century are the Pirate, the Freemason, and the Jew.
> Following the Dreyfus Affair, he stated:
> A Jew traitor who had sold the most vital secrets of France to her enemies was condemned to a mild punishment, imprisonment ... The whole European world, with the exception of the Anglo-Jew coalition and its Irish sycophants, is utterly indifferent to the traitor's fate.
> Griffith's editorial support for the Limerick Pogrom (a boycott of Jewish businesses in 1904) has also been criticised
> Martyn was the first president of Sinn Féin (historically associated with the IRA) from 1905 to 1908. In 1906 he was at the centre of a well-publicised court case over an off-the-cuff remark than any Irishman who joined the British Army should be flogged. He was on close personal terms with Thomas McDonagh, Joseph Mary Plunkett and Patrick Pearse, and deeply mourned their deaths in the aftermath of the Easter Uprising of 1916. A parish hall and church that he founded was attacked and burned by the Black and Tans. He supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921.
>
> Discussions between the three of them over the following year or so led to the founding of the Irish Literary Theatre in 1899. The Irish Literary Theatre project lasted until 1901, when it collapsed due to lack of funding. In 1904, Lady Gregory, Martyn, Yeats, John Millington Synge, Æ, and William and Frank Fay came together to form the Irish National Theatre Society, with funding from <Golden Dawn initiate> Annie Horniman.
Maud Gonne MacBride (21 December 1866 – 27 April 1953) was an English-born Irish revolutionary, feminist and actress, best remembered for her turbulent relationship with William Butler Yeats. Of Anglo-Irish stock and birth, she was won over to Irish nationalism.
>
> She was born at Tongham near Farnham, Surrey, as Edith Maud Gonne, the eldest daughter of Captain Thomas Gonne (1835–1886) whose ancestors hailed from Caithness in Scotland. After her mother died while Maud was still a child, her father sent her to a boarding school in France to be educated.
>
> In 1882 she fell in love with a right wing politician, Lucien Millevoye. They agreed to fight for Irish freedom and regain Alsace-Lorraine for France. She returned to Ireland and worked tirelessly for the release of Irish political prisoners from jail. In 1889, she first met William Butler Yeats, who fell in love with her.
>
> In 1890 she returned to France where she once again met Millevoye. In 1891, she joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a magical organization with which Yeats had involved himself. Between 1893 and 1895, she and Millevoye had two children. Only the second, a girl named Iseult Gonne, born 1894, survived. (At age 23, Iseult was proposed to by then-52-year-old William Butler Yeats, and she had a brief affair with Ezra Pound. At age 26, Iseult married the Irish-Australian novelist, Francis Stuart, who was then 18 years old.)
>
> During the 1890s, Gonne travelled extensively throughout England, Wales, Scotland and the United States campaigning for the Irish nationalist cause.
>
> "I have always hated war and am by nature a pacifist, but it is the English who are forcing war on us, and the first principle of war is TO KILL THE ENEMY ..." --Maud Gonne
>
> In 1897, along with Yeats and Arthur Griffith, Maud Gonne organized protests against Queen Victoria's state visit to Ireland.
>
There had been numerous attempts to assassinate Queen Victoria -- in 1842 (twice), 1849, 1850, 1868, 1872 and 1882. "Most of these attempted assassinations were of Irish origin, with the most serious and well-documented being the “Jubilee Plot”, a conspiracy spawned in New York by the Fenians, a 'fraternal organisation dedicated to establishing an independent Irish Republic.' In the Jubilee Plot, the Fenians were going to blow up Queen Victoria, her family and the whole British government with dynamite in Westminster Abbey in June 1887." http://www.topsecretwriters.com/2011/12/the-strange-assassination-attempt-against-queen-victoria-of-england/ >
>
> "According to British journalist Christy Campbell, in his book Fenian Fire: The British Government Plot to Assassinate Queen Victoria, [failed assassin] Millen had been recruited by the British government 'to stir the Fenians into bombing Britain' – a scheme designed to discredit the Home Rule movement. Campbell further claimed that Millen was hired with the approval of the Conservative leader, Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_Plot <Salisbury's nephew was Gerald Balfour, founder of the Society of Psychical Research and a friend of WB Yeats, Oscar Wilde, et al.>
>
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3576784/When-the-prime-minister-plotted-to-kill-the-queen.html
>
> "Investigative historian and former Sunday Telegraph defence correspondent Christy Campbell has proved beyond doubt that what the 1887 press dubbed "the Jubilee Plot" was in fact planned by the British secret service and sanctioned by the prime minister, in order to achieve two crucial objectives. The first was to uncover and destroy the Irish republican network on mainland Britain that had perpetrated a series of dynamite outrages on such targets as the House of Commons, Scotland Yard, and the Home Office. The second objective was to discredit the movement for Irish Home Rule by linking the constitutionalist Irish leader Charles Stewart Parnell in the British public's mind with the terrorists.
>
> "The key figure in the plot was General Francis Millen, a Tyrone-born mercenary known to have had republican sympathies. He was the brains and the money behind the whole operation, which naturally brought him into close contact with the shadowy leading figures in the American-based terrorist organisations, especially the Irish Fenian Brotherhood and its even more lethal offshoot, Clan-na-Gael. What these Chicago and Pittsburgh-based groups never knew about Millen was that for at least two decades he had been working for British Intelligence. He was paid from secret service funds and recruited for this operation on the authority of the prime minister Lord Salisbury, whose red-inked monogram "S" appears on all the most sensitive documents that sanctioned the operations.
>
> "When I {Andrew Roberts} was writing Salisbury's official biography in 1999 I was repeatedly refused access to the files relating to his nephew Arthur Balfour's period as chief secretary of Ireland between 1887 to 1891. It seemed to me absurd that under Section 3.4 of the 1958 Official Secrets Act, these files should be kept closed for 108 years, when even the children of the British informers named in them have by now presumably died ..."
>
> (For further details, see also: http://www.casebook.org/dissertations/rip-jsfmboe.html )
>
> On Easter 1900, Gonne founded Inghinidhe na hÉireann ("Daughters of Ireland"), a revolutionary women's society. In April 1902, she took a leading role in Yeats's play Cathleen Ní Houlihan. She refused many marriage proposals from Yeats because she viewed him as insufficiently nationalist.
>
> After having turned down at least four marriage proposals from Yeats between 1891 and 1901, Maud married Major John MacBride in Paris in 1903. (After the marriage ended, Gonne made allegations that MacBride sexually molested her 11-year-old daughter Iseult Gonne.) MacBride was a veteran who had led the Irish Transvaal Brigade against the British in the Second Boer War. He was executed in May 1916 along with other leaders of the Easter Uprising.
>
> In 1918 she was arrested in Dublin and imprisoned in England for six months. In 1921 she advocated the Irish Republican cause.
Yeats's muse
Many of Yeats's poems are inspired by her, or mention her, such as "This, This Rude Knocking." He wrote the plays The Countess Cathleen and Cathleen Ní Houlihan for her. Few poets have celebrated a woman's beauty to the extent Yeats did in his lyric verse about Gonne. From his second book to Last Poems, she became the Rose, Helen of Troy (in No second Troy), the Ledaean Body (Leda and the Swan and Among School Children), Cathleen Ní Houlihan, Pallas Athene and Deirdre.
> Lucien Millevoye (1 August 1850 – 25 March 1918) was a French journalist and right-wing politician, now best known for his relationship with the Irish revolutionary and muse of W.B. Yeats, Maud Gonne.
>
> Millevoye was the editor of La Patrie and a supporter of General Boulanger.
>
> Boulanger was among the Third Republic military leaders who crushed the Paris Commune in April–May 1871. With backing from his direct superior, Henri d'Orléans, duc d'Aumale (one of the sons of former king Louis-Philippe), Boulanger became a brigadier-general in 1880. In January 1886, Georges Clemenceau appointed him War Minister, assuming him to be a republican. Boulanger, however, would prove himself a conservative and a monarchist.
>
> It was in the capacity of War Minister that Boulanger gained most popularity. He appealed to the French desire for revenge against Imperial Germany -- in doing so, came to be regarded as the man destined to serve that revenge (nicknamed Général Revanche). A minor scandal arose when Philippe, comte de Paris, the nominal inheritor of the French throne in the eyes of Orléanist monarchists, married his daughter to Portugal's Carlos I, provoking fears of anti-Republican ambitions. The French Parliament hastily passed a law expelling all possible claimants to the crown from French territories.
> The general decided to gather support for his own movement, an eclectic one that capitalized on the frustrations of French conservatism, advocating the three principles of Revanche (Revenge on Germany), Révision (Revision of the Constitution), Restoration (the return to monarchy). The common reference to it has become "Boulangisme," a term used by its partisans and adversaries alike.
> After a political corruption scandal, the Republican government fell into disrepute and by contrast Boulanger's popular appeal rose. During this period, Boulanger met with Jérôme Napoleon Bonaparte II, technically a Bonapartist, who offered his full support to the cause. The Bonapartists attached themselves to the general, and even the Orleanist pretender Philippe, Comte de Paris, encouraged his followers to support him.
During 1888 his personality was the dominating feature of French politics and he was urged to run for the presidency. However, his personal ambitions alienated his republican supporters, who recognized in him a potential military dictator. Various monarchists continued to give him financial aid.
In January 1889, he ran as a deputy for Paris, and among his supporters a coup d'état seemed probable and desirable . Boulanger had now become a threat to the parliamentary Republic. Boulanger decided it would be better to contest the general election and take power legally. This, however, gave his enemies the time they needed to strike back. Ernest Constans, the Minister of the Interior, decided to investigate the matter, and attacked Boulanger using the law banning the activities of secret societies. The French government issued a warrant for Boulanger's arrest for conspiracy and treason. To the astonishment of his supporters, he fled from Paris before it could be executed, going first to Brussels and then to London.
> After his flight, support for him dwindled, and the Boulangists were defeated in the general elections of July 1889. In September 1891 Boulanger committed suicide. In December a [terrorist] attack was carried out by a boulangist against Republican politician Jules Ferry.
> Although largely discredited, boulangisme was still visible in the far right during France's next major scandal, the Dreyfus Affair. Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell cites boulangisme as a major influence on Fascism, alongside Anarcho-syndicalism.
> In the late 1880s Millevoye went to Russia to further the cause of a Franco-Russian alliance. He claimed to be Boulanger's emissary to the Czar in St Petersburg.
> During the late 1880s and throughout the 1890s, he had an affair with the Irish actress Maud Gonne which produced two children. Millevoye's radical politics influenced Gonne, who became deeply involved in the Irish independence movement.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Stuart
Henry Francis Montgomery Stuart (1902–2000) was an Irish writer. His novels have been described as having a thrusting modernist iconoclasm. In 1920 he became a Catholic and married Maud Gonne's daughter, Iseult Gonne. She was seven years older than he and had had a romantic but unsettled life.
Iseult's father was the right-wing French politician, Lucien Millevoye, with whom Maud Gonne had had an affair between 1887 and 1899. Iseult grew up in Paris and London. William Butler Yeats proposed to her in 1917 and she had a brief affair with Ezra Pound prior to meeting Stuart.
>
> Iseult and Stuart travelled in Europe but returned to Ireland when the Irish Civil War began. Unsurprisingly given Gonne's strong opinions, the couple were caught up on the Irish Republican Army (IRA) side of this fight. Stuart was involved in gun-running and, after a botched raid, was interned by the British authorities.
>
> After independence, Stuart participated in the literary life of Dublin and wrote poetry and novels. His writing was publicly supported by Yeats. Yeats, however, seemed to have had mixed feelings for Stuart who was, after all, married to a woman he regarded almost as a daughter (and potential bride).
>
> During the 1930s Stuart became friendly with German Intelligence (Abwehr) agent Helmut Clissmann and his Irish wife Elizabeth. Clissmann was working for the German Academic Exchange Service and the Deutsche Akademie (DA), facilitating academic exchanges between Ireland and the Third Reich but also forming connections which might be of benefit to German Intelligence. Clissmann was also a representative of the Nazi Auslandorganisation (AO) - the Nazi Party's foreign organisation - in pre-war Ireland.
>
Stuart was also friendly with the head of the German Legation in Dublin, Dr Eduard Hempel, as a result of Maud Gonne rapport with him. Stuart travelled to Germany in April 1939 and his host in Germany was Professor Walter F. Schirmer. At the completion of his lecture tour he accepted an appointment as lecturer in English and Irish literature at Berlin University to begin in 1940.
At the outbreak of war in September 1939 he would still take the place in Berlin. When Stuart's plans for travelling to Germany were finalised, he received a visit from his brother-in-law, Sean MacBride, this meeting followed the seizure of an IRA transmitter on 29 December 1939, which had been used to contact Germany. Stuart, MacBride, Seamus O'Donovan, and IRA Chief of Staff Stephen Hayes then met at O'Donovan's house. Stuart was told to take a message to Abwehr HQ in Berlin. He travelled alone to Nazi Germany, something that was possible because Ireland was neutral in the Second World War, and arrived in Berlin during January 1940. Upon arrival he had some discussion with the Abwehr on the conditions in Ireland and reactivated his acquaintance with Abwehr asset Helmut Clissmann who was acting as an advisor to SS Colonel Dr Edmund Vessenmayer. Through Clissmann Stuart was introduced to Sonderführer Kurt Haller.
Between March 1942 and January 1944 Stuart worked as part of the Redaktion-Irland team, reading radio broadcasts containing Nazi propaganda aimed at Ireland. In his radio broadcasts he frequently spoke with admiration of Hitler and expressed the hope that Germany would help unite Ireland. After the war he claimed he was not drawn to Germany by support for Nazism but had been fascinated by wartime Germany as a dark spectacle of the grotesque and as a celebration of destruction.
Literature and the Occult: The Strange Life and Times of Gustav Meyrink.
The relationship between art and occultism is a varied, deep-rooted, and fascinating subject. Many artists have professed a interest in the occult, and flavoured their artworks with the peculiar ambience and iconography of the Art. Of these, some were actual practitioners of magic, some armchair dabblers, and others outright sceptics who merely adopted esoteric emblems for aesthetic effect. Aleister Crowley was a poet, and occasionally wrote novels, such as the Moonchild, which expounded various aspects of his doctrine. Austin Osman Spare, whose pastel The Vampires are Coming is pictured above, was a remarkable artist and magician for whom both activities were complimentary aspects of the same essential process. Edward Bulwer-Lytton, whom we encountered before in relation to The Coming Race and the Vril craze, published a novel called Zononi in 1842 which was essentially an allegory of Rosicrucian initiation. The Welch author and mystic Arthur Machen's anti-modernism and belief in esoteric doctrines produced a small body of highly influential weird fiction, including the Great God Pan and the almost grimoire-like The White People.
On the other hand, H.P. Lovecraft produced an enduring vision of Occult forces flowing into our world from Outside which has influenced generations of occultists and practitioners of rejected knowledge. But Lovecraft himself was an avowed rational sceptic and materialist. WB Yeats famously threw himself into the shenanigans of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, but turn of the century Theosophy and occultic revivalism receive a more sardonic treatment in Eliot's Waste Land and Joyce's Ulysses.
Nevertheless, even where no explicit or conscious connection exists, the artist and magician are bound together by a persistent congruence that is suggestive of shared origins. The classical poetic tradition of invoking the aid of the muses reflects the essential character of unfathomably ancient ceremonial magic: the summoning of supernatural entities and familiars to provide the magician or poet with extraordinary knowledge and abilities. (Though we have now largely replaced the idea of the muses with that of individual genius, the principal of inspiration remains a very mysterious force. Writers and artists in general feel the greatest sense of satisfaction and creativity when they have stopped trying; when some voice in the head or divinely inspired autopilot takes over the reins.) Further to this, the fictional world that emerges in artistic creation bears many similarities to the real world as experienced by the occultist.
The various worlds that emerge from literature and the arts are symbolical landscapes and products of a grand underlying design; they are places where no accidents ever occur, where correspondence and coincidence abound, and the artifice and intentions of the author provide a kind of Cabalistic code underlying the surface of the text. In this sense, Joyce's Ulysses is a supreme work of literary Cabala and occult imagination, a imaginary universe whose apparently quotidian and random character betrays endless interconnection, and the working of a grand, intricate design. ( Ulysses contains the following passage, one of my favourite in all of literature, which is distinctly occult in character: "He found in the world without as actual what was in his world within as possible. Maerlinck says: If Socrates leave his house today he will find the sage seated on is doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend. Every life is is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves".)
Gustav Meyrink was assuredly no stranger to wondering strange mental topographies and urban labyrinths, only to find his own reflection gazing back at every turn. Born the illegitimate son of a Baron and actress in Vienna in 1868, Meyrink spent most of his life in Prague, that grand miasmal mindscape of literary disorientation and angst. He was a contemporary of Kafka who was much admired by Max Brod, having achieved a considerable fame with his early novels of the uncanny The Golem and The Green Face. It has often been said that the prodigious strangeness of Meyrink's novels is eclipsed only by the details of his own life. A brief biographical abstract should leave the reader in no doubt of the validity of this claim.
Meyrink actually started out in life as banker, a profession wherein he enjoyed considerable early success. Between the years of 1882 and 1902, he was a director of the Meyer and Morgenstern Bank in Prague, and enjoyed an extravagant reputation as a bon vivant and fashionable man about town. All, however, was not quite well behind the glittering façade. Meyrink suffered from severe depression which ultimately culminated in nervous breakdown and attempted suicide.
On Assumption Eve, 1891, Meyrink was twenty four years old. He stood by the table in his apartment, holding a revolver in his hand, ready to end his life. Suddenly, he heard a rustling noise coming from the door. Upon investigation, Meyrink discovers that somebody has shoved an occultic pamphlet through the door. It is entitled "Afterlife."
This bizarre coincidence understandably set Meyrink off on a prodigious, life-long quest for occult knowledge and spiritual awakening. Later in the same year of his aborted suicide attempt, Meyrink became a founding member of the Theosophical Lodge of the Blue Star. He was "put to sea" in an endless tide of esoteric books and philosophies, studying and experimenting avidly with Cabalism, Freemasonry, yoga, alchemy, and hashish. There seems to have been no extreme to which he would not go in order to induce visions of the Other World. According to James Webb's book The Occult Establishment, "during the period of his strictest regimen - which probably coincided with his contact with the headquarters of the Theosophists - he took only three hours sleep a night, observed a strict vegetarian diet, performed arduous exercises, and drank gum-arabic twice a day in order to induce clairvoyance. At the end of these privations he had a vision like that of the Emperor Constantine and of abstract geometrical designs."
There was no stone Meyrink would leave unturned in his valiant attempt to attain the Great Work of spiritual transcendence. At one point, his practical experiments in alchemy lead to the shit quite literally hitting the fan: "All the necessary conditions for the alchemical "first matter" as he thought, were fulfilled by an element called "Struvit" or "Ulex" which had only been discovered in Germany, and always in ancient sewers. It therefore arose, argued Meyrink, in human excrement; and the substance fulfilled all the conditions laid down in alchemical texts. So from a "primaeval cess-pit" in Prague, he took a lump of excrement about the size of a nut and followed the instructions of his textbooks. The necessary color changes took place, but at a crucial point of the process his retort burst and the half-transformed prima materia hit the aspiring alchemist in the face."
In 1902, Lady Fortune gave a sharp turn to the wheel of Meyrink's destiny. He was about to get married for the second time, but severe disagreements with his future brother in law lead to him fighting an interminable series of duels with various officers of a Prague regiment. Worse still, rumours were swirling around Prague that Meyrink was running the affairs of the Meyer and Morgenstern Bank according to advice from the spirit world. In the ensuing scandal, he was thrown in jail, wherein he is thought to have broken his spine, and temporarily lost the power of his legs. Meyrink spent just two and a half months in prison, but it had left him financially ruined, and requiring all his reserves of yoga training to heal his shattered body. It was during this period of recuperation that he began writing, and embarked upon an initially successful career as a novelist.
This is only really scraping the surface of Meyrink's adventures in the occult. Another fascinating story suggests that in 1917, agents of the German government encouraged him to write a novel suggesting that the First World War was started by the Freemasons. He later backed away from the project, apparently under pressure from high-ranking Freemasons. Ill-fortune and eerie coincidence seemed to remain constants in his life. In the winter of 1933, Meyrink's son Harro (or "Fortunat" according to the wikipedia entry, which would make the tale even more bizarre if true) injured his backbone while skiing. The injury would effectively have confined him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. However, he committed suicide at the age of 24; the same age his father would have gone, had the "Afterlife" pamphlet not came rustling through the door. Less than a year later, Meyrink himself passed away, in the villa in Starnberg, Bavaria, known, after a hunted building in The Golem, as "The House at the Last Lantern."
The Golden Dawn a "Front" for Anti-British Fascist Sympathizers & Collaborators?
In both the Celtic Magical Revival and the French Magical Revival (both nominally Catholic), the politics of their key players, in their "day jobs," is far more important than their favorite pastime, passing off their occult-themed amateur theatricals as "ceremonial magic" rituals ... In Paris, the tartan-clad "MacGregor" Mathers spent most of his time trying to win the good graces of aristocrats associated with French-Catholic Jacobite pretenders to the British throne and, playing "secret agent" every bit as much as Crowley would later, was always looking over his shoulder, supposedly "dodging assassins" (according to his Inner Order letters).
The same politicking even figured into Westcott's and Mathers' phony "charter" letters from "Fraulein Anna Sprengel" authorizing their founding of the Golden Dawn as a foreign lodge of an older Rosicrucian order in Germany, since she was understood (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Sprengel) to be the illegitimate daughter of Lola Montez (an Irish woman!) and "mad King" Ludwig I of Bavaria -- a Wittelsbach descended from the original patron of the true Rosicrucians, 1612's would-be "Protestant Emperor," Frederick V of the Palatinate (about whom historian Frances Yates has written much). In short, Mathers expected that, hidden behind his "secret chiefs," he would be serving the "rightful heir" to the British throne, a living Wittelsbach whose pedigree incorporated the "illegally" deposed Stuarts, outwardly Catholic in faith but peculiarly so ("holier than the Pope"), as seen in the Priory of Sion and among Elipha Levi's "Rosicrucian" disciples ...
On the principle of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," the leading lights of the Golden Dawn --during the time when Crowley publicly took Mathers' side against them-- were not only closely linked to violent Irish nationalists (including the IRA) but were also personally acquainted with, and sympathetic to, French fascists and Italian revolutionaries. (À la Blavatsky, who fought for Garibaldi and joined Mazzini's Carbonari, acting as their liaison with revolutionary Freemasons* in Russia.) Inevitably, those same links led some in the Golden Dawn directly to Mussolini and Hitler, something of which only Crowley gets accused.
Freemasonry in Russia began with Lord James Keith (1696 - 1758), a descendent of Scottish nobility, banished in 1715 for his support of the Stuart Pretender. He served in the Spanish Army, before moving to Russia in 1728 with the recommendation of Phillip V. Russian Empress Anna appointed him military governor of the Ukraine. In 1740, Keith was made Provincial Grand Master of Russian Freemasonry by the Grand Master of England, who also happened to be Keith's cousin ...
"The appointment of James Keith as Provincial Grand Master of Russian Freemasonry, of course, was only two years after the general suppression of the Craft by the Papal Bull of Pope Clement XIII. It is likely that Keith, as a Jacobite, only paid lip service to the English jurisdiction during the one-year Grand Mastership of his cousin and thereafter influenced Russian Freemasonry towards Germany as the inspirational source for ritual ... One of the powerful influences on Russian Freemasonry was the Rite of Strict Observance. This Rite was sponsored by Baron Karl Gotthelf von Hund (1722-1776), Provincial Grand Master of the Craft in Germany. This system, so-called because of its vows of unquestioned obedience to "Unknown Superiors," was based on the myth that Templar secrets had survived the suppression of the Order in 1312 by fleeing to Scotland. It is interesting to note that von Hund, a man of integrity, was convinced that the unknown Grand Master was Charles Edward Stuart. In about 1744, von Hund claimed that he had been received into the Order of the Temple in Paris in the presence of William, fourth and last Earl of Kilmarnock, who was also Grand Master Mason of Scotland in 1742-1743. Earl Kilmarnock was executed in 1746 for his support of Charles Edward Stuart (Smythe, pp.14-15). So, with all these links to the Stuart cause, you may see how attractive this Rite was to the Jacobites ...
"In August 1822, [Czar] Alexander I closed all Masonic lodges in Russia. There must have remained an underground movement since the five Decembrist leaders are said to have been Freemasons and the Decembrist incident did not take place until 3 years later. {"The failure of the Decembrists’ attempted revolution in 1825 led to both an increase in Czarist secret police terrorism and the spread of revolutionary activity among the educated classes."} That Freemasonry continued in spite of the ban seems likely because Nicholas I, successor to Alexander I, confirmed the decree prohibiting all Freemasonry on April 21, 1826 ...
"In 1906 fifteen members of the [Russian] Constitutional Democratic Party joined Lodges in France, and on returning to Russia they formed two Provincial Lodges, The Polar Star in St. Petersburg and Regeneration in Moscow. Both were opened in May 1908 by representatives from the High Council of the Grand Orient of France, sent especially for that purpose. For some number of years prior to the first Russian Revolution (1917), the Grand Orient of France (considered irregular since 1877) attempted to recreate its own style of political Freemasonry in the last days of the Russian Empire. As early as 1908, Polar Star Lodge in St Petersburg and two other lodges (in Moscow and Warsaw respectively) followed the Grand Orient's political agenda. In 1909 the authorities became aware of the revitalised existence of these lodges and their activities were driven underground until 1911 ... The Craft came to be regarded as a vipers' nest of atheist revolutionaries and/or Jewish conspirators against Christianity, ready to overthrow any lawful government and foster any revolt.
> "In 1911, the Grand Orient of France acknowledged the creation of a new "Grand Orient of the Peoples of Russia". Due to their affiliation and overt political activity, this "Grand Lodge" was not recognised by Freemasonry's Regular Jurisdictions. By 1913-1914 there were about forty "Lodges" operating but with increasing political disputes raging between their members who belonged primarily to the Constitutional Democratic Party. On the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, twenty-eight lodges existed.
> "An independent lodge of the so-called Martinist Rite was formed among the entourage of Czar Nicholas II under the name of 'The Cross and the Star'. Nicholas himself was said to have been a member of this lodge. Other Martinist lodges soon opened: 'Apollonius' in St Petersburg (1910), 'St John' in Moscow (1911), 'St Andrew' in Kiev (1912). Among them, a [counter-revolutionary] lodge calling itself 'Philalethes,' probably in connection with its mother lodge in Paris, defended the monarchy ...
> "With Russia losing the war against the Axis powers, and food riots rapidly spreading throughout Petrograd and Moscow, on March 2, 1917 the Czar abdicated in favour of a provisional government under the initial control of Prince Lvov. On July 16, Alexander Kerensky, a [Grand Orient] Freemason, acquired control of the provisional government. Amid the confusion, Lenin, who had returned from exile with the help of German intelligence, made his momentous move and the Bolsheviks seized control of the government in October. Kerensky fled the country."
http://www.casebook.org/dissertations/freemasonry/russianfm.html
Isabella Augusta, LADY GREGORY (15 March 1852 – 22 May 1932), born Isabella Augusta Persse, was an Irish dramatist, folklorist and theatre manager. With William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre. Her home served as an important meeting place for leading Celtic Revival figures.
> Lady Gregory's mother, Frances Barry, was related to Standish O'Grady, 1st Viscount Guillamore, and her family home, Roxborough, was a 6,000-acre (24 km²) estate, burnt down during the Irish Civil War. In Dublin on 4 March 1880 she married Sir William Henry Gregory, who had just retired from his position of Governor of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), having previously served several terms as Member of Parliament for Galway County. He was a well-educated man with many literary and artistic interests, and had a house in London at which a weekly salon was held, frequented by many of the leading literary and artistic figures of the day, including John Everett Millais and Henry James.
> The Gregorys travelled in Ceylon, India, Spain, Italy and Egypt. (While in Egypt, Lady Gregory had an affair with the English poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt.) In 1882 she pubished a pamphlet --originally a letter to The Times-- in support of Ahmed Orabi Pasha, leader of an 1879 Egyptian nationalist revolt against British domination of Egypt.
> Towards the end of 1894, while researching Irish history, she came to support Irish nationalism and Republicanism, from what she was later to describe as "a dislike and distrust of England".
> Edward Martyn was a neighbour of Lady Gregory, and it was during a visit to his Tullira Castle that she first met W. B. Yeats.
>
> Edward Martyn (30 January 1859 – 5 December 1923) was an Irish political and cultural activist and playwright. Martyn began writing fiction and plays in the 1880s. Martyn was renowned as a networker and was pivotal in introducing William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory. The three founded the Irish Literary Theatre, for whom Martyn wrote his best and most popular plays. He covered the costs of the company's first three seasons, which proved crucial to establishing the company and the future of the Abbey Theatre. He later parted ways with Yeats and Gregory, something he later regretted, but remained on warm terms with Lady Gregory till the end of his life.
Martyn was descended from Richard Óge Martyn (c.1604-1648), a leading Irish Confederate, and Oliver Óge Martyn (c.1630-c.1709), a Jacobite who fought in the Williamite War in Ireland. In the 1880s Martyn came out as an Irish nationalist when he famously refused to allow God Save The Queen to be sung after a dinner party.
By this stage he was involved with the political work of Maude Gonne and Arthur Griffith* (the founder of Sinn Féin), and was a vocal opponent of the visit of Queen Victoria to Ireland in 1897. He likewise protested the visit of Edward VII in 1903.
> The fundamental principles on which Sinn Féin was founded were outlined in an article published in 1904 by Griffith called The Resurrection of Hungary, in which, noting how Hungary went from being part of the Austrian Empire to a separate co-equal kingdom in Austria-Hungary. Though not a monarchist himself, Griffith advocated that Ireland should become a separate kingdom alongside Great Britain, the two forming a dual monarchy with a shared monarch but separate governments. He believed that this solution would be more palatable to the British. However, the idea was never really embraced by separatist leaders and never came to anything.
>
> The charge of anti-semitism has often been levelled at [Arthur] Griffith. He published articles signed by 'The Home Secretary' in his newspaper, the United Irishman, during the Dreyfus Affair that displayed clear hatred for Jews. In 1899 he wrote in the United Irishman:
>
> I have often declared that the Three Evil Influences of the century are the Pirate, the Freemason, and the Jew.
> Following the Dreyfus Affair, he stated:
> A Jew traitor who had sold the most vital secrets of France to her enemies was condemned to a mild punishment, imprisonment ... The whole European world, with the exception of the Anglo-Jew coalition and its Irish sycophants, is utterly indifferent to the traitor's fate.
> Griffith's editorial support for the Limerick Pogrom (a boycott of Jewish businesses in 1904) has also been criticised
> Martyn was the first president of Sinn Féin (historically associated with the IRA) from 1905 to 1908. In 1906 he was at the centre of a well-publicised court case over an off-the-cuff remark than any Irishman who joined the British Army should be flogged. He was on close personal terms with Thomas McDonagh, Joseph Mary Plunkett and Patrick Pearse, and deeply mourned their deaths in the aftermath of the Easter Uprising of 1916. A parish hall and church that he founded was attacked and burned by the Black and Tans. He supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921.
>
> Discussions between the three of them over the following year or so led to the founding of the Irish Literary Theatre in 1899. The Irish Literary Theatre project lasted until 1901, when it collapsed due to lack of funding. In 1904, Lady Gregory, Martyn, Yeats, John Millington Synge, Æ, and William and Frank Fay came together to form the Irish National Theatre Society, with funding from <Golden Dawn initiate> Annie Horniman.
Maud Gonne MacBride (21 December 1866 – 27 April 1953) was an English-born Irish revolutionary, feminist and actress, best remembered for her turbulent relationship with William Butler Yeats. Of Anglo-Irish stock and birth, she was won over to Irish nationalism.
>
> She was born at Tongham near Farnham, Surrey, as Edith Maud Gonne, the eldest daughter of Captain Thomas Gonne (1835–1886) whose ancestors hailed from Caithness in Scotland. After her mother died while Maud was still a child, her father sent her to a boarding school in France to be educated.
>
> In 1882 she fell in love with a right wing politician, Lucien Millevoye. They agreed to fight for Irish freedom and regain Alsace-Lorraine for France. She returned to Ireland and worked tirelessly for the release of Irish political prisoners from jail. In 1889, she first met William Butler Yeats, who fell in love with her.
>
> In 1890 she returned to France where she once again met Millevoye. In 1891, she joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a magical organization with which Yeats had involved himself. Between 1893 and 1895, she and Millevoye had two children. Only the second, a girl named Iseult Gonne, born 1894, survived. (At age 23, Iseult was proposed to by then-52-year-old William Butler Yeats, and she had a brief affair with Ezra Pound. At age 26, Iseult married the Irish-Australian novelist, Francis Stuart, who was then 18 years old.)
>
> During the 1890s, Gonne travelled extensively throughout England, Wales, Scotland and the United States campaigning for the Irish nationalist cause.
>
> "I have always hated war and am by nature a pacifist, but it is the English who are forcing war on us, and the first principle of war is TO KILL THE ENEMY ..." --Maud Gonne
>
> In 1897, along with Yeats and Arthur Griffith, Maud Gonne organized protests against Queen Victoria's state visit to Ireland.
>
There had been numerous attempts to assassinate Queen Victoria -- in 1842 (twice), 1849, 1850, 1868, 1872 and 1882. "Most of these attempted assassinations were of Irish origin, with the most serious and well-documented being the “Jubilee Plot”, a conspiracy spawned in New York by the Fenians, a 'fraternal organisation dedicated to establishing an independent Irish Republic.' In the Jubilee Plot, the Fenians were going to blow up Queen Victoria, her family and the whole British government with dynamite in Westminster Abbey in June 1887." http://www.topsecretwriters.com/2011/12/the-strange-assassination-attempt-against-queen-victoria-of-england/ >
>
> "According to British journalist Christy Campbell, in his book Fenian Fire: The British Government Plot to Assassinate Queen Victoria, [failed assassin] Millen had been recruited by the British government 'to stir the Fenians into bombing Britain' – a scheme designed to discredit the Home Rule movement. Campbell further claimed that Millen was hired with the approval of the Conservative leader, Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_Plot <Salisbury's nephew was Gerald Balfour, founder of the Society of Psychical Research and a friend of WB Yeats, Oscar Wilde, et al.>
>
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3576784/When-the-prime-minister-plotted-to-kill-the-queen.html
>
> "Investigative historian and former Sunday Telegraph defence correspondent Christy Campbell has proved beyond doubt that what the 1887 press dubbed "the Jubilee Plot" was in fact planned by the British secret service and sanctioned by the prime minister, in order to achieve two crucial objectives. The first was to uncover and destroy the Irish republican network on mainland Britain that had perpetrated a series of dynamite outrages on such targets as the House of Commons, Scotland Yard, and the Home Office. The second objective was to discredit the movement for Irish Home Rule by linking the constitutionalist Irish leader Charles Stewart Parnell in the British public's mind with the terrorists.
>
> "The key figure in the plot was General Francis Millen, a Tyrone-born mercenary known to have had republican sympathies. He was the brains and the money behind the whole operation, which naturally brought him into close contact with the shadowy leading figures in the American-based terrorist organisations, especially the Irish Fenian Brotherhood and its even more lethal offshoot, Clan-na-Gael. What these Chicago and Pittsburgh-based groups never knew about Millen was that for at least two decades he had been working for British Intelligence. He was paid from secret service funds and recruited for this operation on the authority of the prime minister Lord Salisbury, whose red-inked monogram "S" appears on all the most sensitive documents that sanctioned the operations.
>
> "When I {Andrew Roberts} was writing Salisbury's official biography in 1999 I was repeatedly refused access to the files relating to his nephew Arthur Balfour's period as chief secretary of Ireland between 1887 to 1891. It seemed to me absurd that under Section 3.4 of the 1958 Official Secrets Act, these files should be kept closed for 108 years, when even the children of the British informers named in them have by now presumably died ..."
>
> (For further details, see also: http://www.casebook.org/dissertations/rip-jsfmboe.html )
>
> On Easter 1900, Gonne founded Inghinidhe na hÉireann ("Daughters of Ireland"), a revolutionary women's society. In April 1902, she took a leading role in Yeats's play Cathleen Ní Houlihan. She refused many marriage proposals from Yeats because she viewed him as insufficiently nationalist.
>
> After having turned down at least four marriage proposals from Yeats between 1891 and 1901, Maud married Major John MacBride in Paris in 1903. (After the marriage ended, Gonne made allegations that MacBride sexually molested her 11-year-old daughter Iseult Gonne.) MacBride was a veteran who had led the Irish Transvaal Brigade against the British in the Second Boer War. He was executed in May 1916 along with other leaders of the Easter Uprising.
>
> In 1918 she was arrested in Dublin and imprisoned in England for six months. In 1921 she advocated the Irish Republican cause.
Yeats's muse
Many of Yeats's poems are inspired by her, or mention her, such as "This, This Rude Knocking." He wrote the plays The Countess Cathleen and Cathleen Ní Houlihan for her. Few poets have celebrated a woman's beauty to the extent Yeats did in his lyric verse about Gonne. From his second book to Last Poems, she became the Rose, Helen of Troy (in No second Troy), the Ledaean Body (Leda and the Swan and Among School Children), Cathleen Ní Houlihan, Pallas Athene and Deirdre.
> Lucien Millevoye (1 August 1850 – 25 March 1918) was a French journalist and right-wing politician, now best known for his relationship with the Irish revolutionary and muse of W.B. Yeats, Maud Gonne.
>
> Millevoye was the editor of La Patrie and a supporter of General Boulanger.
>
> Boulanger was among the Third Republic military leaders who crushed the Paris Commune in April–May 1871. With backing from his direct superior, Henri d'Orléans, duc d'Aumale (one of the sons of former king Louis-Philippe), Boulanger became a brigadier-general in 1880. In January 1886, Georges Clemenceau appointed him War Minister, assuming him to be a republican. Boulanger, however, would prove himself a conservative and a monarchist.
>
> It was in the capacity of War Minister that Boulanger gained most popularity. He appealed to the French desire for revenge against Imperial Germany -- in doing so, came to be regarded as the man destined to serve that revenge (nicknamed Général Revanche). A minor scandal arose when Philippe, comte de Paris, the nominal inheritor of the French throne in the eyes of Orléanist monarchists, married his daughter to Portugal's Carlos I, provoking fears of anti-Republican ambitions. The French Parliament hastily passed a law expelling all possible claimants to the crown from French territories.
> The general decided to gather support for his own movement, an eclectic one that capitalized on the frustrations of French conservatism, advocating the three principles of Revanche (Revenge on Germany), Révision (Revision of the Constitution), Restoration (the return to monarchy). The common reference to it has become "Boulangisme," a term used by its partisans and adversaries alike.
> After a political corruption scandal, the Republican government fell into disrepute and by contrast Boulanger's popular appeal rose. During this period, Boulanger met with Jérôme Napoleon Bonaparte II, technically a Bonapartist, who offered his full support to the cause. The Bonapartists attached themselves to the general, and even the Orleanist pretender Philippe, Comte de Paris, encouraged his followers to support him.
During 1888 his personality was the dominating feature of French politics and he was urged to run for the presidency. However, his personal ambitions alienated his republican supporters, who recognized in him a potential military dictator. Various monarchists continued to give him financial aid.
In January 1889, he ran as a deputy for Paris, and among his supporters a coup d'état seemed probable and desirable . Boulanger had now become a threat to the parliamentary Republic. Boulanger decided it would be better to contest the general election and take power legally. This, however, gave his enemies the time they needed to strike back. Ernest Constans, the Minister of the Interior, decided to investigate the matter, and attacked Boulanger using the law banning the activities of secret societies. The French government issued a warrant for Boulanger's arrest for conspiracy and treason. To the astonishment of his supporters, he fled from Paris before it could be executed, going first to Brussels and then to London.
> After his flight, support for him dwindled, and the Boulangists were defeated in the general elections of July 1889. In September 1891 Boulanger committed suicide. In December a [terrorist] attack was carried out by a boulangist against Republican politician Jules Ferry.
> Although largely discredited, boulangisme was still visible in the far right during France's next major scandal, the Dreyfus Affair. Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell cites boulangisme as a major influence on Fascism, alongside Anarcho-syndicalism.
> In the late 1880s Millevoye went to Russia to further the cause of a Franco-Russian alliance. He claimed to be Boulanger's emissary to the Czar in St Petersburg.
> During the late 1880s and throughout the 1890s, he had an affair with the Irish actress Maud Gonne which produced two children. Millevoye's radical politics influenced Gonne, who became deeply involved in the Irish independence movement.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Stuart
Henry Francis Montgomery Stuart (1902–2000) was an Irish writer. His novels have been described as having a thrusting modernist iconoclasm. In 1920 he became a Catholic and married Maud Gonne's daughter, Iseult Gonne. She was seven years older than he and had had a romantic but unsettled life.
Iseult's father was the right-wing French politician, Lucien Millevoye, with whom Maud Gonne had had an affair between 1887 and 1899. Iseult grew up in Paris and London. William Butler Yeats proposed to her in 1917 and she had a brief affair with Ezra Pound prior to meeting Stuart.
>
> Iseult and Stuart travelled in Europe but returned to Ireland when the Irish Civil War began. Unsurprisingly given Gonne's strong opinions, the couple were caught up on the Irish Republican Army (IRA) side of this fight. Stuart was involved in gun-running and, after a botched raid, was interned by the British authorities.
>
> After independence, Stuart participated in the literary life of Dublin and wrote poetry and novels. His writing was publicly supported by Yeats. Yeats, however, seemed to have had mixed feelings for Stuart who was, after all, married to a woman he regarded almost as a daughter (and potential bride).
>
> During the 1930s Stuart became friendly with German Intelligence (Abwehr) agent Helmut Clissmann and his Irish wife Elizabeth. Clissmann was working for the German Academic Exchange Service and the Deutsche Akademie (DA), facilitating academic exchanges between Ireland and the Third Reich but also forming connections which might be of benefit to German Intelligence. Clissmann was also a representative of the Nazi Auslandorganisation (AO) - the Nazi Party's foreign organisation - in pre-war Ireland.
>
Stuart was also friendly with the head of the German Legation in Dublin, Dr Eduard Hempel, as a result of Maud Gonne rapport with him. Stuart travelled to Germany in April 1939 and his host in Germany was Professor Walter F. Schirmer. At the completion of his lecture tour he accepted an appointment as lecturer in English and Irish literature at Berlin University to begin in 1940.
At the outbreak of war in September 1939 he would still take the place in Berlin. When Stuart's plans for travelling to Germany were finalised, he received a visit from his brother-in-law, Sean MacBride, this meeting followed the seizure of an IRA transmitter on 29 December 1939, which had been used to contact Germany. Stuart, MacBride, Seamus O'Donovan, and IRA Chief of Staff Stephen Hayes then met at O'Donovan's house. Stuart was told to take a message to Abwehr HQ in Berlin. He travelled alone to Nazi Germany, something that was possible because Ireland was neutral in the Second World War, and arrived in Berlin during January 1940. Upon arrival he had some discussion with the Abwehr on the conditions in Ireland and reactivated his acquaintance with Abwehr asset Helmut Clissmann who was acting as an advisor to SS Colonel Dr Edmund Vessenmayer. Through Clissmann Stuart was introduced to Sonderführer Kurt Haller.
Between March 1942 and January 1944 Stuart worked as part of the Redaktion-Irland team, reading radio broadcasts containing Nazi propaganda aimed at Ireland. In his radio broadcasts he frequently spoke with admiration of Hitler and expressed the hope that Germany would help unite Ireland. After the war he claimed he was not drawn to Germany by support for Nazism but had been fascinated by wartime Germany as a dark spectacle of the grotesque and as a celebration of destruction.
Literature and the Occult: The Strange Life and Times of Gustav Meyrink.
The relationship between art and occultism is a varied, deep-rooted, and fascinating subject. Many artists have professed a interest in the occult, and flavoured their artworks with the peculiar ambience and iconography of the Art. Of these, some were actual practitioners of magic, some armchair dabblers, and others outright sceptics who merely adopted esoteric emblems for aesthetic effect. Aleister Crowley was a poet, and occasionally wrote novels, such as the Moonchild, which expounded various aspects of his doctrine. Austin Osman Spare, whose pastel The Vampires are Coming is pictured above, was a remarkable artist and magician for whom both activities were complimentary aspects of the same essential process. Edward Bulwer-Lytton, whom we encountered before in relation to The Coming Race and the Vril craze, published a novel called Zononi in 1842 which was essentially an allegory of Rosicrucian initiation. The Welch author and mystic Arthur Machen's anti-modernism and belief in esoteric doctrines produced a small body of highly influential weird fiction, including the Great God Pan and the almost grimoire-like The White People.
On the other hand, H.P. Lovecraft produced an enduring vision of Occult forces flowing into our world from Outside which has influenced generations of occultists and practitioners of rejected knowledge. But Lovecraft himself was an avowed rational sceptic and materialist. WB Yeats famously threw himself into the shenanigans of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, but turn of the century Theosophy and occultic revivalism receive a more sardonic treatment in Eliot's Waste Land and Joyce's Ulysses.
Nevertheless, even where no explicit or conscious connection exists, the artist and magician are bound together by a persistent congruence that is suggestive of shared origins. The classical poetic tradition of invoking the aid of the muses reflects the essential character of unfathomably ancient ceremonial magic: the summoning of supernatural entities and familiars to provide the magician or poet with extraordinary knowledge and abilities. (Though we have now largely replaced the idea of the muses with that of individual genius, the principal of inspiration remains a very mysterious force. Writers and artists in general feel the greatest sense of satisfaction and creativity when they have stopped trying; when some voice in the head or divinely inspired autopilot takes over the reins.) Further to this, the fictional world that emerges in artistic creation bears many similarities to the real world as experienced by the occultist.
The various worlds that emerge from literature and the arts are symbolical landscapes and products of a grand underlying design; they are places where no accidents ever occur, where correspondence and coincidence abound, and the artifice and intentions of the author provide a kind of Cabalistic code underlying the surface of the text. In this sense, Joyce's Ulysses is a supreme work of literary Cabala and occult imagination, a imaginary universe whose apparently quotidian and random character betrays endless interconnection, and the working of a grand, intricate design. ( Ulysses contains the following passage, one of my favourite in all of literature, which is distinctly occult in character: "He found in the world without as actual what was in his world within as possible. Maerlinck says: If Socrates leave his house today he will find the sage seated on is doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend. Every life is is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves".)
Gustav Meyrink was assuredly no stranger to wondering strange mental topographies and urban labyrinths, only to find his own reflection gazing back at every turn. Born the illegitimate son of a Baron and actress in Vienna in 1868, Meyrink spent most of his life in Prague, that grand miasmal mindscape of literary disorientation and angst. He was a contemporary of Kafka who was much admired by Max Brod, having achieved a considerable fame with his early novels of the uncanny The Golem and The Green Face. It has often been said that the prodigious strangeness of Meyrink's novels is eclipsed only by the details of his own life. A brief biographical abstract should leave the reader in no doubt of the validity of this claim.
Meyrink actually started out in life as banker, a profession wherein he enjoyed considerable early success. Between the years of 1882 and 1902, he was a director of the Meyer and Morgenstern Bank in Prague, and enjoyed an extravagant reputation as a bon vivant and fashionable man about town. All, however, was not quite well behind the glittering façade. Meyrink suffered from severe depression which ultimately culminated in nervous breakdown and attempted suicide.
On Assumption Eve, 1891, Meyrink was twenty four years old. He stood by the table in his apartment, holding a revolver in his hand, ready to end his life. Suddenly, he heard a rustling noise coming from the door. Upon investigation, Meyrink discovers that somebody has shoved an occultic pamphlet through the door. It is entitled "Afterlife."
This bizarre coincidence understandably set Meyrink off on a prodigious, life-long quest for occult knowledge and spiritual awakening. Later in the same year of his aborted suicide attempt, Meyrink became a founding member of the Theosophical Lodge of the Blue Star. He was "put to sea" in an endless tide of esoteric books and philosophies, studying and experimenting avidly with Cabalism, Freemasonry, yoga, alchemy, and hashish. There seems to have been no extreme to which he would not go in order to induce visions of the Other World. According to James Webb's book The Occult Establishment, "during the period of his strictest regimen - which probably coincided with his contact with the headquarters of the Theosophists - he took only three hours sleep a night, observed a strict vegetarian diet, performed arduous exercises, and drank gum-arabic twice a day in order to induce clairvoyance. At the end of these privations he had a vision like that of the Emperor Constantine and of abstract geometrical designs."
There was no stone Meyrink would leave unturned in his valiant attempt to attain the Great Work of spiritual transcendence. At one point, his practical experiments in alchemy lead to the shit quite literally hitting the fan: "All the necessary conditions for the alchemical "first matter" as he thought, were fulfilled by an element called "Struvit" or "Ulex" which had only been discovered in Germany, and always in ancient sewers. It therefore arose, argued Meyrink, in human excrement; and the substance fulfilled all the conditions laid down in alchemical texts. So from a "primaeval cess-pit" in Prague, he took a lump of excrement about the size of a nut and followed the instructions of his textbooks. The necessary color changes took place, but at a crucial point of the process his retort burst and the half-transformed prima materia hit the aspiring alchemist in the face."
In 1902, Lady Fortune gave a sharp turn to the wheel of Meyrink's destiny. He was about to get married for the second time, but severe disagreements with his future brother in law lead to him fighting an interminable series of duels with various officers of a Prague regiment. Worse still, rumours were swirling around Prague that Meyrink was running the affairs of the Meyer and Morgenstern Bank according to advice from the spirit world. In the ensuing scandal, he was thrown in jail, wherein he is thought to have broken his spine, and temporarily lost the power of his legs. Meyrink spent just two and a half months in prison, but it had left him financially ruined, and requiring all his reserves of yoga training to heal his shattered body. It was during this period of recuperation that he began writing, and embarked upon an initially successful career as a novelist.
This is only really scraping the surface of Meyrink's adventures in the occult. Another fascinating story suggests that in 1917, agents of the German government encouraged him to write a novel suggesting that the First World War was started by the Freemasons. He later backed away from the project, apparently under pressure from high-ranking Freemasons. Ill-fortune and eerie coincidence seemed to remain constants in his life. In the winter of 1933, Meyrink's son Harro (or "Fortunat" according to the wikipedia entry, which would make the tale even more bizarre if true) injured his backbone while skiing. The injury would effectively have confined him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. However, he committed suicide at the age of 24; the same age his father would have gone, had the "Afterlife" pamphlet not came rustling through the door. Less than a year later, Meyrink himself passed away, in the villa in Starnberg, Bavaria, known, after a hunted building in The Golem, as "The House at the Last Lantern."
PSIOPS
Wizards and Spooks
There is a tradition of Spooks and Wizards consorting since Elizabethan spymaster Walsingham recruited magus John Dee for his MI spy network. The unholy alliance continues to this day in Psionics and Psychotronics and PsiOps - the weaponization of the occult arts, even if under new "more scientific" names.
The modern version spawned psionics, psychotronics, and PsiOps – the weaponization of occult mental focus. Extreme psychic countermeasures and attack can range from attacks on the energy body to organs of the target. Usually, the specific target in arcane assassination is the heart or brain – heart attack or stroke are the methods of choice.
Walsingham proved that intelligence equaled power. He recruited educated young men--like playwright Christopher Marlowe--random lowlifes, and traveling merchants. Hmmm, writers, jugglers and magicians, again? Magicians and alchemists have always made potions, nostrums, tonics, even poisons. It is part of their stock in trade.
Dee is probably best known for his deep involvement in skrying, magic and mystery. The Elizabethan Magus advanced the fields of mathematics, mapmaking, and navigation. His interests included alchemy, mysticism, and astrology. Dee's personal library was one of the largest in Europe. His obsessions, like Crowley’s, also included the pursuit of angels and spirits; he claimed to summon the divine secrets of the universe from angels and archangels.
Following the examples of his predecessors, Crowley’s promotion of drugs, used for induced psychotic states and sexual abandon, was followed by Tavistock Institute sponsorship. His contemporary Carl Jung (1975-1961) provided the science; Crowley laid down the hedonistic drug, sex, and magick philosophy. Both saw the death of the old society but not the psychedelic rebirth of the new paradigm.
With his slow-motion magick, his long-term intentional influence, it was Crowley who eventually pulled the cosmic trigger on a cultural revolution with an unlikely accomplice – the CIA. The infamous MK Ultra program of the CIA dosed unsuspecting CIA officials with LSD, and their reactions were studied like "guinea pigs".
Later, acid was turned on the unsuspecting general population. Curiously, the LSD “counter-culture” of the 1960s, the “student revolution”, was financed by $25 million from the CIA to deliberately ruin the peace movement. LSD use continues at a steady rate in the youth drug scene throughout generations; it just doesn't get the press it once did..
In their own CIA Black Ops program, Astral travel became Remote Viewing and psychism became Psychotronics, weaponized ESP influencing the mindbody of another at a distance, often with malevolence. It gave new meaning to ESPionage. Crowley’s occult fighting with MacGregor Mathers is well known and perhaps the exemplar of psychic attack.
Psychedelic cults took root in the U.S. and spread from San Francisco to Europe. The mystic arts, such as astrology and tarot became commonplace. Though he didn’t live to see it, Crowley got his New Age, even if the results seem a little childish or narcissistic to those of a more mature disposition. Broader than reform, deeper than revolution, this benign conspiracy for a new human agenda triggered chaotic cultural evolution even if polarity and stress undergird it.
The Flower Children and drugs and free sex Hippies were followed by disenfranchised punks and disillusioned postmoderns and skeptical cyberfreaks. The Internet and cell phones have made voluntary ESP possible and soon we will have direct Brain-Computer interface.
Aquarian Conspirators, 1980’s pioneers of social transformation, embodied the cultural imprint of Tavistock vision (Whole Earth Conspiracy). They used their mindbodies and PCs in the battle toward a higher consciousness, networking and urging a paradigm shift to a more mindful society.
The way to heal the imbalances is to heal ourselves. Tools are shapers of their users, individuals fall into the thrall of institutions, "development" can be a trap. The way to heal ourselves is to pay attention, to witness, to share wisdom. But the wounds that won’t heal are the programmed personality disorders – neurotic childishness, self-absorption or immaturities promoted by the Tavistock agenda in schools, media, and therapy.
“New Age” is an umbrella term to describe organizations which seem to exhibit one or more of the following beliefs: (1) All is one, all reality is part of the whole; (2) Everything is God and God is everything; (3) Man is God or a part of God; (4) Man never dies, but continues to live through reincarnation; (5) Man can create his own reality and/or values through transformed consciousness or altered states of consciousness.
Whip Me; Beat Me; Call Me ThelemaDue in part to his outrageous exploits and the legends attributed to him, Crowley gets mixed reviews. Certainly, there was mystical insight and prophetic wisdom in Crowley’s enigmatic writings. But it remains unknown to what extent he was able to ‘seize the noble fruit’ himself, beyond his ostentatious claims.
Nevertheless, he’s been accused of everything from being the “wickedest man on earth” to being the potential father of Barbara Bush! Outlandish stories about Crowley still arise phoenix-like, much like Jimi Hendrix releasing posthumous albums. There are also rumors of his espionage, being Hitler’s programmer during his breakdown in 1918 at Pasewalk military hospital. Crowley bragged that Adolf was his guinea pig or magickal child. (Blackraiser)
"The Great Beast 666" -- the infamous practitioner of "sex magick" whose motto was "Do What Thou Wilt" – did meet Pauline Robinson Pierce, Barbara’s mother, through a mutual libertine friend, Frank Harris. Most likely it is viral nonsense that Barbara is Crowley’s love child. Yet, the story is typical of how others relentlessly project onto the legendary mind bending Magus, even retroactively. But somehow the math adds up to Barbara’s birth nine months after her abrupt departure!
She was a beautiful young socialite married to a publisher. In 1924 she went to France, where she fell in with the mistress of Frank "My Life and Loves" Harris, Crowley's patron. The idea is that the impressionable Mrs. Pierce then came under the spell of Crowley, once described by a newspaper as "the wickedest man in the world”. It is even suggested that Barbara was conceived during a "sex magick" ritual. Do we hear the words "DNA test"?
A world traveler and adventurer, Crowley was always keen for any game that was afoot. Could his sidelines have included cultural engineering and global espionage? Did he insinuate himself into the Great Game of international spying? He certainly tried, as did his friend James Bond creator, Ian Fleming who recommended him to debrief Rudolph Hesse. Some say it’s plausible he was an Intel asset, others find it certain based on discoveries of hard evidence. (Spence)
Besides a few centuries of secret societies and revolutionary thought, what inspired Crowley’s quest? Did it overlap or was it co-opted by other organizations for their own purposes? Did this Strange Attractor willingly cooperate or, as usual, keep his thought processes unknown as his behavior was enigmatic?
The Crowley meme is still bending minds toward their True Will (Thelema), so perhaps he engineered one of the most successful mind control ops in history. In some ways he was the spiritual godfather of the counterculture, having influenced many popular figures.
Perhaps by alchemically combining sources from both the left and right political wings we can approach the truth – or at least The Middle Way -- even if it remains indelibly mythologized. The left-handed path of libertarianism and radical hedonism is counterpoint to the Right pillar preference for authoritarian, aristocratic rule and classical culture – autarchy vs. totalitarianism. Crowley’s behavior reveals a penchant for both.
Wizards and Spooks
There is a tradition of Spooks and Wizards consorting since Elizabethan spymaster Walsingham recruited magus John Dee for his MI spy network. The unholy alliance continues to this day in Psionics and Psychotronics and PsiOps - the weaponization of the occult arts, even if under new "more scientific" names.
The modern version spawned psionics, psychotronics, and PsiOps – the weaponization of occult mental focus. Extreme psychic countermeasures and attack can range from attacks on the energy body to organs of the target. Usually, the specific target in arcane assassination is the heart or brain – heart attack or stroke are the methods of choice.
Walsingham proved that intelligence equaled power. He recruited educated young men--like playwright Christopher Marlowe--random lowlifes, and traveling merchants. Hmmm, writers, jugglers and magicians, again? Magicians and alchemists have always made potions, nostrums, tonics, even poisons. It is part of their stock in trade.
Dee is probably best known for his deep involvement in skrying, magic and mystery. The Elizabethan Magus advanced the fields of mathematics, mapmaking, and navigation. His interests included alchemy, mysticism, and astrology. Dee's personal library was one of the largest in Europe. His obsessions, like Crowley’s, also included the pursuit of angels and spirits; he claimed to summon the divine secrets of the universe from angels and archangels.
Following the examples of his predecessors, Crowley’s promotion of drugs, used for induced psychotic states and sexual abandon, was followed by Tavistock Institute sponsorship. His contemporary Carl Jung (1975-1961) provided the science; Crowley laid down the hedonistic drug, sex, and magick philosophy. Both saw the death of the old society but not the psychedelic rebirth of the new paradigm.
With his slow-motion magick, his long-term intentional influence, it was Crowley who eventually pulled the cosmic trigger on a cultural revolution with an unlikely accomplice – the CIA. The infamous MK Ultra program of the CIA dosed unsuspecting CIA officials with LSD, and their reactions were studied like "guinea pigs".
Later, acid was turned on the unsuspecting general population. Curiously, the LSD “counter-culture” of the 1960s, the “student revolution”, was financed by $25 million from the CIA to deliberately ruin the peace movement. LSD use continues at a steady rate in the youth drug scene throughout generations; it just doesn't get the press it once did..
In their own CIA Black Ops program, Astral travel became Remote Viewing and psychism became Psychotronics, weaponized ESP influencing the mindbody of another at a distance, often with malevolence. It gave new meaning to ESPionage. Crowley’s occult fighting with MacGregor Mathers is well known and perhaps the exemplar of psychic attack.
Psychedelic cults took root in the U.S. and spread from San Francisco to Europe. The mystic arts, such as astrology and tarot became commonplace. Though he didn’t live to see it, Crowley got his New Age, even if the results seem a little childish or narcissistic to those of a more mature disposition. Broader than reform, deeper than revolution, this benign conspiracy for a new human agenda triggered chaotic cultural evolution even if polarity and stress undergird it.
The Flower Children and drugs and free sex Hippies were followed by disenfranchised punks and disillusioned postmoderns and skeptical cyberfreaks. The Internet and cell phones have made voluntary ESP possible and soon we will have direct Brain-Computer interface.
Aquarian Conspirators, 1980’s pioneers of social transformation, embodied the cultural imprint of Tavistock vision (Whole Earth Conspiracy). They used their mindbodies and PCs in the battle toward a higher consciousness, networking and urging a paradigm shift to a more mindful society.
The way to heal the imbalances is to heal ourselves. Tools are shapers of their users, individuals fall into the thrall of institutions, "development" can be a trap. The way to heal ourselves is to pay attention, to witness, to share wisdom. But the wounds that won’t heal are the programmed personality disorders – neurotic childishness, self-absorption or immaturities promoted by the Tavistock agenda in schools, media, and therapy.
“New Age” is an umbrella term to describe organizations which seem to exhibit one or more of the following beliefs: (1) All is one, all reality is part of the whole; (2) Everything is God and God is everything; (3) Man is God or a part of God; (4) Man never dies, but continues to live through reincarnation; (5) Man can create his own reality and/or values through transformed consciousness or altered states of consciousness.
Whip Me; Beat Me; Call Me ThelemaDue in part to his outrageous exploits and the legends attributed to him, Crowley gets mixed reviews. Certainly, there was mystical insight and prophetic wisdom in Crowley’s enigmatic writings. But it remains unknown to what extent he was able to ‘seize the noble fruit’ himself, beyond his ostentatious claims.
Nevertheless, he’s been accused of everything from being the “wickedest man on earth” to being the potential father of Barbara Bush! Outlandish stories about Crowley still arise phoenix-like, much like Jimi Hendrix releasing posthumous albums. There are also rumors of his espionage, being Hitler’s programmer during his breakdown in 1918 at Pasewalk military hospital. Crowley bragged that Adolf was his guinea pig or magickal child. (Blackraiser)
"The Great Beast 666" -- the infamous practitioner of "sex magick" whose motto was "Do What Thou Wilt" – did meet Pauline Robinson Pierce, Barbara’s mother, through a mutual libertine friend, Frank Harris. Most likely it is viral nonsense that Barbara is Crowley’s love child. Yet, the story is typical of how others relentlessly project onto the legendary mind bending Magus, even retroactively. But somehow the math adds up to Barbara’s birth nine months after her abrupt departure!
She was a beautiful young socialite married to a publisher. In 1924 she went to France, where she fell in with the mistress of Frank "My Life and Loves" Harris, Crowley's patron. The idea is that the impressionable Mrs. Pierce then came under the spell of Crowley, once described by a newspaper as "the wickedest man in the world”. It is even suggested that Barbara was conceived during a "sex magick" ritual. Do we hear the words "DNA test"?
A world traveler and adventurer, Crowley was always keen for any game that was afoot. Could his sidelines have included cultural engineering and global espionage? Did he insinuate himself into the Great Game of international spying? He certainly tried, as did his friend James Bond creator, Ian Fleming who recommended him to debrief Rudolph Hesse. Some say it’s plausible he was an Intel asset, others find it certain based on discoveries of hard evidence. (Spence)
Besides a few centuries of secret societies and revolutionary thought, what inspired Crowley’s quest? Did it overlap or was it co-opted by other organizations for their own purposes? Did this Strange Attractor willingly cooperate or, as usual, keep his thought processes unknown as his behavior was enigmatic?
The Crowley meme is still bending minds toward their True Will (Thelema), so perhaps he engineered one of the most successful mind control ops in history. In some ways he was the spiritual godfather of the counterculture, having influenced many popular figures.
Perhaps by alchemically combining sources from both the left and right political wings we can approach the truth – or at least The Middle Way -- even if it remains indelibly mythologized. The left-handed path of libertarianism and radical hedonism is counterpoint to the Right pillar preference for authoritarian, aristocratic rule and classical culture – autarchy vs. totalitarianism. Crowley’s behavior reveals a penchant for both.
OTO: Ordo Templi Orientis
Crowley became initiated into the secret order of the Golden Dawn in 1898. After nearly destroying the order, he started his own, and was shortly thereafter recruited into OTO, on the pretext he had published their sex magic secrets.
Crowley married his obsessions with debauch, drugs and sex with the occult. Crowley went on to become the world head of the Ordo Templi Orientis, or Order of the Eastern Temple. He further defined his own gnostic religion, Thelema, including eclectic ideas from occultism, Yoga, and both Eastern and Western mysticism (especially the Hermetic Qabalah).
Thelema is from the ancient Greek noun θÝλημα: "will", from the verb θÝλω: to will, wish, purpose. Today’s equivalent buzzword is Intentionality. In the broadest sense, magick is any act designed to cause intentional change. Crowley’s Holy Guardian Angel embodied much the same archetype as Jung’s Self, and the Higher Self of Theosophy.
Crowley wrote that the Law is not a license to indulge in casual whim or to mindlessly accept cultural mores, but is rather a mandate to discover and manifest one's True Will, which he described as one's inner divine nature, spiritual destiny, or proper course in life. This is a nonlinear transformative path.
In 1307, the Knights Templar were accused of worshipping the heretical figure of Baphomet, considered by the uninitiated as a symbol of Satan. In reality, this symbol comes from a level deeper than and prior to such dichotomization as good/evil where the opposites are still fused. It is actually a symbol of fertility, the erotic element being symbolic rather than literal. The name itself is a puzzle, perhaps the corruption of Mahomet, brought back to Europe during the Crusades. He figured preeminently in the Cathar heresies, and provided the basis for accusations of heresy and witchcraft. However, it may come from combining two Greek words--baphe and metis—and means “absorption into wisdom.” Dr. Hugh Schonfield, a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar knows the Atbash cipher, the Hebrew kabbalistic code which substitutes the first letter of the alphabet for the last and the second letter for the second last and so on. His simple explanation is the encrypted word Baphomet actually spells the name of the gnostic goddess: BPVMTh, Baphomet, transposed becomes ShVPYA, Sophia.The OTO does not merely hint of occultism, but plunges headlong into the very subjects the high degree Masons are told are reserved to the core of initiation. And at the core of these secrets is the embrace of contradiction, of the “elixir of life, “ and of the power of blood. It is the grad-school of masonic groups…a crash course, which might make you mad before it enlightens you.
The OTO was founded between 1895 and 1900 by a pair of powerful Freemasons, Karl Kellner and Theodor Reuss. Politically, the order was right-wing in the extreme, proposing the creation of a pan-German world based on pagan spiritual beliefs. Kellner died in 1905, and Reuss, a former spy for the Prussian Secret Service, assumed the office of high caliph. While living in London, Reuss spied on German socialist expatriates. In 1912 he made the acquaintance of Aleister Crowley [pictured], and appointed him head of the OTO's British chapter. But The Beast's political loyalties have always been an open question.
Theoretically, the original O.T.O. could be called a proto-fascist group, with its various elements, such as its role as a Thelemic revolutionary movement, its élitism, its personality cult of the leader, in symbols and rituals, and its romantically irrational ethos. Totalitarian aspects may be found in the desire for transcendence in Thelemic religion.
While living in the States, Crowley wrote pro-German diatribes for two fascist publications, The Fatherland and The Internationalist. After WW II, there were calls for his head. Later, Crowley called them satirical and claimed his pro-German stance was a ruse of MI6, the military intelligence division in the UK. In 1912 he had informed the secret service of his correspondence with Reuss, the German spy. Throughout the '20s and '30s, Crowley gathered intelligence on European Communists, the Nazi movement and Germany's occult lodges. Crowley died in 1944 (Constantine)
OTO As Intelligence Tool?
Was OTO coopted for CIA mind control in the 1970’s. That’s the allegation of Marcello Motta, who claims CIA paid for Grady McMurty’s lawyers to hijack the Caliphate from him. Germer died during the period the CIA had chosen to move mind control experimentation from academic and military labs into the community. Though choosing a successor was left to his widow, a scramble of would-be leaders ensued.
CIA cult activity and programming of assassins has since been revealed. An inner circle of Heironymous scientists experimented on cult devotees, and sometimes collaborated in mass murder to silence the subjects (Jonestown, SLA, Solar Temple). It was a sweet arrangement. Occult societies are secretive and often highly irrational. They follow a leader. They exist on the edge of a society that ignores them because weird religious rhetoric is obnoxious.
A number of intelligence agents with occult interests already had their hooks into the OTO. One of them was Gerald Yorke, a veteran British intelligence agent working, an advocate of Matta argues, "with American intelligence in an attempt to absorb the OTO into the ideological warfare network of the political right."
Before the horns of Thelemite succession were bestowed upon Grady McMurty, Yorke the prelate spy "misinterpreted" Germer's will and named Joseph Metzger, a ranking Thelemite (and the son of a former Swiss intelligence chief), to the office of high caliph.
One order adept, Oskar Schlag, was an alleged "psychological warfare" specialist from Israel. Even McMurty (with his degree in political science) was a State Department bureaucrat the day Herr Germer died. Marcello Motta claims OTO successorship was stolen from him by CIA sponsored attorneys who stepped in on behalf of McMurtry. Agent 666 British Intelligence couldn't have groomed a better double-agent to infiltrate the German propaganda machine than Aleister Crowley! . While it is still not clear whether he was primarily spying for Britain, Germany, or a rogue regime, we do know from his writings that he was looking for a distinct type of doppelganger or "Magic Child."
Since Crowley had studied for the Foreign Service, he learned various languages including Russian and modern Persian Farsi.
"As to my study of Islam, I got a sheikh to teach me Arabic and the practices of ablution, prayer and so on, so that at some future time I might pass for a Moslem among themselves ...my ability to fraternize fully with Mohammedans has proved of infinite use in many ways”…"Persian fascinated me more than any other language had ever done and I reveled in the ideas of the Sufis." - The Confessions of Aleister Crowley Crowley studied to be a diplomat at Cambridge, before devoting himself entirely to the occult, and was competent in his knowledge of English, French and German. Richard Spence is convinced that “Despite Crowley's virulent anti-British/anti-Allied writings in U.S. publications during World War I, materials from the archives of the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Division convince the author that Crowley was working for British intelligence.” Did Crowley conduct a WWII magical defense of Britain? Were his public German sympathies and propaganda writing merely misdirection to preserve his cover and enable him to collect intelligence where others could not? Was he perhaps deployed by Britain to engineer a sociopathic assassin at the end of WWI to insure “Act II” would be even more fearsome?
Crowley, a true Magician and Trickster, would have taken no sides in any battle, but deliberately and consciously played both sides against one another, in good Machiavellian fashion. It’s tough to imagine him as an etheric freedom fighter. Both sides are bound together in the one Great War for the conquest of men’s souls and minds.
Yet, we are still caught under that spell of magick, both historical and political, and the Nazi legacy is inescapable, for good or evil. It haunts us. In Wagnerian myth, the price of evil becomes apparent; we reap what we sow.
OTO As Intelligence Tool? Was OTO coopted for CIA mind control in the 1970’s. That’s the allegation of Marcello Motta, who claims CIA paid for Grady McMurty’s lawyers to hijack the Caliphate from him. Germer died during the period the CIA had chosen to move mind control experimentation from academic and military labs into the community. Though choosing a successor was left to his widow, a scramble of would-be leaders ensued.
CIA cult activity and programming of assassins has since been revealed. An inner circle of Heironymous scientists experimented on cult devotees, and sometimes collaborated in mass murder to silence the subjects (Jonestown, SLA, Solar Temple). It was a sweet arrangement. Occult societies are secretive and often highly irrational. They follow a leader. They exist on the edge of a society that ignores them because weird religious rhetoric is obnoxious.
A number of intelligence agents with occult interests already had their hooks into the OTO. One of them was Gerald Yorke, a veteran British intelligence agent working, an advocate of Matta argues, "with American intelligence in an attempt to absorb the OTO into the ideological warfare network of the political right."
Before the horns of Thelemite succession were bestowed upon Grady McMurty, Yorke the prelate spy "misinterpreted" Germer's will and named Joseph Metzger, a ranking Thelemite (and the son of a former Swiss intelligence chief), to the office of high caliph.
One order adept, Oskar Schlag, was an alleged "psychological warfare" specialist from Israel. Even McMurty (with his degree in political science) was a State Department bureaucrat the day Herr Germer died. Marcello Motta claims OTO successorship was stolen from him by CIA sponsored attorneys who stepped in on behalf of McMurtry. Agent 666 British Intelligence couldn't have groomed a better double-agent to infiltrate the German propaganda machine than Aleister Crowley! . While it is still not clear whether he was primarily spying for Britain, Germany, or a rogue regime, we do know from his writings that he was looking for a distinct type of doppelganger or "Magic Child."
Since Crowley had studied for the Foreign Service, he learned various languages including Russian and modern Persian Farsi.
"As to my study of Islam, I got a sheikh to teach me Arabic and the practices of ablution, prayer and so on, so that at some future time I might pass for a Moslem among themselves ...my ability to fraternize fully with Mohammedans has proved of infinite use in many ways”…"Persian fascinated me more than any other language had ever done and I reveled in the ideas of the Sufis." - The Confessions of Aleister Crowley Crowley studied to be a diplomat at Cambridge, before devoting himself entirely to the occult, and was competent in his knowledge of English, French and German. Richard Spence is convinced that “Despite Crowley's virulent anti-British/anti-Allied writings in U.S. publications during World War I, materials from the archives of the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Division convince the author that Crowley was working for British intelligence.” Did Crowley conduct a WWII magical defense of Britain? Were his public German sympathies and propaganda writing merely misdirection to preserve his cover and enable him to collect intelligence where others could not? Was he perhaps deployed by Britain to engineer a sociopathic assassin at the end of WWI to insure “Act II” would be even more fearsome?
Crowley, a true Magician and Trickster, would have taken no sides in any battle, but deliberately and consciously played both sides against one another, in good Machiavellian fashion. It’s tough to imagine him as an etheric freedom fighter. Both sides are bound together in the one Great War for the conquest of men’s souls and minds.
Yet, we are still caught under that spell of magick, both historical and political, and the Nazi legacy is inescapable, for good or evil. It haunts us. In Wagnerian myth, the price of evil becomes apparent; we reap what we sow.
Occult Hitler
Misdirection True and false “facts” about Hitler are repeated from author to author, website to website. What matters most are not the particular influences Hitler identified with, but the overall fact that, like Crowley, he was obsessed with the occult and it iinfluenced his philosophy and behavior. The details of the Crowley-Hitler legend are probably less important than than understanding how to become a living legend by seizing the opportunity to become legendary, even notorious.
The most outrageous legend surrounding Crowley-Hitler connection proposes the magus as Hitler’s doppelganger. The theory starts off with Crowley's intelligence/occult work in the first few decades of the last century. This put him in a position to pick a patsy who he could switch places with and then make an attempt at power under his new identity.
Although there is some disparity in age (Crowley was born in 1875 and Hitler in 1889) by the time you are looking for the switcheroo the difference wouldn't be that notable. In 1918 the quiet Austrian painter and minor war hero emerged from his convalescence (from mustard gas attacks and what some think was PTSD) as an occult-obsessed lunatic bent on world destruction.
Where was Aleister Crowley during Hitler's miserable stay and psychiatric treatment in Pasewalk Hospital, Pomerania (80 miles north of Berlin)? Hitler was treated for mustard gas, hysterical blindness, depression and post traumatic stress syndrome with hypnotic suggestion by Dr. Edmund Forster who diagnosed him as a psychopath.
When Hitler came out he was a rabid political animal. If there was a single, identifiable moment when Nazism was born, it was in that hospital in November 1918. Hitler’s degeneration had begun. He became a vegetarian obsessed with the occult. Hitler hired a chemist to produce methamphetamine in the early 1900's.
Hitler was infected with syphilis in 1908, and thirty years later, the dormant illness entered the tertiary stage. Tremors and irregular heartbeat during the last years of his life could have been symptoms of tertiary (late stage) syphilis. He was a methamphetamine addict from about 1935, courtesy the quack Dr. Morrell, who was retained by Hitler as his doctor because Morrell was a syphilis expert.
Whether Crowley was there for some reason is conjecture, but someone brainwashed, drugged, and hypnotized Hitler into a profound personality change. Further, Crowley’s notoriety as an Occult Messiah would likely have drawn Hitler’s attention in the natural course of events with his keen interest in the occult. Arguably, he was sort of a proto-Nazi. Both were slaves to drugs, which skewed their views of reality and jacked up their paranoia meters.
“The Book of the Law,” (1904) written at the same time as Einstein’s Relativity Theory (1905) was a prescription for a quantum leap in social reorganization based in worldwide destruction. Adolf Hitler whole-heartedly adopted many of the central tenets of Liber Al.
Crowley fed Hitler’s dark fantasies, directly or indirectly. Whether or not he actually embraced “the Law of Thelema,” as such, there can be no doubt at all that Hitler was aware of the Book, and probably derived a certain demonic inspiration from it as he did from Nietzsche and Wagner. It is an indisputable fact that the SS—and Nazism (originally spawned by the Thule Society) as a whole—was established upon an occult basis, and that its inner structures and purposes were not merely political, but decidedly magickal.
Though it is controversial, John Roemer reports Hitler took peyote with a rustic German shaman who got the drug from Mexico. He had his first transcendent experience and saw his past lives on the psychedelic. Hitler came to see himself as a negative spiritual force, the antagonist of Parcival. He travelled the shadowed path. http://www.stargods.org/Nazis_and_the_Occult.html
According to http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?noframes;read=32848
Izakovic there is an explicit Crowley-Hitler link:
Hitler learned many of his occult lesson from avatars in Vienna and Munich. Crowley's student Dietrich Eckart met Hitler in 1919 and became Hitler’s esoteric mentor in persuasion and oratory, techniques of self confidence, self projection, body language and discursive sophistry. Hiler dedicated his biography, Mein Kampf (which he wrote with Rudolph Hess) to Dietrich. Eckart used peyote in his magical practice. He also used techniques from Crowley’s sex magick and Arabian astrological magic. Eckart opened Hitler’s centers with perverse black arts.
Later, Karl Haushofer, founder of the Vril Society, filled the mentor role. He was a student of Gurdjieff. Haushofer taught him Gurdjieff’s techniques based on the teachings of the Sufis and the Tibetan Lamas. He also familiarized him with the Zen teaching of the Japanese Society of the Green Dragon. Hitler’s new-found charisma becomes more comprehensible when we realize he tapped the secret psychological techniques of esoteic lodges, now codified in systems such as NLP.
Eckart was the wealthy publisher and editor-in-chief of the anti-Semitic journal Auf Gut Deutsch. He was also a committed occultist and a master of magic who belonged to the inner circle of the Thule Society as well as other esoteric orders.
The Thule Society believed in highly intelligent, illuminated secret beings who work behind the scenes, much like Theosophy’s Ascended Masters and Golden Dawn’s Secret Chiefs. There is some evidence that Eckart used Crowley’s ritual magic to prepare Hitler for his occultic destiny of ruling the Aryan race and ultimately the world.
Having done his worst, Eckart died in 1923, but only after proudly advising those around him: "Follow Hitler! He will dance, but it is I who have called the tune! I have initiated him into the 'Secret Doctrine', opened his centers of vision and given him the means to communicate with the Powers. Do not mourn for me: I shall have influenced history more than any other German."
From then on Crowley himself influenced Hitler's thinking and beliefs directly. Hitler was already familiar with his writing and theories through the Thule Society, and The Book of the Law, oriented toward various fascist principles, became Hitler's guide. Very often he would paraphrase or express an idea from the book - often word for word.
Armed with new, secret psychological techniques Hitler was able to move the obscure National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) from the clubs and beer halls to a mass movement, while in 1925 Crowley was elected World Head of the OTO.
Between 1936 and 1939 Crowley paid a number of visits to Nazi Germany while Heinrich Himmler's Occult Corps (Geheimnisvolle Korps) recruited or persecuted all practicing occultists in Germany and incorporated into one organization the Thule Society, the Vril Society and the German branch of the OTO. The SS Paranormal Division's subsequent vilification of Crowley during World War II was a simple cover; behind the political facades performed for the public the most powerful factions (occult and economic) of Germany and Britain were not enemies but allies, bound together in the one great war for the conquest of men’s souls and minds.
Himmler viewed the relationship between Crowley and Hitler like that once shared by Merlin and Arthur: the one magician, adviser and the architect of Camelot, the other true-born king, and each equally benefiting from the favors of the other. But Marianna Blavatsky, high priestess of the Occult Corps, claimed the relationship was more like that once shared by Rasputin and the Romanovs of Russia, and that it was Crowley who ruled the Third Reich
Further…
http://user.cyberlink.ch/~koenig/2005/krumm/krumm.htm
Martha Küntzl, born in 1857 (Sister 'Ich Will Es' - I want it) stumbled feverishly from one cult to another, until the Book of the Law put her on the right path and was sustained in her last years by the Law of Thelema. Frau Küntzel's translation of "Liber AL" produced in 1925, of which she claimed to have delivered a copy to Hitler, met with neither Karl Germer's nor Henri Birven's approval; or so Germer passed on Birven's opinion to Crowley: "he calls her translations childish and silly".
Nevertheless, in the beginning of the 1940s when he read Hermann Rauschnings " Hitler Speaks" (1939) Crowley opined "Yes, it is astonishing how closely his [Hitler's] intimate thoughts run on the same rails". For example, when Hitler had said that "we are now at the end of the Age of Reason. The intellect has grown autocratic and become a disease of life" he seemed to paragraphe Crowley's Liber AL II;27-32, and when he had said "A new age of magic interpretation of the world is coming of interpretation in terms of the will and not the intelligence", he was similarly paraphrasing I;44, of Crowley's Book of the Law.
Crowley got a fixation on Hitler. He scribbled in his copy of Rauschning's "Hitler Speaks" many comments that reveal how much he thought Hitler had taken over from Liber AL. On 4th February 1939 he dreamt "about Hitler & cigars & Magick & my horse Sultan. I was running Germany for him," because "Fascism must always fail because it creates the discontent which it is designed to suppress." On 2nd June 1939 he again dreamt. "I had several long talks with Hitler a very tall man. Forgot subject, but he was pleased & impressed: ordered all my books translated & made official in Germany". Diary 17 October 1939: "Hitler reported dead from a surfeit of raspberries". 24 January 1940 another dream with Hitler and "Phallic geometric pictures, Satanic parodies of diagrams" etc.
On 29 July 1943, Crowley went to the movies to see a cartoon film: "Saw show of cartoons lampooing Mein Kampf, with appropriate quotations. Taken in these selected doses, what a masterpiece! And how patent & profound a debt he owes to AL!" After World War II he promptly u-turned his opinion: "Himmler, the Schweinhund [sic] & worse who put Karl Germer on Concentration Camps chiefly because he was my friend! killed himself after capture."
We do know that Crowley had dropped out of sight. Visitors were told Mr. Crowley had gone on a Masonic "Magical Retreat" to a secret place called Esopus Island. He supposedly went off to camp and canoe for over a month somewhere, writing a commentary on the ancient Chinese sage Lao Tzu. (Blackraiser)
So, did he or didn’t he? Was he ‘on retreat’ or mindphreaking Hitler in Germany in 1918? OR, most remarkably, had he mastered the psychic power of bilocation? Was he literally in both places at once? “Let’s do the timewarpp, again.” Although Crowley's absences do seem to link up with important periods in Hitler's life it would be difficult for him to have pulled this off throughout WWII without anyone noticing.
http://www.blackraiser.com/jewpeter/hitskull.htm
Crowley-Hitler videos
http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=CleanBlackRaiser&p=r
Misdirection True and false “facts” about Hitler are repeated from author to author, website to website. What matters most are not the particular influences Hitler identified with, but the overall fact that, like Crowley, he was obsessed with the occult and it iinfluenced his philosophy and behavior. The details of the Crowley-Hitler legend are probably less important than than understanding how to become a living legend by seizing the opportunity to become legendary, even notorious.
The most outrageous legend surrounding Crowley-Hitler connection proposes the magus as Hitler’s doppelganger. The theory starts off with Crowley's intelligence/occult work in the first few decades of the last century. This put him in a position to pick a patsy who he could switch places with and then make an attempt at power under his new identity.
Although there is some disparity in age (Crowley was born in 1875 and Hitler in 1889) by the time you are looking for the switcheroo the difference wouldn't be that notable. In 1918 the quiet Austrian painter and minor war hero emerged from his convalescence (from mustard gas attacks and what some think was PTSD) as an occult-obsessed lunatic bent on world destruction.
Where was Aleister Crowley during Hitler's miserable stay and psychiatric treatment in Pasewalk Hospital, Pomerania (80 miles north of Berlin)? Hitler was treated for mustard gas, hysterical blindness, depression and post traumatic stress syndrome with hypnotic suggestion by Dr. Edmund Forster who diagnosed him as a psychopath.
When Hitler came out he was a rabid political animal. If there was a single, identifiable moment when Nazism was born, it was in that hospital in November 1918. Hitler’s degeneration had begun. He became a vegetarian obsessed with the occult. Hitler hired a chemist to produce methamphetamine in the early 1900's.
Hitler was infected with syphilis in 1908, and thirty years later, the dormant illness entered the tertiary stage. Tremors and irregular heartbeat during the last years of his life could have been symptoms of tertiary (late stage) syphilis. He was a methamphetamine addict from about 1935, courtesy the quack Dr. Morrell, who was retained by Hitler as his doctor because Morrell was a syphilis expert.
Whether Crowley was there for some reason is conjecture, but someone brainwashed, drugged, and hypnotized Hitler into a profound personality change. Further, Crowley’s notoriety as an Occult Messiah would likely have drawn Hitler’s attention in the natural course of events with his keen interest in the occult. Arguably, he was sort of a proto-Nazi. Both were slaves to drugs, which skewed their views of reality and jacked up their paranoia meters.
“The Book of the Law,” (1904) written at the same time as Einstein’s Relativity Theory (1905) was a prescription for a quantum leap in social reorganization based in worldwide destruction. Adolf Hitler whole-heartedly adopted many of the central tenets of Liber Al.
Crowley fed Hitler’s dark fantasies, directly or indirectly. Whether or not he actually embraced “the Law of Thelema,” as such, there can be no doubt at all that Hitler was aware of the Book, and probably derived a certain demonic inspiration from it as he did from Nietzsche and Wagner. It is an indisputable fact that the SS—and Nazism (originally spawned by the Thule Society) as a whole—was established upon an occult basis, and that its inner structures and purposes were not merely political, but decidedly magickal.
Though it is controversial, John Roemer reports Hitler took peyote with a rustic German shaman who got the drug from Mexico. He had his first transcendent experience and saw his past lives on the psychedelic. Hitler came to see himself as a negative spiritual force, the antagonist of Parcival. He travelled the shadowed path. http://www.stargods.org/Nazis_and_the_Occult.html
According to http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?noframes;read=32848
Izakovic there is an explicit Crowley-Hitler link:
Hitler learned many of his occult lesson from avatars in Vienna and Munich. Crowley's student Dietrich Eckart met Hitler in 1919 and became Hitler’s esoteric mentor in persuasion and oratory, techniques of self confidence, self projection, body language and discursive sophistry. Hiler dedicated his biography, Mein Kampf (which he wrote with Rudolph Hess) to Dietrich. Eckart used peyote in his magical practice. He also used techniques from Crowley’s sex magick and Arabian astrological magic. Eckart opened Hitler’s centers with perverse black arts.
Later, Karl Haushofer, founder of the Vril Society, filled the mentor role. He was a student of Gurdjieff. Haushofer taught him Gurdjieff’s techniques based on the teachings of the Sufis and the Tibetan Lamas. He also familiarized him with the Zen teaching of the Japanese Society of the Green Dragon. Hitler’s new-found charisma becomes more comprehensible when we realize he tapped the secret psychological techniques of esoteic lodges, now codified in systems such as NLP.
Eckart was the wealthy publisher and editor-in-chief of the anti-Semitic journal Auf Gut Deutsch. He was also a committed occultist and a master of magic who belonged to the inner circle of the Thule Society as well as other esoteric orders.
The Thule Society believed in highly intelligent, illuminated secret beings who work behind the scenes, much like Theosophy’s Ascended Masters and Golden Dawn’s Secret Chiefs. There is some evidence that Eckart used Crowley’s ritual magic to prepare Hitler for his occultic destiny of ruling the Aryan race and ultimately the world.
Having done his worst, Eckart died in 1923, but only after proudly advising those around him: "Follow Hitler! He will dance, but it is I who have called the tune! I have initiated him into the 'Secret Doctrine', opened his centers of vision and given him the means to communicate with the Powers. Do not mourn for me: I shall have influenced history more than any other German."
From then on Crowley himself influenced Hitler's thinking and beliefs directly. Hitler was already familiar with his writing and theories through the Thule Society, and The Book of the Law, oriented toward various fascist principles, became Hitler's guide. Very often he would paraphrase or express an idea from the book - often word for word.
Armed with new, secret psychological techniques Hitler was able to move the obscure National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) from the clubs and beer halls to a mass movement, while in 1925 Crowley was elected World Head of the OTO.
Between 1936 and 1939 Crowley paid a number of visits to Nazi Germany while Heinrich Himmler's Occult Corps (Geheimnisvolle Korps) recruited or persecuted all practicing occultists in Germany and incorporated into one organization the Thule Society, the Vril Society and the German branch of the OTO. The SS Paranormal Division's subsequent vilification of Crowley during World War II was a simple cover; behind the political facades performed for the public the most powerful factions (occult and economic) of Germany and Britain were not enemies but allies, bound together in the one great war for the conquest of men’s souls and minds.
Himmler viewed the relationship between Crowley and Hitler like that once shared by Merlin and Arthur: the one magician, adviser and the architect of Camelot, the other true-born king, and each equally benefiting from the favors of the other. But Marianna Blavatsky, high priestess of the Occult Corps, claimed the relationship was more like that once shared by Rasputin and the Romanovs of Russia, and that it was Crowley who ruled the Third Reich
Further…
http://user.cyberlink.ch/~koenig/2005/krumm/krumm.htm
Martha Küntzl, born in 1857 (Sister 'Ich Will Es' - I want it) stumbled feverishly from one cult to another, until the Book of the Law put her on the right path and was sustained in her last years by the Law of Thelema. Frau Küntzel's translation of "Liber AL" produced in 1925, of which she claimed to have delivered a copy to Hitler, met with neither Karl Germer's nor Henri Birven's approval; or so Germer passed on Birven's opinion to Crowley: "he calls her translations childish and silly".
Nevertheless, in the beginning of the 1940s when he read Hermann Rauschnings " Hitler Speaks" (1939) Crowley opined "Yes, it is astonishing how closely his [Hitler's] intimate thoughts run on the same rails". For example, when Hitler had said that "we are now at the end of the Age of Reason. The intellect has grown autocratic and become a disease of life" he seemed to paragraphe Crowley's Liber AL II;27-32, and when he had said "A new age of magic interpretation of the world is coming of interpretation in terms of the will and not the intelligence", he was similarly paraphrasing I;44, of Crowley's Book of the Law.
Crowley got a fixation on Hitler. He scribbled in his copy of Rauschning's "Hitler Speaks" many comments that reveal how much he thought Hitler had taken over from Liber AL. On 4th February 1939 he dreamt "about Hitler & cigars & Magick & my horse Sultan. I was running Germany for him," because "Fascism must always fail because it creates the discontent which it is designed to suppress." On 2nd June 1939 he again dreamt. "I had several long talks with Hitler a very tall man. Forgot subject, but he was pleased & impressed: ordered all my books translated & made official in Germany". Diary 17 October 1939: "Hitler reported dead from a surfeit of raspberries". 24 January 1940 another dream with Hitler and "Phallic geometric pictures, Satanic parodies of diagrams" etc.
On 29 July 1943, Crowley went to the movies to see a cartoon film: "Saw show of cartoons lampooing Mein Kampf, with appropriate quotations. Taken in these selected doses, what a masterpiece! And how patent & profound a debt he owes to AL!" After World War II he promptly u-turned his opinion: "Himmler, the Schweinhund [sic] & worse who put Karl Germer on Concentration Camps chiefly because he was my friend! killed himself after capture."
We do know that Crowley had dropped out of sight. Visitors were told Mr. Crowley had gone on a Masonic "Magical Retreat" to a secret place called Esopus Island. He supposedly went off to camp and canoe for over a month somewhere, writing a commentary on the ancient Chinese sage Lao Tzu. (Blackraiser)
So, did he or didn’t he? Was he ‘on retreat’ or mindphreaking Hitler in Germany in 1918? OR, most remarkably, had he mastered the psychic power of bilocation? Was he literally in both places at once? “Let’s do the timewarpp, again.” Although Crowley's absences do seem to link up with important periods in Hitler's life it would be difficult for him to have pulled this off throughout WWII without anyone noticing.
http://www.blackraiser.com/jewpeter/hitskull.htm
Crowley-Hitler videos
http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=CleanBlackRaiser&p=r
A Spy In the House of Love
No Man Is An Island
In 1918, Aleister Crowley came to Esopus Island in the Hudson Valley, a small rocky streak of land in the Hudson, still uninhabited and officially off-limits. Coast Guard markers are sunk into the rock at the southern end. Visitors have left carvings in stone and painted graffiti, but one searches in vain for traces of Crowley or his campsite.
There are no wartime reports of Aleister Crowley ever being in Esopus Island, not even in the official Hudson Valley records. He simply vanished from America during the summer of 1918 and did not turn up in England again until the next season.
Did Crowley initiate a current of revolutionary psychedelic use at Esopus Island, New York? Did he formulate the seed of an Egregor? He may have been among the first intelligentsia to systematically experiment with their ritual use in North America.
Aleister Crowley was 42 the summer he haunted the Hudson Valley shores, swaying and chanting his 'purifications' of ancient pagan ritual in the moth-swirling smoke around his Esopus Island campfire. His bullet-like head was shaved except for a phallic forelock and an irregular and untended growth of new beard. He often wore a robe-like shirt, climbing shoes, shorts and scarlet tassels on his golf socks. 'Magically' he was still approaching the height of his powers. In terms of fashion-sense, he was digging his own moats. (Alexander)
Since coming to America in 1914, Crowley had taken such occasional retirements from his New York City base to Lake Pasquaney in New Hampshire and to the tip of Long Island. He was consistently broke at the time, writing an astrology book with Evangeline Adams that never saw print and selling articles to Vanity Fair magazine. If this latter connection seems unlikely, it was also so to the Beast, who wrote of its editor, Frank Crowninshield; "He treated me, through some inexplicable misunderstanding, as a human being and asked me to write for him." A good deal of controversy was to arise from the fact that he was also at the time contributing to the pro-German paper The Fatherland, a service which his detractors considered treasonable and which he was forced to defend with no little exacerbation ever afterward.
It is difficult today to understand how AC's ludicrous and obvious satires were taken to be seriously pro-German but Crowley-haters could seemingly read traitor into his words with the ease of natural reflex.
Many years later, British intelligence expert Richard Deacon would cite evidence that Crowley was trying to aid the Allied cause (and was in fact in touch with the American Department of Justice) but at the time of his upstate adventure there was a wartime concern about strangers to contend with and the question of his political allegiance was a factor not to be ignored. .” (Gary Alexander, Crowley in the Valley)
His trademark libertarian sayings rang out from the cliffs: EVERY MAN AND WOMAN IS A STAR! It expresses a sacred and sublime nature exists in every human being which is to be respected. DO WHAT THOU WILT SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW, a vital principle of his philosophy, a declaration of rights for that inward star. Everyone has the right to live, not as an outlaw, but by his or her own internal integrity and self-determinism. To do less is to remain a slave, much like Plato implied, suggesting “Know Thyself.”
Conspirituality
Course Correction
Penetration into the Abyss of the Transcendent Imagination carries its own perils. It is not without trouble that we storm heaven's gates, that infinite abyss of the mysteries. There are pathologies at every level of reality. It is the attempt to penetrate to the nondual state of the condition that is beyond forms. Hence its ritual is that of the "Bornless One." Magician, Aleister Crowley attempted to reach this initiation. In his magical efforts he had a Faustian encounter with egotism and psycholoigcal danger--ending his life as an addict and setting himself up as a false god, choking with guilt over his arrogance. There are psychic dangers in magic even for the adept. His cult of personality still survives, but his legacy is dubious, and often seems pre-rational rather than trans-rational.
The critical point is that collective is not necessarily transpersonal. Most of the Jungian archetypes are simply archaic images lying in the magic and mythic structures of our being. They exert a pre-rational pull, but there is nothing mystical, or transpersonal about them. It is imnportant to come to terms with these archetypes, to differentiate them and integrate them (transcend and include), but they are not themselves the source of a transpersonal or genuinely spiritual awareness -- including the so-called Holy Guardian Angel, the magical symbol of higher Self or the Neshamah. In fact, for the most part, they are regressive pulls in awareness and inhibit higher development. They need to be overcome, not merely embraced as so-called divine immanence.
Just because something is collective or non-rational does not mean it is transpersonal. Magic and myth are collective prepersonal (magic and mythic) structures. There are also collective personal structures (rational and existential), and collective transpersonal structures (psychic and subtle). Collective simply means that the structure is universally present.
Gods and goddesses are not transpersonal modes of awareness, or genuinely mystical luminosities, but simply a collection of typical, everyday self-images and self-roles available to us. They are self-concepts and self-roles. To go beyond into formlessness is therefore characterized as the bornless babe of the abyss. Transpersonal archetypes are anemic compared to that transpersonal domain of meditative Light and Sound, the foundation of the world...God within.
No Man Is An Island
In 1918, Aleister Crowley came to Esopus Island in the Hudson Valley, a small rocky streak of land in the Hudson, still uninhabited and officially off-limits. Coast Guard markers are sunk into the rock at the southern end. Visitors have left carvings in stone and painted graffiti, but one searches in vain for traces of Crowley or his campsite.
There are no wartime reports of Aleister Crowley ever being in Esopus Island, not even in the official Hudson Valley records. He simply vanished from America during the summer of 1918 and did not turn up in England again until the next season.
Did Crowley initiate a current of revolutionary psychedelic use at Esopus Island, New York? Did he formulate the seed of an Egregor? He may have been among the first intelligentsia to systematically experiment with their ritual use in North America.
Aleister Crowley was 42 the summer he haunted the Hudson Valley shores, swaying and chanting his 'purifications' of ancient pagan ritual in the moth-swirling smoke around his Esopus Island campfire. His bullet-like head was shaved except for a phallic forelock and an irregular and untended growth of new beard. He often wore a robe-like shirt, climbing shoes, shorts and scarlet tassels on his golf socks. 'Magically' he was still approaching the height of his powers. In terms of fashion-sense, he was digging his own moats. (Alexander)
Since coming to America in 1914, Crowley had taken such occasional retirements from his New York City base to Lake Pasquaney in New Hampshire and to the tip of Long Island. He was consistently broke at the time, writing an astrology book with Evangeline Adams that never saw print and selling articles to Vanity Fair magazine. If this latter connection seems unlikely, it was also so to the Beast, who wrote of its editor, Frank Crowninshield; "He treated me, through some inexplicable misunderstanding, as a human being and asked me to write for him." A good deal of controversy was to arise from the fact that he was also at the time contributing to the pro-German paper The Fatherland, a service which his detractors considered treasonable and which he was forced to defend with no little exacerbation ever afterward.
It is difficult today to understand how AC's ludicrous and obvious satires were taken to be seriously pro-German but Crowley-haters could seemingly read traitor into his words with the ease of natural reflex.
Many years later, British intelligence expert Richard Deacon would cite evidence that Crowley was trying to aid the Allied cause (and was in fact in touch with the American Department of Justice) but at the time of his upstate adventure there was a wartime concern about strangers to contend with and the question of his political allegiance was a factor not to be ignored. .” (Gary Alexander, Crowley in the Valley)
His trademark libertarian sayings rang out from the cliffs: EVERY MAN AND WOMAN IS A STAR! It expresses a sacred and sublime nature exists in every human being which is to be respected. DO WHAT THOU WILT SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW, a vital principle of his philosophy, a declaration of rights for that inward star. Everyone has the right to live, not as an outlaw, but by his or her own internal integrity and self-determinism. To do less is to remain a slave, much like Plato implied, suggesting “Know Thyself.”
Conspirituality
Course Correction
Penetration into the Abyss of the Transcendent Imagination carries its own perils. It is not without trouble that we storm heaven's gates, that infinite abyss of the mysteries. There are pathologies at every level of reality. It is the attempt to penetrate to the nondual state of the condition that is beyond forms. Hence its ritual is that of the "Bornless One." Magician, Aleister Crowley attempted to reach this initiation. In his magical efforts he had a Faustian encounter with egotism and psycholoigcal danger--ending his life as an addict and setting himself up as a false god, choking with guilt over his arrogance. There are psychic dangers in magic even for the adept. His cult of personality still survives, but his legacy is dubious, and often seems pre-rational rather than trans-rational.
The critical point is that collective is not necessarily transpersonal. Most of the Jungian archetypes are simply archaic images lying in the magic and mythic structures of our being. They exert a pre-rational pull, but there is nothing mystical, or transpersonal about them. It is imnportant to come to terms with these archetypes, to differentiate them and integrate them (transcend and include), but they are not themselves the source of a transpersonal or genuinely spiritual awareness -- including the so-called Holy Guardian Angel, the magical symbol of higher Self or the Neshamah. In fact, for the most part, they are regressive pulls in awareness and inhibit higher development. They need to be overcome, not merely embraced as so-called divine immanence.
Just because something is collective or non-rational does not mean it is transpersonal. Magic and myth are collective prepersonal (magic and mythic) structures. There are also collective personal structures (rational and existential), and collective transpersonal structures (psychic and subtle). Collective simply means that the structure is universally present.
Gods and goddesses are not transpersonal modes of awareness, or genuinely mystical luminosities, but simply a collection of typical, everyday self-images and self-roles available to us. They are self-concepts and self-roles. To go beyond into formlessness is therefore characterized as the bornless babe of the abyss. Transpersonal archetypes are anemic compared to that transpersonal domain of meditative Light and Sound, the foundation of the world...God within.
ELIZABETHAN ESPIONAGE:
Intimate family connections remains a hallmark of British espionage Brief Historical Sketch
by Peter Dawkins, MA
In 1580 the Queen commissioned Francis Bacon, via Sir Thomas Bodley, to make report and compile notes of observations respecting the ‘laws, religion, military strength and whatsoever concerneth pleasure or profit’ in the countries of Europe. This was a specially-prepared 12-month tour of Italy, Spain, Germany and Denmark, to observe life and gather information, both for the Queen and for his own purposes. For the planning of the journey Francis was aided by his brother Anthony, who was able to advise, arrange contacts and prepare a route. Anthony returned briefly from France to England in November-December 1580 for this purpose, and then was sent back again to the continent, remaining abroad for the next eleven years (except for one visit to England in 1588) gathering political intelligence.
Francis left England sometime in the spring 1581 and was back home at Gray’s Inn by the beginning of April 1582. On his return to England he wrote up a report of his travels and findings for Lord Burghley and the Queen. This report, including additional information from his brother Anthony and Nicholas Faunt, was presented to the Queen as a State Paper entitled Notes on the Present State of Christendom. The countries covered included not just France, Italy and Spain, but also Austria, Germany, Portugal, Poland, Denmark and Sweden. Florence, Venice, Mantua, Genoa and Savoy are dealt with in most detail. Some of this information was used in the Shakespeare plays. (These Notes were not made available to the public until 1734.)
Cryptography was one of Francis’ interests, and he assisted Burghley and Walsingham with decoding various correspondence. He also invented some new ciphers, one of his earliest creations being the Biliteral cipher which he invented in his youth whilst at Paris, which later became the basis of the Morse code and the binary code of all computer technology today.
In 1581 Francis began his thirty-six years of Parliamentary service as a Member of Parliament. Other than this he seems to have led the life partly of a courtier and partly of a recluse, and we hear little of him until 1587, except that in March 1584 he visited Scotland, and on 10 February 1586 he became a Bencher of Gray’s Inn.
Nearly two years later, on 23 November 1587 Francis was appointed a Reader of Gray’s Inn. As a Reader he was allowed his own private chambers. In fact, just two days previous to this, confirming a grant made nine years earlier, several buildings were leased to Anthony and Francis Bacon for a term of fifty years, with leave to add additional rooms (which Francis eventually did). These buildings contained the original chambers of Sir Nicholas Bacon, which had been kept for Edward and Anthony Bacon’s use. By then Edward, Francis’ and Anthony’s half-brother, had ceased studying law and had acquired the lease of Twickenham Park from the Queen, as well as having estates elsewhere. Since Anthony was still abroad, this meant that Francis had the unimpeded use of all the chambers, both to live in and to pursue his great project. Conveniently, the Great Library of Gray’s Inn was adjacent to and on the same level as Francis' chambers.
From that time onwards we learn that Francis was regularly associated with other gentlemen of Gray’s Inn in devising and presenting masques and entertainments at Gray’s Inn and the royal Court at Greenwich, and writing speeches and devices to be used in the Queen’s Accession Day Tilts.
Francis’ movements tended to oscillate between Gray’s Inn, the royal Court when he was in attendance on the Queen, and Twickenham Lodge. The latter was situated in Twickenham Park, the Crown property leased by Edward Bacon, with land leading down to the River Thames immediately opposite the Queen’s palace of Richmond. The lodge with its park was a tranquil and beautiful place where Francis could write in peace, together with his friends and ‘good pens’.
It was almost certainly here and at Gray’s Inn that Bacon began writing, in 1588, the extraordinary series of plays that were later (from 1598 onwards) published under the pseudonymous mask of ‘William Shakespeare’.
Edward seems to have allowed Francis the use of Twickenham Lodge whenever he wanted, and in November 1595 Francis took over the lease himself. Gorhambury, the fine country house and estate at St Albans, although owned by Anthony Bacon, was, under the terms of Sir Nicholas Bacon’s will, Lady Anne Bacon’s home and residence until she should die. It was, in any case, rather far from London, whereas Twickenham Park was close to the city and linked to it by river. All the main royal palaces and noblemen’s houses in or just outside London, from Greenwich to Hampton Court Palace, fronted onto this one great Thames thoroughfare. Twickenham Lodge was thus an ideal place. Francis had the use of it and part of its park until 1607, when the lease was surrendered to Lucy, Countess of Bedford, the new owner.
1588 saw the Spanish Armada approach the coast of England in July and suffer defeat, and the Earl of Leicester’s fever and death in September. Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, took on the mantle of his step-father, becoming Elizabeth’s principal favourite, and Leicester House became Essex House.
In 1591 Francis appears to have almost given up his fruitless suit with Burghley and the Queen, threatening that if his Lordship would not carry him on he would sell the small inheritance he had in order to purchase some means of quick revenue, and thereby give up all care of service (i.e. to Burghley and the Queen) in order to become some ‘sorry bookmaker or a true pioneer in that mine of truth which (Anaxagoras) said lay so deep’. Suspecting Burghley’s motives, Francis tried to make it absolutely clear to his uncle that just as he had vast contemplative ends so he had moderate civil ends, and that he did not ‘seek or affect any place whereunto any that is nearer unto your Lordship shall be concurrent’. In this Francis was particularly referring to his hunchback cousin, Robert Cecil, Burghley’s son by his second wife, Mildred, the sister of Lady Ann Bacon. Besides being Lord Treasurer and Master of the Court of Wards, the most lucrative office in the land, Burghley was doing his best to advance Robert as high and as quickly as possible to a similar status, although unlike Francis (and Burghley himself) Robert had no official legal training. Not without cause it was the astute but wily Robert Cecil who, seen from the point of view of Francis Bacon, provided the character study for the hunchback King Richard in the Shakespeare play of Richard III.
Richard III was written in 1591 and first performed in 1592. One of Francis’ main endeavours in his work was not only to study human nature and raise the level of people’s consciousness, but to improve people’s moral behaviour and purge corruption from wherever it might lurk—including corruption in high places. His ideal was to discover truth and practice philanthropy; and, like the Ancients, to teach wisdom through entertainment.
One of the main points about the Shakespeare plays is that they hold a mirror up to human nature, so that both good and bad might be seen for what they are and what they do. Each character in the plays embodies qualities and characteristics drawn from real life, and sometimes the analogies go close to the bone. Increasingly, from 1591 onwards, the Shakespeare plays subtly attacked or satirised the abuses and weaknesses of the Cecil combo and others, even the Queen, as well as of society in general.
However, Francis did carry on serving the Queen with his legal and political advice, and with the use of his pen, and about this time (perhaps in response to his letter to Burghley threatening to retire) she made him Queen’s Counsel Extraordinary—an honorary, unpaid position with duties that were not clearly defined, except that examining prisoners suspected of treason or other grave offences, protecting the Queen’s interests and drawing up official reports were some of the services Francis was called upon to perform. Moreover, it was about this time that the Queen asked Francis to assist Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, as an advisor.
Francis had in fact already struck up a good friendship with Essex. The Earl at that time was the foremost favourite of the Queen and, with his sparkling charisma and gallantry, popular with the people. Francis set out to assist Essex in every way possible, believing him to be ‘the fittest instrument to do good to the state’. Essex in turn promised to help Francis, such as with his suit to the Queen and in obtaining other patronage. Ultimately this turned out to be a perilous mistake for Francis. Essex’s temperament was so hot-headed and imperious that rather than helping Francis he repeatedly made matters worse, with the Queen and he clashing like gladiators.
Burghley and Robert Cecil came to loathe him, resulting in their admitted policy of doing their utmost to block the advancement of any of his friends, including the Bacon brothers. It was Essex’s character that was used as the model for the fiery, gallant Hotspur in Henry IV, about which Essex complained to the Queen, saying that Francis and Anthony Bacon ‘print me and make me speak to the world, and shortly they will play me in what form they list upon the stage’. However, most importantly, it was with the group of writers that were associated with or were to become associated with Essex and his friends that Francis had already launched his literary endeavours.
The Essex group, which had been linked with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Sir Francis Walsingham and Sir Philip Sydney until their deaths in the 1580’s, and with the Areopagitae of English poets that used to meet at Leicester House (later Essex House), included the Earl of Oxford, the Earl of Southampton, Lord Mountjoy, Lady Frances Essex, Penelope Rich, Elizabeth Vernon and Mary Sydney, the Countess of Pembroke, all of whom periodically resided at Essex House.
Associated with them were the circle of poets, writers and dramatists patronised by Essex, Southampton and the Pembrokes, who included Samuel Daniel, Ben Jonson, John Florio, George Wither, Edmund Spenser, Thomas Nashe and John Lyly. The other ‘University Wits’—Thomas Lodge, George Peele, Robert Greene and Christopher Marlowe were also connected with this group—the wits who acknowledged Shakespeare (but not the actor Shakspere) as their head.
Southampton—a scholar, poet, gentleman and soldier, and a patron of poets, scholars and playwrights, and of libraries and places of learning—considered himself to be, like Essex, the successor to Philip Sydney. To Southampton was dedicated, in 1593, the ‘first heir’ of Shakespeare’s ‘invention’—the erotic narrative poem Venus and Adonis. His wife, Elizabeth Vernon, was Essex’s cousin. Essex’s wife, Frances, was the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham and widow of Sir Philip Sydney. Penelope Rich was Essex’s golden haired, black-eyed, beautiful sister, who had previously been considered as a bride for Sir Philip Sydney; but sadly her father died before the match could be arranged and her guardian (Huntingdon) married her in 1581 to ‘the rich Lord Rich’. Sydney remained passionately in love with Penelope all his life and addressed her as ‘Stella’ in his sonnets. After his death in 1586 Penelope became the mistress of Sir Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy.
Mary Sydney, Countess of Pembroke, was Sir Philip Sydney’s sister and the mother of ‘the Two Noble Brethren’ to whom the Shakespeare First Folio was dedicated. Her husband, Henry Herbert, the 2nd Earl of Pembroke, whose country estate at Wilton bordered on the Wiltshire River Avon, was the patron of his own professional acting company, the Lord Pembroke’s Men, who owned and performed the early Shakespeare plays. Mary was a devoted patroness of the arts and learning, and of poets, who saw to it that her brother’s epic poem Arcadia was completed and published after his death. The poet Samuel Daniel was a tutor to Mary’s eldest son, William Herbert.
John Florio, a poet and scholar, was a friend of Giordano Bruno who came to England in 1585. Florio, who was previously in the service of the Earl of Leicester, entered Southampton’s household in the early 1590’s. He tutored Essex in Italian whilst working on his own Italian-English dictionary and the English translation of the essays of Anthony Bacon’s friend, Michel de Montaigne. Influences from these essays are to be found in The Tempest, Hamlet and King Lear, whilst Florio himself is thought to be caricatured as Holofernes in Love’s Labour’s Lost. Florio’s wife was a sister of the poet Samuel Daniel.
Oxford, the hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain who was brought up as a ward of Burghley, was, as we have already seen (Chapter 8), noted as a poet and writer of comedies as well as being a patron of poets and dramatists, and of his own acting companies, Oxford’s Boys and Oxford’s Men. His harsh treatment of his wife, Anne Cecil, Burghley’s daughter, became a matter of great concern to the group of family and friends, as well as to the Queen, who between them contrived an eventual reunion of the couple. Much of All’s Well That Ends Well, written in 1598, ten years after Anne’s death in 1588 and seven years after Oxford’s second marriage to Elizabeth Trentham in 1591, is largely based upon Oxford’s marriage to Anne. The play’s title was first recorded in Francis Bacon’s private notebook in 1594.
The novelist and dramatist John Lyly, who had been at Cambridge University at the same time as the Bacon brothers, entered the service of the Earl of Oxford as Oxford’s secretary from 1580 onwards, writing plays for Oxford’s Boys from 1583 to 1590. The style of Love’s Labour’s Lost was derived from Lyly’s romance, Eupheus, the Anatomy of Wit, published in 1578. Lyly eventually became one of Anthony Bacon’s ‘good pens’ at Essex House. Later, however, he was suspected of being a spy at Essex House, acting for Burghley.
In February 1592 Anthony Bacon returned home from the continent. Anthony, whom Francis called his ‘dearest brother’ and ‘comfort’, shared Francis’ aspirations. His main love was literary and, like his brother, he was a secret poet, known only as such to his friends, as revealed in their letters to him. But his wit and his talents as a multi-linguist were much in demand, and he put them at the service of the Queen and Burghley, who sent him on his twelve-year mission. All the time he was abroad he kept in constant correspondence with his brother Francis as well as with his uncle and Sir Francis Walsingham.
Anthony Bacon’s foreign contacts were wide-spread and he enjoyed friendship in many high places, ‘being a gentleman whose ability the world taketh knowledge of for matters of state, specially foreign’. His contacts and friendship with Henri of Navarre, later Henri IV of France, were later incorporated into the Shakespeare play, Love’s Labour’s Lost, as also was the result of his association with the King of Spain’s Secretary of State, Antonio Perez, who defected to England and upon whom the character of Don Adriana de Armado is based.
When Anthony returned to England he joined his brother at Gray’s Inn, and started to pour all his energy and financial resources into his brother’s project whilst at the same time continuing his intelligence work. Together the brothers formed a scrivenery of secretaries and writers to assist them, dealing with political intelligence, cryptography, translations of correspondence and books in foreign languages and the classics, invention of new words, and literature generally. The Shakespeare plays took off in earnest.
With Anthony back in England with his brother, it soon became clear to them that their uncle Burghley, far from helping them as much as he had repeatedly promised, in return for their services, had in fact been holding back on his help, blocking Francis’ advancement and taking most of the credit for Anthony’s intelligence work to himself. He was full of promises and pleasant words to the brothers, but time proved that he did not exert himself much on their behalf or give much in return, and in fact was suspicious and at times antagonistic towards them. He and the Queen took all but gave little. He was the Queen’s chief counsellor and friend, and in charge of the Queen’s treasury and the lucrative Court of Wards. She held Francis in special regard and affection, and used him ‘in her greatest causes’. Francis’ official and financial situation could and should have been different, as also Anthony’s: they had both served the Queen and Burghley faithfully and unceasingly. As it was, it was hard, with Lady Fortune (the ‘Dark Lady’ of the Shakespeare Sonnets) acting many times cruelly.
In 1593, just as ‘Shakespeare’ as a name was launched onto the public scene for the first time with the scholarly poem Venus and Adonis, Francis (as an MP representing Middlesex)) dared to stand up in Parliament against an attempt by the Queen and Burghley to take away Parliament’s vitally important prerogative of raising taxes. Thanks to Francis’ oratory and arguments, the proposals of the Queen’s Government were rejected on this constitutional issue. Elizabeth was furious and Francis was made to feel her displeasure, being denied access to her presence, which hitherto he had enjoyed with an unusual freedom. She told him ‘that he must nevermore look to her for favour or promotion’.
Such a royal excommunication precipitated a major crisis for Francis, who supported himself and his literary work mainly by loans and credit; and, although helped by his mother and Anthony, who sold two estates to assist Francis (and eventually beggared himself on his brother’s behalf), Francis was driven by necessity to practice law seriously. So it was that on 25 January 1594 Francis pleaded his first case in the King’s Bench, with others to follow. His first pleading was so successful that Burghley, content with Francis as a lawyer and pressured by his own family who had taken pity on Francis’ predicament, undertook to make a report ‘where it might do him the most good’.
The Queen played a game of punishment or reward with Francis, trying to make him her creature in all ways, including the Parliamentary one. In 1594 the position of Attorney-General fell vacant and was kept vacant for a whole year, and several times it was intimated to Francis that the Queen might appoint him to this position and that it was only his conduct in Parliament that stood in the way. Essex, eager to help Francis, urged the Queen to appoint him to this position. But Francis would not recant, and there were other factors afoot. Robert Cecil suggested to Essex that if Sir Edward Coke, the Solicitor-General, were to be appointed as Attorney-General, which he felt the Queen would prefer, then perhaps Francis might be content with the lesser position of Solicitor-General instead. But Essex would not have it. Only the higher office would do for the friend of Essex! As Essex saw it, his own reputation was at stake. The result was that the Attorney-Generalship went instead to Coke, and Francis was also by-passed for the office of Solicitor-General.
Essex was mortified by this result, feeling it as a matter of pride, and bestowed on Francis a gift of land in Twickenham in recompense for what he felt was his failure to help his friend. Francis was able to raise money on the land to ease his situation (later he sold it).
But, despite the fact that (or perhaps because) Francis thought of retiring to Cambridge with a couple of men to spend his life in studies and contemplation, matters between him and the Queen did improve that year. In the summer the Queen appointed him one of her Counsel learned in the Law and conferred on him some woodland in Somerset at a nominal rent. Then for her Accession Day celebration on 17 November 1594 he wrote The Device of the Indian Prince, filled with flattering and adulatory references to the Queen, which helped to reconcile her to Essex (who had, thanks to a book published abroad, been under a shadow of suspicion concerning his influence with the Queen upon the matter of succession). The Device was sponsored by Essex and took place at York House. It was so successful that her Majesty was extremely pleased. She was reconciled to Francis and on that very day the reversion of the lease of certain lands in Twickenham Park was made over to him—a concession on the basis of which he could raise some more money to satisfy his creditors for awhile.
Creditors were a continual problem, as Francis’s project was costly and he never ever had enough money. His brother Anthony was the main source of his help on this matter. The friendship between the two brothers, and the difficulties they endured through being forced year after year to raise loans from usurers, and the eventual bankruptcy of Anthony on his brother’s behalf, was strongly reflected in the Shakespeare play, The Merchant of Venice. In the play Antonio is a good caricature of Anthony, who did trade abroad (but in intelligence rather than merchandise) and who hazarded all for his brother’s sake; and Bassanio of Francis, whose ‘Portia’ he sought after was, in a philosophical sense, Wisdom on her Mountain of Beauty (‘Belmont’), and in a personal sense, his rich cousin, Lady Hatton (see below). Many times either one or the other brother had to attend court and pay the forfeits demanded for late repayment of the loans. Being a lawyer and ‘learned in the law’, Francis often pleaded his own case. He was even arrested for debt at one time (September 1598), unjustly as it happened, because of the maliciousness of a particular debtor, and had to be rescued from the awful possibility of incarceration in the Fleet.
In 1595 Francis ‘knit’ Anthony’s service to the Earl of Essex. As a result, in August 1595 Anthony moved into Essex House to act as the Earl’s ‘Secretary of State’, partly in the hope of counter-balancing the increased power base of the Cecil faction. 1595 was the year in which the Lord Treasurer Burghley completed his personal coup d’état by seeing his son Robert, who was knighted in 1591 and made a member of the Privy Council, and who had been unofficially filling the vacant office of Secretary of State for several years, achieve the politically powerful position of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. This climb to power culminated the following year when Robert was officially made the Principal Secretary of State, cementing the father-son combo which together held the reins of power in the Queen’s Government. (When Burghley died in 1598, Robert continued as Secretary of State, maintaining his position of power.)
Only two years later, in 1597, a hazardous situation arose, in which the Shakespeare play of Richard II was involved. Again, this had to do with the royal succession, but this time it was a question of the deposing and ‘voluntary’ abdication of a king. Clearly, when first performed the historical deposition scene was included; but the Queen was both horrified and incensed by it, seeing herself regarded by certain of her courtiers as ‘Richard’ and Essex as ‘Bolingbroke’. Subsequently the play was performed with the offending deposition scene omitted, and both it and other plays which followed were published with the name of ‘William Shakespeare’ appearing on their title pages for the first time.
The actor Will Shakspere suddenly acquired a lot of money, reportedly from the Earl of Southampton, and set himself up in Stratford-upon-Avon with a fine house and trading business, and Essex continued in the Queen’s high favour. It was also in that year that Francis had a book published under his own name of ‘Francis Bacon’ for the first time, this being the first version of his Essays, which he dedicated with affection to his ‘Loving and beloved Brother’, Anthony, referring to Anthony as ‘you that are next myself’.
Anthony was not the only person Francis loved deeply, howbeit as a brother, friend and partner in his grand scheme. Francis was also enamoured of his cousin, Elizabeth Cecil, one of Burghley’s grand-daughters, with whom he had flirted when younger. He continued his friendship with Elizabeth after she was married to Sir William Hatton in 1594, which deepened over the years. When Elizabeth was widowed in 1597 Francis courted her seriously, requesting her hand in marriage. But another disappointment was in store, and once again Sir Edward Coke, now Attorney-General and wealthy, won the day.
In 1599 trouble between the Queen and Essex flared up dangerously, Essex consistently acting against the advice of both Francis and Anthony, who urged Essex not to seek a military position and not to go to Ireland at the head of the English army—both of which he did. Just before Essex set out for Ireland in March 1599, a potentially volatile situation arose for both Francis and Essex in which the Shakespeare play of Richard II was again involved. This time a book based on the play had been published by a young doctor of civil law, John Hayward, a friend of both Essex and Bacon, which in its preface likened Essex to Bolingbroke and seemed to exhort Essex to rise up against the Queen and usurp the throne. Hayward was arrested and Francis was immediately called before the Queen to explain and sort matters out, the Queen seemingly knowing of Francis’ authorship of the Shakespeare play. Fifteen months later Francis was again involved on the same subject, when Essex was arraigned before the Queen’s Council on a charge of disobeying Her Majesty’s orders in Ireland. Francis, as one of the Queen’s Counsel, was given the specific role of charging Essex concerning the use of Hayward’s book, a role to which he objected, remarking that ‘it would be said that I gave in evidence mine own tales’.
When all this culminated in February 1601 with Essex’s abortive attempt to raise an armed insurrection against the Queen and her government, which led to his trial for treason and subsequent execution (25 February 1601), the Bacon brothers were devastated. Both of them had been misled for several years by Essex, who had been secretly plotting and preparing his insurrection, and they only learnt the full truth during and after the trial. Both brothers had worked hard to try to prove the supposed innocence of Essex, and Francis did all he could to mediate with the Queen on Essex’s behalf, right up to the end, at the expense of his own relationship with her. Francis was ordered by the Queen to take part in the trial as her Counsel Learned, to assist the State Prosecutor. As if these tragic events were not enough, a few months after Essex’s execution Anthony, who had not been well, was reported to have died (27 May 1601).
Queen Elizabeth was to go to her grave just two years later (24 March 1603), and in July 1603 King James IV of Scotland was crowned King James I of England. Anthony Bacon had over the years done some good service for the Scottish king, and Francis, who pleaded his case as a ‘concealed poet’ who was for the most part one with his brother in ‘endeavour and duties’, was helped by King James as a result.
In Queen Elizabeth’s reign Francis had been continually by-passed in terms of being given a position where he could command both a sufficient income and influence for the needs of his great project, and his service under the Tudor queen had gone largely unpaid, except for the promise of the reversion of the position of Clerk to the Star Chamber when it became vacant, the granting under favourable terms of the lease of Twickenham Park, which became Francis’ favourite retreat and home for his scrivenery, the lease of the Rectory of Cheltenham, and the payment of a fee of £1200 for his services at Essex’s trial. With James, after a cautious start, it was to be different.
The Stuart king soon came to rely on Francis’ exceptional talents and to recognise them officially; but, as with Elizabeth, it was primarily in the highways and byways of law that he drew Francis’ services to him, although Francis eventually became the principal adviser to the King on all matters. (Not that James always took notice of the advice: if he had done so more often, many unfortunate situations might have been avoided, including the mismanagement and rape of Ireland.) http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/walsingham.html
SIR FRANCIS WALSINGHAM
Spymaster FRANCIS WALSINGHAM, Renaissance SPOOK
In foreign intelligence, the full range of Walsingham's network of "intelligencers" (of news as well as secrets) will never be known, but it was substantial. While foreign intelligence was part of the principal secretary's duties, Walsingham brought to it flair and ambition, and large sums of his own money. He also cast his net more widely than others had done hitherto, exploiting the insight into Spanish policy offered at the Italian courts; cultivating contacts in Constantinople and Aleppo, building complex connections with the Catholic exiles. Recent detective work by John Bossy has suggested that he recd Giordano Bruno although this remains controversial. Among his more minor spies may have been the playwright Christopher Marlowe, who may have been one of the stream of false converts with which Walsingham annoyed the foreign seminaries. A more central figure was te cryptographer Thomas Phelippes, expert in deciphering letters, creating false handwriting and breaking and repairing seals without detection.
The long and successful reign of Elizabeth I proved that a woman could be as effective and popular a monarch as any King. But there existed around the Queen a critical support structure which was made up almost exclusively of men. This was her network of spies supervised by Walsingham, one of Elizabeth's most loyal ministers, and their aim was to safeguard the life of the Queen. The efficiency of this network unearthed a series of plots to overthrow Elizabeth and replace her with the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots. It is a testament to the success of this secret service that Elizabeth died peacefully of old age and not at the hands of an assassin.
In the early years of her reign William Cecil (later Lord Burghley) had been overseeing the gathering of intelligence, but once Mary Queen of Scots arrived on English soil things moved up a gear. She was a magnet for conspiracy, the perfect focus for discontented Catholics who refused to conform to Elizabeth's Protestant faith.
A number of plots came to light, such as the Northern Uprising of 1569 and the Ridolfi Plot two years later, which centred on rescuing Mary. So far, the plots had been uncovered in time and disaster had been averted. But the threat to her life was growing ever more serious. Realising the scale of the task ahead he called upon the man who was to become known as Elizabeth's spy master, Francis Walsingham.
Walsingham and his spies Walsingham had studied as a lawyer and was intelligent, serious and disciplined. He held strong Protestant beliefs, and had gone to live abroad during the reign of the Catholic Mary I. But when Protestantism was re-established under Elizabeth I, he returned to England and became Secretary of State in 1568. Quick-witted and ruthless, he was soon playing a critical role in intelligence-gathering operations. Without the other commitments which had taken up much of Cecil's time, Walsingham could devote himself to overseeing Elizabeth's secret service.
This he did with zeal. He was strict, almost Puritan in his religious beliefs, and passionate about protecting the country from Catholic threat. Spies were posted to live abroad who could supply him with intelligence on the politics and attitudes of Catholic countries towards England. This information enabled Walsingham to piece together, for example, the policy of the Pope towards Elizabeth. Armed also with information from spies based in this country, Walsingham could trace lines of communication between Catholics here and abroad, and keep track of any plots.
'The world of a spy was not, however, one of glamour and intrigue.'
The world of a spy was not, however, one of glamour and intrigue. Many spies were ambitious undergraduates recruited from Oxford and Cambridge who saw this as a route to fame and fortune. But the reality was quite different. Long journeys, low pay and the logistical difficulties of delivering information meant that, unless involved in a high-profile success, the work of a spy was often thankless and mundane. More challenging was the area of intelligence-gathering. This kind of work included travelling abroad to gather information on national security.
Coded letters Intelligence work also involved learning how to break the different codes used by plotters in their correspondence. Often, letters of the alphabet were shuffled in a certain sequence and, once the key was worked out, the message could be read and understood. Alternatively individual letters could be substituted with numbers, symbols or signs of the zodiac. But spies had to learn not only how to decipher code but also how to write it themselves. This was frustrating and time-consuming work, paid off only by the satisfaction of finally cracking a difficult code. '...spies had to learn not only how to decipher code but also how to write it themselves.'
Some codes could only be understood by placing a sheet of paper punched with holes over the top so that just the relevant letters making up the message could be read. Success therefore depended on calculating the exact sequence of thousands of holes. Also popular was the practice of conveying information in invisible ink. Written in milk or lemon juice, the secret message could be read as the page was warmed over a candle and the letters appeared. Innocent text in normal ink was often written alongside the hidden message in order to throw a spy off the scent.
Walsingham knew that this work was critical to his success, and established a spy school to provide formal training for recruits. The security of the country was at stake, after all. Mistakes were unthinkable. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/tudors/spying_01.shtml
****
Sir Francis Walsingham 1532 - 1590
To most serious students of espionage and counter-espionage, Sir Francis Walsingham, who was knighted in 1577, is considered the father of modern Intelligence and Counterintelligence. It was Walsingham who as Secretary of State under Queen Elizabeth I, established an elaborate intelligence service that controlled agents in England and abroad. His agents in Europe kept him informed of the activities of King Philip of Spain. Thus Britain obtained early warnings of the attack by the Spanish Armada.
Phillip was recruiting sail makers and shipwrights from Sweden to Italy to build his fleet. Mary received pay from Walsingham in addition the their Spanish wages. The shipwrights would drive defective treenails holding the planks to the ribs. The treenails were only shallow plugs; sawed halfway through, others filled with sawdust and putty was used to secure the ribs to the keel. In the first storm the armada met off the Irish coast many of the 130 ships were turned into kindling, which resulted in its disastrous defeat.
Mary, Queen of Scots was a factor that King Philip was beginning to exploit. He became an active agent in her cause. Hence, Elizabeth was very much thrown under Walsingham protection. She became increasingly dependent on the security and counter-intelligence screen that her Secretary wore about the throne. During the 1580s, Walsingham became the most important of her ministers and they developed a close relationship.
Walsingham’s security service was built up progressively in the 1570s. It operated in the ports, in the London taverns, in the French and Spanish embassies and from 1575, in the household of Queen Mary. For more than 10 years, Walsingham worked hard to secure absolute proofs of Mary's plotting with England’s enemies and the assassination of Queen Elizabeth.
Sir Francis Walsingham’s secret service uncovered the “Anthony Babington” plot that in 1586 planned the murder of Queen Elizabeth and the rescue of Mary Queen of Scots from house arrest. Through his spy network he managed to intercept all the messages to Queen Mary that were hidden in kegs of beer and when invited to hunt deer on the estate where Mary was confined, his men took advantage of the opportunity to search through all of Mary’s papers, discovering the evidence he needed to obtain her death sentence.
Walsingham died on April 6, 1590. For such a faithful servant he was ill rewarded by his Queen. He lived and died miserably poor. He had lavished huge sums in his public service and was never repaid. He was so far in debt that he was buried at night so that his creditors would not steal his coffin.
Intimate family connections remains a hallmark of British espionage Brief Historical Sketch
by Peter Dawkins, MA
In 1580 the Queen commissioned Francis Bacon, via Sir Thomas Bodley, to make report and compile notes of observations respecting the ‘laws, religion, military strength and whatsoever concerneth pleasure or profit’ in the countries of Europe. This was a specially-prepared 12-month tour of Italy, Spain, Germany and Denmark, to observe life and gather information, both for the Queen and for his own purposes. For the planning of the journey Francis was aided by his brother Anthony, who was able to advise, arrange contacts and prepare a route. Anthony returned briefly from France to England in November-December 1580 for this purpose, and then was sent back again to the continent, remaining abroad for the next eleven years (except for one visit to England in 1588) gathering political intelligence.
Francis left England sometime in the spring 1581 and was back home at Gray’s Inn by the beginning of April 1582. On his return to England he wrote up a report of his travels and findings for Lord Burghley and the Queen. This report, including additional information from his brother Anthony and Nicholas Faunt, was presented to the Queen as a State Paper entitled Notes on the Present State of Christendom. The countries covered included not just France, Italy and Spain, but also Austria, Germany, Portugal, Poland, Denmark and Sweden. Florence, Venice, Mantua, Genoa and Savoy are dealt with in most detail. Some of this information was used in the Shakespeare plays. (These Notes were not made available to the public until 1734.)
Cryptography was one of Francis’ interests, and he assisted Burghley and Walsingham with decoding various correspondence. He also invented some new ciphers, one of his earliest creations being the Biliteral cipher which he invented in his youth whilst at Paris, which later became the basis of the Morse code and the binary code of all computer technology today.
In 1581 Francis began his thirty-six years of Parliamentary service as a Member of Parliament. Other than this he seems to have led the life partly of a courtier and partly of a recluse, and we hear little of him until 1587, except that in March 1584 he visited Scotland, and on 10 February 1586 he became a Bencher of Gray’s Inn.
Nearly two years later, on 23 November 1587 Francis was appointed a Reader of Gray’s Inn. As a Reader he was allowed his own private chambers. In fact, just two days previous to this, confirming a grant made nine years earlier, several buildings were leased to Anthony and Francis Bacon for a term of fifty years, with leave to add additional rooms (which Francis eventually did). These buildings contained the original chambers of Sir Nicholas Bacon, which had been kept for Edward and Anthony Bacon’s use. By then Edward, Francis’ and Anthony’s half-brother, had ceased studying law and had acquired the lease of Twickenham Park from the Queen, as well as having estates elsewhere. Since Anthony was still abroad, this meant that Francis had the unimpeded use of all the chambers, both to live in and to pursue his great project. Conveniently, the Great Library of Gray’s Inn was adjacent to and on the same level as Francis' chambers.
From that time onwards we learn that Francis was regularly associated with other gentlemen of Gray’s Inn in devising and presenting masques and entertainments at Gray’s Inn and the royal Court at Greenwich, and writing speeches and devices to be used in the Queen’s Accession Day Tilts.
Francis’ movements tended to oscillate between Gray’s Inn, the royal Court when he was in attendance on the Queen, and Twickenham Lodge. The latter was situated in Twickenham Park, the Crown property leased by Edward Bacon, with land leading down to the River Thames immediately opposite the Queen’s palace of Richmond. The lodge with its park was a tranquil and beautiful place where Francis could write in peace, together with his friends and ‘good pens’.
It was almost certainly here and at Gray’s Inn that Bacon began writing, in 1588, the extraordinary series of plays that were later (from 1598 onwards) published under the pseudonymous mask of ‘William Shakespeare’.
Edward seems to have allowed Francis the use of Twickenham Lodge whenever he wanted, and in November 1595 Francis took over the lease himself. Gorhambury, the fine country house and estate at St Albans, although owned by Anthony Bacon, was, under the terms of Sir Nicholas Bacon’s will, Lady Anne Bacon’s home and residence until she should die. It was, in any case, rather far from London, whereas Twickenham Park was close to the city and linked to it by river. All the main royal palaces and noblemen’s houses in or just outside London, from Greenwich to Hampton Court Palace, fronted onto this one great Thames thoroughfare. Twickenham Lodge was thus an ideal place. Francis had the use of it and part of its park until 1607, when the lease was surrendered to Lucy, Countess of Bedford, the new owner.
1588 saw the Spanish Armada approach the coast of England in July and suffer defeat, and the Earl of Leicester’s fever and death in September. Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, took on the mantle of his step-father, becoming Elizabeth’s principal favourite, and Leicester House became Essex House.
In 1591 Francis appears to have almost given up his fruitless suit with Burghley and the Queen, threatening that if his Lordship would not carry him on he would sell the small inheritance he had in order to purchase some means of quick revenue, and thereby give up all care of service (i.e. to Burghley and the Queen) in order to become some ‘sorry bookmaker or a true pioneer in that mine of truth which (Anaxagoras) said lay so deep’. Suspecting Burghley’s motives, Francis tried to make it absolutely clear to his uncle that just as he had vast contemplative ends so he had moderate civil ends, and that he did not ‘seek or affect any place whereunto any that is nearer unto your Lordship shall be concurrent’. In this Francis was particularly referring to his hunchback cousin, Robert Cecil, Burghley’s son by his second wife, Mildred, the sister of Lady Ann Bacon. Besides being Lord Treasurer and Master of the Court of Wards, the most lucrative office in the land, Burghley was doing his best to advance Robert as high and as quickly as possible to a similar status, although unlike Francis (and Burghley himself) Robert had no official legal training. Not without cause it was the astute but wily Robert Cecil who, seen from the point of view of Francis Bacon, provided the character study for the hunchback King Richard in the Shakespeare play of Richard III.
Richard III was written in 1591 and first performed in 1592. One of Francis’ main endeavours in his work was not only to study human nature and raise the level of people’s consciousness, but to improve people’s moral behaviour and purge corruption from wherever it might lurk—including corruption in high places. His ideal was to discover truth and practice philanthropy; and, like the Ancients, to teach wisdom through entertainment.
One of the main points about the Shakespeare plays is that they hold a mirror up to human nature, so that both good and bad might be seen for what they are and what they do. Each character in the plays embodies qualities and characteristics drawn from real life, and sometimes the analogies go close to the bone. Increasingly, from 1591 onwards, the Shakespeare plays subtly attacked or satirised the abuses and weaknesses of the Cecil combo and others, even the Queen, as well as of society in general.
However, Francis did carry on serving the Queen with his legal and political advice, and with the use of his pen, and about this time (perhaps in response to his letter to Burghley threatening to retire) she made him Queen’s Counsel Extraordinary—an honorary, unpaid position with duties that were not clearly defined, except that examining prisoners suspected of treason or other grave offences, protecting the Queen’s interests and drawing up official reports were some of the services Francis was called upon to perform. Moreover, it was about this time that the Queen asked Francis to assist Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, as an advisor.
Francis had in fact already struck up a good friendship with Essex. The Earl at that time was the foremost favourite of the Queen and, with his sparkling charisma and gallantry, popular with the people. Francis set out to assist Essex in every way possible, believing him to be ‘the fittest instrument to do good to the state’. Essex in turn promised to help Francis, such as with his suit to the Queen and in obtaining other patronage. Ultimately this turned out to be a perilous mistake for Francis. Essex’s temperament was so hot-headed and imperious that rather than helping Francis he repeatedly made matters worse, with the Queen and he clashing like gladiators.
Burghley and Robert Cecil came to loathe him, resulting in their admitted policy of doing their utmost to block the advancement of any of his friends, including the Bacon brothers. It was Essex’s character that was used as the model for the fiery, gallant Hotspur in Henry IV, about which Essex complained to the Queen, saying that Francis and Anthony Bacon ‘print me and make me speak to the world, and shortly they will play me in what form they list upon the stage’. However, most importantly, it was with the group of writers that were associated with or were to become associated with Essex and his friends that Francis had already launched his literary endeavours.
The Essex group, which had been linked with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Sir Francis Walsingham and Sir Philip Sydney until their deaths in the 1580’s, and with the Areopagitae of English poets that used to meet at Leicester House (later Essex House), included the Earl of Oxford, the Earl of Southampton, Lord Mountjoy, Lady Frances Essex, Penelope Rich, Elizabeth Vernon and Mary Sydney, the Countess of Pembroke, all of whom periodically resided at Essex House.
Associated with them were the circle of poets, writers and dramatists patronised by Essex, Southampton and the Pembrokes, who included Samuel Daniel, Ben Jonson, John Florio, George Wither, Edmund Spenser, Thomas Nashe and John Lyly. The other ‘University Wits’—Thomas Lodge, George Peele, Robert Greene and Christopher Marlowe were also connected with this group—the wits who acknowledged Shakespeare (but not the actor Shakspere) as their head.
Southampton—a scholar, poet, gentleman and soldier, and a patron of poets, scholars and playwrights, and of libraries and places of learning—considered himself to be, like Essex, the successor to Philip Sydney. To Southampton was dedicated, in 1593, the ‘first heir’ of Shakespeare’s ‘invention’—the erotic narrative poem Venus and Adonis. His wife, Elizabeth Vernon, was Essex’s cousin. Essex’s wife, Frances, was the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham and widow of Sir Philip Sydney. Penelope Rich was Essex’s golden haired, black-eyed, beautiful sister, who had previously been considered as a bride for Sir Philip Sydney; but sadly her father died before the match could be arranged and her guardian (Huntingdon) married her in 1581 to ‘the rich Lord Rich’. Sydney remained passionately in love with Penelope all his life and addressed her as ‘Stella’ in his sonnets. After his death in 1586 Penelope became the mistress of Sir Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy.
Mary Sydney, Countess of Pembroke, was Sir Philip Sydney’s sister and the mother of ‘the Two Noble Brethren’ to whom the Shakespeare First Folio was dedicated. Her husband, Henry Herbert, the 2nd Earl of Pembroke, whose country estate at Wilton bordered on the Wiltshire River Avon, was the patron of his own professional acting company, the Lord Pembroke’s Men, who owned and performed the early Shakespeare plays. Mary was a devoted patroness of the arts and learning, and of poets, who saw to it that her brother’s epic poem Arcadia was completed and published after his death. The poet Samuel Daniel was a tutor to Mary’s eldest son, William Herbert.
John Florio, a poet and scholar, was a friend of Giordano Bruno who came to England in 1585. Florio, who was previously in the service of the Earl of Leicester, entered Southampton’s household in the early 1590’s. He tutored Essex in Italian whilst working on his own Italian-English dictionary and the English translation of the essays of Anthony Bacon’s friend, Michel de Montaigne. Influences from these essays are to be found in The Tempest, Hamlet and King Lear, whilst Florio himself is thought to be caricatured as Holofernes in Love’s Labour’s Lost. Florio’s wife was a sister of the poet Samuel Daniel.
Oxford, the hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain who was brought up as a ward of Burghley, was, as we have already seen (Chapter 8), noted as a poet and writer of comedies as well as being a patron of poets and dramatists, and of his own acting companies, Oxford’s Boys and Oxford’s Men. His harsh treatment of his wife, Anne Cecil, Burghley’s daughter, became a matter of great concern to the group of family and friends, as well as to the Queen, who between them contrived an eventual reunion of the couple. Much of All’s Well That Ends Well, written in 1598, ten years after Anne’s death in 1588 and seven years after Oxford’s second marriage to Elizabeth Trentham in 1591, is largely based upon Oxford’s marriage to Anne. The play’s title was first recorded in Francis Bacon’s private notebook in 1594.
The novelist and dramatist John Lyly, who had been at Cambridge University at the same time as the Bacon brothers, entered the service of the Earl of Oxford as Oxford’s secretary from 1580 onwards, writing plays for Oxford’s Boys from 1583 to 1590. The style of Love’s Labour’s Lost was derived from Lyly’s romance, Eupheus, the Anatomy of Wit, published in 1578. Lyly eventually became one of Anthony Bacon’s ‘good pens’ at Essex House. Later, however, he was suspected of being a spy at Essex House, acting for Burghley.
In February 1592 Anthony Bacon returned home from the continent. Anthony, whom Francis called his ‘dearest brother’ and ‘comfort’, shared Francis’ aspirations. His main love was literary and, like his brother, he was a secret poet, known only as such to his friends, as revealed in their letters to him. But his wit and his talents as a multi-linguist were much in demand, and he put them at the service of the Queen and Burghley, who sent him on his twelve-year mission. All the time he was abroad he kept in constant correspondence with his brother Francis as well as with his uncle and Sir Francis Walsingham.
Anthony Bacon’s foreign contacts were wide-spread and he enjoyed friendship in many high places, ‘being a gentleman whose ability the world taketh knowledge of for matters of state, specially foreign’. His contacts and friendship with Henri of Navarre, later Henri IV of France, were later incorporated into the Shakespeare play, Love’s Labour’s Lost, as also was the result of his association with the King of Spain’s Secretary of State, Antonio Perez, who defected to England and upon whom the character of Don Adriana de Armado is based.
When Anthony returned to England he joined his brother at Gray’s Inn, and started to pour all his energy and financial resources into his brother’s project whilst at the same time continuing his intelligence work. Together the brothers formed a scrivenery of secretaries and writers to assist them, dealing with political intelligence, cryptography, translations of correspondence and books in foreign languages and the classics, invention of new words, and literature generally. The Shakespeare plays took off in earnest.
With Anthony back in England with his brother, it soon became clear to them that their uncle Burghley, far from helping them as much as he had repeatedly promised, in return for their services, had in fact been holding back on his help, blocking Francis’ advancement and taking most of the credit for Anthony’s intelligence work to himself. He was full of promises and pleasant words to the brothers, but time proved that he did not exert himself much on their behalf or give much in return, and in fact was suspicious and at times antagonistic towards them. He and the Queen took all but gave little. He was the Queen’s chief counsellor and friend, and in charge of the Queen’s treasury and the lucrative Court of Wards. She held Francis in special regard and affection, and used him ‘in her greatest causes’. Francis’ official and financial situation could and should have been different, as also Anthony’s: they had both served the Queen and Burghley faithfully and unceasingly. As it was, it was hard, with Lady Fortune (the ‘Dark Lady’ of the Shakespeare Sonnets) acting many times cruelly.
In 1593, just as ‘Shakespeare’ as a name was launched onto the public scene for the first time with the scholarly poem Venus and Adonis, Francis (as an MP representing Middlesex)) dared to stand up in Parliament against an attempt by the Queen and Burghley to take away Parliament’s vitally important prerogative of raising taxes. Thanks to Francis’ oratory and arguments, the proposals of the Queen’s Government were rejected on this constitutional issue. Elizabeth was furious and Francis was made to feel her displeasure, being denied access to her presence, which hitherto he had enjoyed with an unusual freedom. She told him ‘that he must nevermore look to her for favour or promotion’.
Such a royal excommunication precipitated a major crisis for Francis, who supported himself and his literary work mainly by loans and credit; and, although helped by his mother and Anthony, who sold two estates to assist Francis (and eventually beggared himself on his brother’s behalf), Francis was driven by necessity to practice law seriously. So it was that on 25 January 1594 Francis pleaded his first case in the King’s Bench, with others to follow. His first pleading was so successful that Burghley, content with Francis as a lawyer and pressured by his own family who had taken pity on Francis’ predicament, undertook to make a report ‘where it might do him the most good’.
The Queen played a game of punishment or reward with Francis, trying to make him her creature in all ways, including the Parliamentary one. In 1594 the position of Attorney-General fell vacant and was kept vacant for a whole year, and several times it was intimated to Francis that the Queen might appoint him to this position and that it was only his conduct in Parliament that stood in the way. Essex, eager to help Francis, urged the Queen to appoint him to this position. But Francis would not recant, and there were other factors afoot. Robert Cecil suggested to Essex that if Sir Edward Coke, the Solicitor-General, were to be appointed as Attorney-General, which he felt the Queen would prefer, then perhaps Francis might be content with the lesser position of Solicitor-General instead. But Essex would not have it. Only the higher office would do for the friend of Essex! As Essex saw it, his own reputation was at stake. The result was that the Attorney-Generalship went instead to Coke, and Francis was also by-passed for the office of Solicitor-General.
Essex was mortified by this result, feeling it as a matter of pride, and bestowed on Francis a gift of land in Twickenham in recompense for what he felt was his failure to help his friend. Francis was able to raise money on the land to ease his situation (later he sold it).
But, despite the fact that (or perhaps because) Francis thought of retiring to Cambridge with a couple of men to spend his life in studies and contemplation, matters between him and the Queen did improve that year. In the summer the Queen appointed him one of her Counsel learned in the Law and conferred on him some woodland in Somerset at a nominal rent. Then for her Accession Day celebration on 17 November 1594 he wrote The Device of the Indian Prince, filled with flattering and adulatory references to the Queen, which helped to reconcile her to Essex (who had, thanks to a book published abroad, been under a shadow of suspicion concerning his influence with the Queen upon the matter of succession). The Device was sponsored by Essex and took place at York House. It was so successful that her Majesty was extremely pleased. She was reconciled to Francis and on that very day the reversion of the lease of certain lands in Twickenham Park was made over to him—a concession on the basis of which he could raise some more money to satisfy his creditors for awhile.
Creditors were a continual problem, as Francis’s project was costly and he never ever had enough money. His brother Anthony was the main source of his help on this matter. The friendship between the two brothers, and the difficulties they endured through being forced year after year to raise loans from usurers, and the eventual bankruptcy of Anthony on his brother’s behalf, was strongly reflected in the Shakespeare play, The Merchant of Venice. In the play Antonio is a good caricature of Anthony, who did trade abroad (but in intelligence rather than merchandise) and who hazarded all for his brother’s sake; and Bassanio of Francis, whose ‘Portia’ he sought after was, in a philosophical sense, Wisdom on her Mountain of Beauty (‘Belmont’), and in a personal sense, his rich cousin, Lady Hatton (see below). Many times either one or the other brother had to attend court and pay the forfeits demanded for late repayment of the loans. Being a lawyer and ‘learned in the law’, Francis often pleaded his own case. He was even arrested for debt at one time (September 1598), unjustly as it happened, because of the maliciousness of a particular debtor, and had to be rescued from the awful possibility of incarceration in the Fleet.
In 1595 Francis ‘knit’ Anthony’s service to the Earl of Essex. As a result, in August 1595 Anthony moved into Essex House to act as the Earl’s ‘Secretary of State’, partly in the hope of counter-balancing the increased power base of the Cecil faction. 1595 was the year in which the Lord Treasurer Burghley completed his personal coup d’état by seeing his son Robert, who was knighted in 1591 and made a member of the Privy Council, and who had been unofficially filling the vacant office of Secretary of State for several years, achieve the politically powerful position of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. This climb to power culminated the following year when Robert was officially made the Principal Secretary of State, cementing the father-son combo which together held the reins of power in the Queen’s Government. (When Burghley died in 1598, Robert continued as Secretary of State, maintaining his position of power.)
Only two years later, in 1597, a hazardous situation arose, in which the Shakespeare play of Richard II was involved. Again, this had to do with the royal succession, but this time it was a question of the deposing and ‘voluntary’ abdication of a king. Clearly, when first performed the historical deposition scene was included; but the Queen was both horrified and incensed by it, seeing herself regarded by certain of her courtiers as ‘Richard’ and Essex as ‘Bolingbroke’. Subsequently the play was performed with the offending deposition scene omitted, and both it and other plays which followed were published with the name of ‘William Shakespeare’ appearing on their title pages for the first time.
The actor Will Shakspere suddenly acquired a lot of money, reportedly from the Earl of Southampton, and set himself up in Stratford-upon-Avon with a fine house and trading business, and Essex continued in the Queen’s high favour. It was also in that year that Francis had a book published under his own name of ‘Francis Bacon’ for the first time, this being the first version of his Essays, which he dedicated with affection to his ‘Loving and beloved Brother’, Anthony, referring to Anthony as ‘you that are next myself’.
Anthony was not the only person Francis loved deeply, howbeit as a brother, friend and partner in his grand scheme. Francis was also enamoured of his cousin, Elizabeth Cecil, one of Burghley’s grand-daughters, with whom he had flirted when younger. He continued his friendship with Elizabeth after she was married to Sir William Hatton in 1594, which deepened over the years. When Elizabeth was widowed in 1597 Francis courted her seriously, requesting her hand in marriage. But another disappointment was in store, and once again Sir Edward Coke, now Attorney-General and wealthy, won the day.
In 1599 trouble between the Queen and Essex flared up dangerously, Essex consistently acting against the advice of both Francis and Anthony, who urged Essex not to seek a military position and not to go to Ireland at the head of the English army—both of which he did. Just before Essex set out for Ireland in March 1599, a potentially volatile situation arose for both Francis and Essex in which the Shakespeare play of Richard II was again involved. This time a book based on the play had been published by a young doctor of civil law, John Hayward, a friend of both Essex and Bacon, which in its preface likened Essex to Bolingbroke and seemed to exhort Essex to rise up against the Queen and usurp the throne. Hayward was arrested and Francis was immediately called before the Queen to explain and sort matters out, the Queen seemingly knowing of Francis’ authorship of the Shakespeare play. Fifteen months later Francis was again involved on the same subject, when Essex was arraigned before the Queen’s Council on a charge of disobeying Her Majesty’s orders in Ireland. Francis, as one of the Queen’s Counsel, was given the specific role of charging Essex concerning the use of Hayward’s book, a role to which he objected, remarking that ‘it would be said that I gave in evidence mine own tales’.
When all this culminated in February 1601 with Essex’s abortive attempt to raise an armed insurrection against the Queen and her government, which led to his trial for treason and subsequent execution (25 February 1601), the Bacon brothers were devastated. Both of them had been misled for several years by Essex, who had been secretly plotting and preparing his insurrection, and they only learnt the full truth during and after the trial. Both brothers had worked hard to try to prove the supposed innocence of Essex, and Francis did all he could to mediate with the Queen on Essex’s behalf, right up to the end, at the expense of his own relationship with her. Francis was ordered by the Queen to take part in the trial as her Counsel Learned, to assist the State Prosecutor. As if these tragic events were not enough, a few months after Essex’s execution Anthony, who had not been well, was reported to have died (27 May 1601).
Queen Elizabeth was to go to her grave just two years later (24 March 1603), and in July 1603 King James IV of Scotland was crowned King James I of England. Anthony Bacon had over the years done some good service for the Scottish king, and Francis, who pleaded his case as a ‘concealed poet’ who was for the most part one with his brother in ‘endeavour and duties’, was helped by King James as a result.
In Queen Elizabeth’s reign Francis had been continually by-passed in terms of being given a position where he could command both a sufficient income and influence for the needs of his great project, and his service under the Tudor queen had gone largely unpaid, except for the promise of the reversion of the position of Clerk to the Star Chamber when it became vacant, the granting under favourable terms of the lease of Twickenham Park, which became Francis’ favourite retreat and home for his scrivenery, the lease of the Rectory of Cheltenham, and the payment of a fee of £1200 for his services at Essex’s trial. With James, after a cautious start, it was to be different.
The Stuart king soon came to rely on Francis’ exceptional talents and to recognise them officially; but, as with Elizabeth, it was primarily in the highways and byways of law that he drew Francis’ services to him, although Francis eventually became the principal adviser to the King on all matters. (Not that James always took notice of the advice: if he had done so more often, many unfortunate situations might have been avoided, including the mismanagement and rape of Ireland.) http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/walsingham.html
SIR FRANCIS WALSINGHAM
Spymaster FRANCIS WALSINGHAM, Renaissance SPOOK
In foreign intelligence, the full range of Walsingham's network of "intelligencers" (of news as well as secrets) will never be known, but it was substantial. While foreign intelligence was part of the principal secretary's duties, Walsingham brought to it flair and ambition, and large sums of his own money. He also cast his net more widely than others had done hitherto, exploiting the insight into Spanish policy offered at the Italian courts; cultivating contacts in Constantinople and Aleppo, building complex connections with the Catholic exiles. Recent detective work by John Bossy has suggested that he recd Giordano Bruno although this remains controversial. Among his more minor spies may have been the playwright Christopher Marlowe, who may have been one of the stream of false converts with which Walsingham annoyed the foreign seminaries. A more central figure was te cryptographer Thomas Phelippes, expert in deciphering letters, creating false handwriting and breaking and repairing seals without detection.
The long and successful reign of Elizabeth I proved that a woman could be as effective and popular a monarch as any King. But there existed around the Queen a critical support structure which was made up almost exclusively of men. This was her network of spies supervised by Walsingham, one of Elizabeth's most loyal ministers, and their aim was to safeguard the life of the Queen. The efficiency of this network unearthed a series of plots to overthrow Elizabeth and replace her with the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots. It is a testament to the success of this secret service that Elizabeth died peacefully of old age and not at the hands of an assassin.
In the early years of her reign William Cecil (later Lord Burghley) had been overseeing the gathering of intelligence, but once Mary Queen of Scots arrived on English soil things moved up a gear. She was a magnet for conspiracy, the perfect focus for discontented Catholics who refused to conform to Elizabeth's Protestant faith.
A number of plots came to light, such as the Northern Uprising of 1569 and the Ridolfi Plot two years later, which centred on rescuing Mary. So far, the plots had been uncovered in time and disaster had been averted. But the threat to her life was growing ever more serious. Realising the scale of the task ahead he called upon the man who was to become known as Elizabeth's spy master, Francis Walsingham.
Walsingham and his spies Walsingham had studied as a lawyer and was intelligent, serious and disciplined. He held strong Protestant beliefs, and had gone to live abroad during the reign of the Catholic Mary I. But when Protestantism was re-established under Elizabeth I, he returned to England and became Secretary of State in 1568. Quick-witted and ruthless, he was soon playing a critical role in intelligence-gathering operations. Without the other commitments which had taken up much of Cecil's time, Walsingham could devote himself to overseeing Elizabeth's secret service.
This he did with zeal. He was strict, almost Puritan in his religious beliefs, and passionate about protecting the country from Catholic threat. Spies were posted to live abroad who could supply him with intelligence on the politics and attitudes of Catholic countries towards England. This information enabled Walsingham to piece together, for example, the policy of the Pope towards Elizabeth. Armed also with information from spies based in this country, Walsingham could trace lines of communication between Catholics here and abroad, and keep track of any plots.
'The world of a spy was not, however, one of glamour and intrigue.'
The world of a spy was not, however, one of glamour and intrigue. Many spies were ambitious undergraduates recruited from Oxford and Cambridge who saw this as a route to fame and fortune. But the reality was quite different. Long journeys, low pay and the logistical difficulties of delivering information meant that, unless involved in a high-profile success, the work of a spy was often thankless and mundane. More challenging was the area of intelligence-gathering. This kind of work included travelling abroad to gather information on national security.
Coded letters Intelligence work also involved learning how to break the different codes used by plotters in their correspondence. Often, letters of the alphabet were shuffled in a certain sequence and, once the key was worked out, the message could be read and understood. Alternatively individual letters could be substituted with numbers, symbols or signs of the zodiac. But spies had to learn not only how to decipher code but also how to write it themselves. This was frustrating and time-consuming work, paid off only by the satisfaction of finally cracking a difficult code. '...spies had to learn not only how to decipher code but also how to write it themselves.'
Some codes could only be understood by placing a sheet of paper punched with holes over the top so that just the relevant letters making up the message could be read. Success therefore depended on calculating the exact sequence of thousands of holes. Also popular was the practice of conveying information in invisible ink. Written in milk or lemon juice, the secret message could be read as the page was warmed over a candle and the letters appeared. Innocent text in normal ink was often written alongside the hidden message in order to throw a spy off the scent.
Walsingham knew that this work was critical to his success, and established a spy school to provide formal training for recruits. The security of the country was at stake, after all. Mistakes were unthinkable. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/tudors/spying_01.shtml
****
Sir Francis Walsingham 1532 - 1590
To most serious students of espionage and counter-espionage, Sir Francis Walsingham, who was knighted in 1577, is considered the father of modern Intelligence and Counterintelligence. It was Walsingham who as Secretary of State under Queen Elizabeth I, established an elaborate intelligence service that controlled agents in England and abroad. His agents in Europe kept him informed of the activities of King Philip of Spain. Thus Britain obtained early warnings of the attack by the Spanish Armada.
Phillip was recruiting sail makers and shipwrights from Sweden to Italy to build his fleet. Mary received pay from Walsingham in addition the their Spanish wages. The shipwrights would drive defective treenails holding the planks to the ribs. The treenails were only shallow plugs; sawed halfway through, others filled with sawdust and putty was used to secure the ribs to the keel. In the first storm the armada met off the Irish coast many of the 130 ships were turned into kindling, which resulted in its disastrous defeat.
Mary, Queen of Scots was a factor that King Philip was beginning to exploit. He became an active agent in her cause. Hence, Elizabeth was very much thrown under Walsingham protection. She became increasingly dependent on the security and counter-intelligence screen that her Secretary wore about the throne. During the 1580s, Walsingham became the most important of her ministers and they developed a close relationship.
Walsingham’s security service was built up progressively in the 1570s. It operated in the ports, in the London taverns, in the French and Spanish embassies and from 1575, in the household of Queen Mary. For more than 10 years, Walsingham worked hard to secure absolute proofs of Mary's plotting with England’s enemies and the assassination of Queen Elizabeth.
Sir Francis Walsingham’s secret service uncovered the “Anthony Babington” plot that in 1586 planned the murder of Queen Elizabeth and the rescue of Mary Queen of Scots from house arrest. Through his spy network he managed to intercept all the messages to Queen Mary that were hidden in kegs of beer and when invited to hunt deer on the estate where Mary was confined, his men took advantage of the opportunity to search through all of Mary’s papers, discovering the evidence he needed to obtain her death sentence.
Walsingham died on April 6, 1590. For such a faithful servant he was ill rewarded by his Queen. He lived and died miserably poor. He had lavished huge sums in his public service and was never repaid. He was so far in debt that he was buried at night so that his creditors would not steal his coffin.
John Dee(1527-1608) was a fascinating genius, considered a magus, philosopher and alchemist who captured the attention of the royal courts and best minds throughout Europe. You were either intimidated by his ideas and reputation or you wished to be influenced by them. It has only been in the last century that we've had a more sober approach to Dee, thanks to such authors as Peter French, Francis Yates, Gerald Shuster and Richard Deacon who have rescued this "man of grand design" from obscurity and have realized how significant a thinker he was.
Dr. Dee's learning was far and wide, a brilliant mathematician, whose study ranged from geo-cartography and calculus which was vital in navigating the New World for explorers, to astrology, alchemy, the Cabala, cypher writing, religion, architecture, and science. In short, Dee's metaphysics were a 'red' cross of the Hermetic tradition with a strong dose of mathematics. His library at the riverside village of Mortlake was considered the finest private collection in Europe containing thousands of bound books and handwritten manuscripts devoted to philosophy, science and esoterica. In comparison the University of Cambridge at the time had a mere 451 total books and manuscripts in their possession.
Noel Fermor in the journal Baconiana wrote that, "The Earl of Leicester's father, the Duke of Northmberland, employed Dee as a tutor to his children so that they would have a sound scientific upbringing. Northumberland became a notable scientist with a strong leaning toward mathematics and magnetism. Anthony Wood in his Athenae Oxoniensis, wrote "that no one knew Robert Dudley better than Dee." So it was quite natural for Leicester to introduce Dee to Elizabeth as she was to become the new Queen and it wasn't long before Dee advanced to become the court astrologer.
(Leicester signed his letters to Elizabeth with two circles containing dots symbolising he was her "Eyes")
Elizabeth was very much interested in the occult. Dee was responsible for choosing the most auspicious date for Elizabeth's coronation which was on January 15th, 1559. The Queen was so impressed by Dee that she eventually travelled with her court to Mortlake, for the purpose of seeing his great library.
Dee has been defamed through the centuries as a necromancer, but it's the opinion of many writers that his angelic-cabalistic- alchemical work, his Philosophers Stone, the"Monad Hieroglyphica"(1564) may have been a cover for covert operations carried on in the name of her majesty. The 007 was the insignia number that Elizabeth was to use for private communiques between her Court and Dee.
Dee signed his letters with two circles symbolising his own two eyes and indicating that he was the secret eyes of the Queen.The two circles are guarded by what may be considered a square root sign or an elongated seven. For Dee, seven was a sacred cabbalistic and lucky number.(Richard Deacon)
When the Spanish Armada loomed over the English Channel it was Dee as the wise sage who suggested to hold the course and be still. He had correctly anticipated that devastating storms would destroy the mighty Spanish Fleet and that it would be best to keep the English ships at bay. Some have suggested that it was Dee himself who conjured up that storm.
Whatever it was that allowed England to defeat the Armada, John Dee was having his finest patriotic moment. One can see why some commentators have Dee associated with being the inspiration for the protagonist Prospero (to hope for the future) from The Tempest. Francis Yates in her seminal exploration Majesty and Magic in Shakespeare's Last Plays, comments, "Dare one say that the German Rosicrucian movement reaches a peak of poetic expression in The Tempest, a Rosicrucian manifesto infused with the spirit of Dee, using theatrical parables for esoteric communication?"
Dee's wisdom of nature even extended into the field of architecture where Francis Yates in The Theatre of the World states that James Burbage consulted Dee on the design of the first theater. Later,"The Globe was created, says Yates, because in the Burbage tradition the design was to amplify naturally the voices of the plyers." This was accomplished by the geometrical resonance of the circled dome. Burbage relied on Dee's extensive architectural library for this construction.
Little has come down to us in terms of records of Francis Bacon and John Dee knowing each other but on the afternoon of August 11, 1582 there was an entry in Dee's journal that they met at Mortlake. Bacon was 21 years old at the time and was accompanied by a Mr. Phillipes, a top cryptographer in the employ of Sir Francis Walsingham who headed up the early days of England's secret service. They were there according to Ewen MacDuff, in an article, "After Some Time Be Past" in 'Baconiana', (Dec.1983)" to find out the truth about the ancient Hebrew art of the Gematria- one of the oldest cipher systems known, dating from 700 B.C.
They were seeking to discuss this with Dee because he was not only one of the leading adepts of this field, but a regular practitioner in certain levels of Gematria." Also, David Kahn in The Codebreakers suggests that because of Dee's great interest in the 13th century alchemist Roger Bacon, that he may have introduced Bacon to the works of Roger Bacon,"which may help explain the similarities in their thought."
The Precarious Politics of Hermetic Tradition in the King James Reign
There is no doubt of John Dee's ubiquitous influence during the Elizabethan age. When James became King, Dee's ideas on magic were no longer appreciated. James unfavorable and fearful attitude toward the occult was the opposite of Elizabeth's. Bacon became well aware that it was necessary to be very careful while advancing his scientific ideas to James and that any trace of Dee's weird angelic-alchemical study could jeopardize his own projects from taking hold.
Bacon's observation of the mis-treatment bestowed upon Dee by James served to reinforce that it was a different era and that the need to practice that Shakespeare maxim, "Discretion is the better part of valor" was imperative to anyone with a sweet disposition toward magic and mathematics or a secret society. Dee was even derided in the Ben Jonson play The Alchemist perhaps to placate James, yet another signal that this was an end of the liberal Elizabethan attitude toward Hermeticism. So it's not surprising that Bacon chose to hold back his Rosicrucian utopia The New Atlantis from publication until after his death as it portrayed a future world in which man could co-exist with his fellow man without the divine right of kings and the new tools that the magic of science would one day bring could also be in harmony with nature as well.
But it was Dee's colonization dream many years before who referred to the new world as "Atlantis." He would have been proud to have read Bacon's New Atlantis and seen Bacon's sympathetic portrayal of him as the magician Prospero, of The Tempest.
Francis Yates in The Rosicrucian Enlightenment suggests that," in Bacon's writings there is nowhere to be found any mention of Dee or his famous Monas Hierglyphica. Yates makes a further point by saying that, "It is a well known objection to Bacon's claim to be an important figure in the history of science that he did not place sufficient emphasis on the all-important mathematical sciences in his programme for the advancement of learning, and that he ignored these sciences by his rejection of the Copernican theory and of William Gilbert's theory of the magnet.
Bacon's avoidance of mathematics and Copernican theory might have been because he regarded mathematics as too closely associated with Dee and his 'conjuring' and Copernicus as to closely associated with Bruno and his extreme Egyptian and magical religion. This hypothesis is now worth recalling because it suggests a possible reason for a major difference between German Rosicrucianism and Baconianism. In the former Dee and his mathematics are not feared, but Bacon avoids them; in the former Bruno is an influence but is rejected by Bacon. In both cases Bacon may have been evading what seemed to him dangerous subjects in order to protect his projects from witch hunters, from the cry of 'sorcery' which as Naude' said, "could pursue a mathematician in the early 17th century."
It should be remembered that Bacon had a cautious and scientific approach to mathematics along with his great interest in cyphers.
Peter Dawkins in his book "Francis Bacon Herald of the New Age" would strongly disagree with Yates on Bacon's avoidance of mathematics. He writes, "nothing could be further from the truth: for number is a cypher and geometry a symbol for truth, and Francis Bacon was intensely interested in and a master of cipher and symbol, and of rhythm in language, using them repeatedly throughout all his works in various cryptic ways--for he saw mathematics as a vitally important occult or mystical science, and used it accordingly.
Mathematics coupled with analogy and allegory, constitute a principal means to the discovery of what Bacon has enticingly hidden." Dawkins later emphasizes that, "Francis Bacon considered mathematics to be a branch of metaphysics, capable of giving insights into the highest 'Forms' or archetypes--the laws and intelligences of the universe. Consequently, like Dr. John Dee, his early tutor, he was fascinated by mathematical cypher in both its numeric and geometric forms, and with its magical use.
Bacon gives both mathematics and analogy which he considers a science and calls "grammatical philosophy," a high place in his Great Instauration; which, when used together help to unlock the doors to that which Bacon has deliberately concealed-- including certain mysteries hidden in the Shakespeare plays. For instance, the two great books published in 1623 were the Shakespeare's Folio Comedies, Histories & Tragedies and Bacon's De Augmentis Scientiarum{the philosophical background and purpose of the Shakespeare plays} two masterpieces published together, since they are as twins, each being a key to unlock hidden treasures in the other-- two relating to the twin faculties of the mind--imagination and reason--and both drawing upon the third faculty, memory."
It should be noted that the following year 1624 the cypher book, Cryptomenytices was published and Dawkins points to this as "providing the cipher keys to open the 'crypt' of Rosicrucian wisdom hidden in both the philosophical and the poetical works of art of this great Master."
Yates admits to being a Stratfordian and of course does not realize the extent of Bacon's wisdom in protecting himself from censorship. She says, "We begin to understand that The Tempest was a very bold manifesto, and that Shakespeare was braver than Bacon."
If Yates could only glimpse how ahead of the game Bacon was she could only burst out and laugh at herself for writing this. But she is not the first modern day Shakespeare critic to underestimate Francis Bacon's foresight to write under a mighty pen-name and steer his Secret Free-Masonry-Group at the same time. It's like asking was Twain braver than Clemens? The absurd logic of this could be solved if Stratfordians applied the Baconian method (inductive logic with trial and error) into the Shakespeare Authorship.
Go one step further using this method of inquiry to cross reference a lost connection missing between the Rosicrucian literature of The Fama and the Confessio, The Chemical Marriage of Christian Rosenkrantz, The New Atlantis, The Tempest, with The King James Version of the Bible, The Advancement of Learning and Dee's Monad Hieroglyphic. Somewhere there lies a common thread, a code, meant for those who would cross reference all these words. Perhaps when the code is broken we will have the equivalent of Prospero's buried staff and recognize the impact of Dee and Bacon's relationship with their dedication to the enlightenment of all.
What Bacon learned from Dee outside of the importance of cyphers was not to have one's political and esoteric-artistic identity defined exclusively by the outside world. There was inner power for Bacon that no matter what happened to him he could still sacrifice his name, bury his staff like Prospero and wield a protective persona to express his artistic views for himself and his secret group of "Good Pens." This is responsible wisdom in action as a response to difficult political pressures. For Bacon due to the out of the ordinary set of circumstances surrounding his birth this pressure became a discipline for him (all his life) to maintain and remember that old saying, "keep your friends close and your enemies closer." Bacon knew from first hand experience when he said, as Shakespeare, "sweet are the uses of adversity."
Manly P. Hall had a book, Orders of Universal Reformation in which a woodcut from 1655 by Jacob Cats, shows an emblem of an ancient man bearing likeness to John Dee, passing the lamp of tradition over an open grave to a young man with an extravagantly large rose on his shoe buckle. In Bacon's sixth book of the Advancement of Learning he defines his method as, Traditionem Lampadis, the delivery of the lamp.
Mrs. Henry Pott writes in "Francis Bacon and His Secret Society,"The organization or method of transmission he (Bacon) established was such as to ensure that never again so long as the world endured, should the lamp of tradition, the light of truth, be darkened or extinguished."
In closing a comment from Noel Fermor from Baconiana 1981 "After all, in John Dee we have a man who had a profound influence on Renaissance thought and on the deep laid schemes of Francis Bacon for the betterment of mankind. Dee wrote, "Farewell, diligent reader; in reading these things, invocate the spirit of Eternal Light, speak little, meditate much and judge aright."For more on John Dee: visit The John Dee Society Web Site
The Secret: To Dare, To Will, To Know, To Keep Silent
Intelligence is the key to understanding the world today. What spies have in common with magicians is an uncanny ability to connect the seemingly unconnected, to notice what goes on behind the scenes and to see through misdirection ~ it takes one to know one. Both have learned to synthesize and interprete data, how to pace and lead people (hypno-patsies) with rapport. The opening gambit of psychological warfare and mind control is flattery.
As trained observers, magicians and spies are adept at people-reading and keeping secrets; both are actors -- performers. Both are in secret societies that rely on craft and often use collaborators or confederates, and mentors. How much different is stealth and surveillance than a spell of invisibility? Each have their rules of engagement in the Great Work and the Great Game. Clandestine Craft
Even some of the elements of tradecraft are the same. Both are cryptic, using encryptions and codes. Each has its own arcane language, symbols and rituals veiled from the profane. Remote Viewing or psychic spying is virtually identical with clairvoyance. Ceremonial psychodrama is played out in public, in personality cults and "ritual" murders.
Both use passwords and slogans for security. Cryptography is now ubiquitous. All domestic and foreign electronic communication is monitored by programs like Echelon. Spies and magicians both are cracking the Brain Code, the wetware of humanity. Cryptocracy refers to a type of government where the real leaders are hidden. There may possibly be a fake government that appears to be in charge and this fake government might not know themselves that they are not in charge. It can also be used when referring to similar arrangements in organisations, orders, sects and cults.
Everywhere is Ground Zero
In military terms psychic operations are called psychotronics. Adversaries are rogue psi operatives, psiwarriors who battle like sorcerers. Psychic self defense employs thought disruption, shielding techniques, mind drain and energy manipulation. Psionics is scientific magic ~ magecraft, the product of extraordinary human potential. Precogs, like analysts, are attuned to the future.
Deep Cover
They understand viscerally that things are often not what they seem. Both are masters of disguise, the hidden environment, intelligence, espionage, and covert action. Both aim to 'tweak the timeline' with small perturbations that pump up to macroscopic results, setting up currents of intentional influence. They also tweak minds by controlling the environment. No one can resist what they cannot detect.
Both are Inside Outsiders, working at the fringes of the System. The "outsider" aesthetic is charged by a desire to break free from the contrivances of tradition. They look boldly outside the system and deep within themselves for inspiration that arises directly from Creative Source. Both work sub rosa. This phrase comes from the Latin meaning 'under the rose' for confidentiality, black ops. It comes from the Masonic fraternal tradition. The rose is the emblem of Horus, God of Silence and Secrecy; the Tudor Rose shares tthe same root.
Dee was excited about a book, the "Steganographica" of Trithemius, the Abbot of Sponheim. He spent ten days copying a manuscript of this work and crowed to Sir William about its value. The "Steganographica" appears to be a textbook on codes and ciphers, all very valuable to spies and intelligence networks, but is really a hermetic text on angelic communication. Designed so that the codes and ciphers described in the first section of the book must be used to read the second section on angelic magick, Trithemius' masterpiece works like our modern interactive games. The reader has absorbed the mind-set or world view of the book by the time the important information is reached.
1527 13th July: John Dee born in London, England, son of Rowland Dee, a minor civil servant, and Johanna Dee (nee Phillips). 1542 Dee atttends St. John's College, Cambridge University, having already been schooled at London and Chelmsford (Essex). Dee, having already mastered Latin, would have studied grammar, logic and rhetoric; also arithmetic, geometry, astronomy (which in those days included Astrology), and music; as well as the three philosophies - Moral, Natural and Divine. It is also probable that he studied Greek and Hebrew. It has also been suggested (Clulee 1988), that this was when Dee first became acquainted with Hermeticism, and even (French 1972) Practical Alchemy - though both of these would not have been on the curriculum! 1546 Dee gets BA. He is given a fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge as Under Reader in Greek. 1548 Dee is awarded his MA. He goes to Louvain in Belgium to lecture in Mathematics. He fast establishes an international reputation for himself as a leader in the field. 1550 Goes to Paris to lecture on Euclid. This is so successful Dee receives offers of patronage from European Monarchs and nobles: however, Dee refuses them all, as he has set his sights on a career in England. Dee's success in Paris also causes hime to be sought out by European scholars. Around this time, Dee's lectures show the influence of Henry Cornelius Agrippa. 1551 Returns to England. He makes a favourable impression on the boy King Edward VI, from whom he receives an annuity. 1552 Dee is employed by the Earl of Pembroke. Around this time, he is also engaged by the Duke of Northumberland, a powerful nobleman, as tutor to his children: on the grounds that the Duke wants "the best scientific education in England." 1553 Edward VI dies. Lady Jane Grey becomes Queen with support of, inter alia, Northumberland (Dee's patron). However, 9 days later she is deposed by Mary I. Northumberland is executed, and Dee becomes an object of suspicion among supporters of the new queen, Mary. 1555 Dee, who numbers Astrology among his many talents, does some work for Princess Elizabeth by casting her horoscope and those of the Queen and her husband. Dee's enemies use this as an excuse to lay false charges of Treason and conjuring evil spirits. Dee successfully defends himself before the Star Chamber and subsequent interrogation by the Bishop of London. Dee is eventually released 3 months after being arrested, but the slur of being a conjurer of spirits will haunt him for the rest of his life... 1558 Mary I dies. Elizabeth I ascends the throne. Unlike her predecessor, Elizabeth is kindly disposed towards Dee - indeed, she sets the date of her coronation (17th November) by a horoscope she has asked him to cast. Propaedeumata Aphoristica published. This is a set of aphorisms setting out Dee's view of cosmology, astrology, and the roles of science and natural magic. There is a strong Hermetic influence pervading the text. 1562 Dee travels to the Continent. In Antwerp, he gets hold of a rare copy of Trithemius' Steganographia - a book of Cryptography and Angel magic, allowing the magician to know what is going on in the parts of the Earth as if by telepathy. Dee by his own admission is very impressed by his find. 1563 Leaves Antwerp for Zurich in Switzerland; and thence for Italy. 1564 Returns to Antwerp. Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica is published. c. 1565 - 1570 Dee returns to England and settles at Mortlake in Oxfordshire. He sets about establishing the best library in England at his own house. It eventually becomes at least the second largest collection in all Europe: around 1000 written books, and 3000 more other documents. As well as containing works on all the Sciences, it also includes Hermetic philosophy,alchemical works, classical Roman poetry, neoplatonist works, etc etc. 1570 - 1583 In between being England's greatest Philosopher and Mathematician (and Bibliophile), Dee during this time is feted at Court. Both noblemen and scholars regularly visit Mortlake to meet Dee and to inspect his library. At one point (in 1575), the Queen herself comes to visit. However, apart from a few works (See below) Dee does not publish much himself: and he likes to impart his wisdom only in private. 1570 "Mathematicall Preface" to Euclid's Elements of Geometrie published. Dee's approach is not just one of practical mathematics, but also "Mathesis". This is a kind of Mystical Mathematics � la Pythagoras - as if the secret language of the mind of God, which holds the Universe and all its inhabitants together, consists of numbers. Hence Magic is the art of discovering the Equations which govern the Universe. 1576 Since 1563, one John Foxe has been publishing a book called Actes and Monuments. This has included disparaging references to Dee as the "Greate Conjurer", as well as a number of other epithets suggestive of black magic. Since 1571 a copy of this book has been placed in every English Cathedral, and in most parish churches. Fed up with the slander, Dee makes a Plea to make Foxe stop calling him "a conjurer of divils". This is successful (perhaps we can infer the influence of members of Elizabeth I's court?) - all references to Dee are removed in the 1576 edition. 1581 Dee's first recorded attempt at Angel Magic, with the aid of a seer named Barnabas Saul 1582 Dee meets Edward Kelley for the first time, who is then using the assumed name of "Talbot". From March until the spring of the following year, Dee and Kelley receive the Sigillum Dei Aemeth, the Holy Table, a Lamen formed from the names of the Heptarchic Kings and Princes, a magic Ring, and seven tables of letters (forming the basis of the Tabula Bonorum and Tabula Collecta). It would appear that Dee and Kelley had a quarrel early in 1583, causing a hiatus in the work. 1583 September - Dee, Kelley (now apparently reconciled) and their respective families travel to the Continent. In Dee's absence, a mob, possibly suspicious of his magical activities, ransack Mortlake doing extensive damage to the Library. Meanwhile, Dee and Kelley's Angelic Magic at this time includes revelations concerning the 49 Good Angels, Liber Logaeth, and the Angelic Alphabet. 1584 In Prague, Dee meets Emperor Rudolf II. Meanwhile, Dee and Kelley are attracting criticism and malicious gossip, after all they are "Heretics" (i.e. Protestants) in Catholic Europe, and practising Magic. Rumours of conjuring demons again begin to fly. It is around this time (April - July) that Dee and Kelley receive the Tablet of Nalvage, Liber Scientiae, the elemental Tablets and Tablet of Union and the 48 Enochian Calls. Significantly, the Angelic Magic operations between the pair fizzle out from this point. 1585 In Cracow, Dee meets the King of Poland. 1586 In Prague, Dee, at a meeting with the Papal Nuntio (i.e. the Vatican Ambassador), makes a plea for Christian unity and love to end the terrible divisions between Catholics and Protestants. Dee, Kelley and their entourage then leave to go on their travels again. Dee later learns that his plea for unity incensed the Nuntio against Dee: even the Pope wrote to the Emperor to arrest the magicians and send them to Rome for interrogation. Although this doesn't happen, they are banned from Rudolf's territories. Dee and Kelley go to stay as guests of the Duke of Bavaria, at one of his castles at Trebona. The Duke manages to get the exclusion order mitigated. 1589 Dee and Kelley break up once and for all, quite soon after the notorious wife-swapping incident. Kelley convinced Dee that an Angel had told them to share their wives in common. Note that since Dee was not present at the time this angel spoke to Kelley. Apparently the incident did occur, although Dee unsuccessfully tried to erase this portion from his diary. Kelley remains behind when Dee, at Elizabeth I's behest, returns to England. Dee attempts to continue Angel Magic with limited success, using as seers his son Arthur, and one Bartholemew Hickman. Dee's influence at court starts to go into decline: most of his old friends and patrons are either dead, getting old - or just wilfully distant. Old gossip about Dee being a conjurer of devils begins to circulate again... 1594 Dee writes A Letter, Containing a most Briefe Discourse Apologeticall... to the Archbishop of Canterbury - it is published the following year. Dee's motive is to try and quash rumours that he is a necromancer: but the rumours still persist. 1595 After his break-up with Dee, Kelley stayed in Europe: he was knighted by the Emperor Rudolf II, and employed as his Alchemist. However, when the bullion was not forthcoming, Rudolf lost patience and had Kelley imprisoned. In November 1595, Kelley, aged 40, died, being fatally injured falling from a turret during an escape bid. 1596 Given the Wardenship of Christ's College, Manchester, but encounters hostility from the Fellows there on account of his reputation. 1603 Elizabeth I, who throughout her reign had enormous respect for Dee, dies. She is replaced on the throne by the King of Scotland, James VI (who becomes James I of England). He is a man known for his hatred of witchcraft, satanism and the Occult. Once again, Dee finds himself as an outsider at Court, in much the same way as in 1553. 1604 Dee, in a desparate attempt to clear his name once and for all, petitions the King to put him on trial so that accusations of summoning evil spirits and devils can be disproved. Note that if Dee had gone on trial and was found guilty he would have been sentenced to death and burnt at the stake. As it happens, the King does not decide to put Dee on trial, but in sparing him the ordeal he has denied Dee the chance to salvage his public reputation, now in tatters. 1605 Jane, Dee's wife, dies of the plague. Dee is forced to relinquish his post at Manchester, owing to the hatred from the Fellows - this reduces him to poverty. The only way he can keep from starving is to start selling books from out of his famous Library. 1608 John Dee dies at Mortlake, aged 81. http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.geocities.com/alex_sumner/images/dee.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.geocities.com/alex_sumner/dee.htm&h=371&w=342&sz=34&hl=en&&um=1&tbnid=cFzN-3oxE4nXHM:&tbnh=122&tbnw=112&prev=/images%3Fq%3Djohn%2BDee%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN
Francis Bacon and John Dee
The Rosicrucian manifestos were published beginning in 1614, following John Dee's death in 1608, although they had circulated in manuscript form previously. The work of the particular evangelical confederation he had activated secretly in 1586 came to be known as "the Rosicrucian movement."
There is no doubt by revisionist historians that Dee's hand was in the writing of the manifestos, nor doubt that Dee's influence privately continued to dominate the movement long after its beginning with his Luneberg meeting. Francis Bacon and Michael Maier, Robert Fludd, and numerous other highly learned and respected men of their time have been continously tied closely with the Rosicrucian work. In the past 20 years especially, however, the same work of the Rosicrucian movement from the earliest records in the 16th Century has now been tied inextricably to John Dee.
In the 17th Century Francis Bacon's name came to the fore in his advocation of a scientific approach to knowledge and learning in Advancement in Learning, his Novum Organum and in the utopian allegory, The New Atlantis; also, in his activities as a founding member of the Royal Society, which concerned itself with the scientific approach.
Although Dee personally tutored Bacon in his youth, training him in ancient arcane arts, the name and reputation of John Dee was shelved necessarily by his own loving brothers and sisters to ensure the continued work of the Rosicrucians. They needed to avoid jeopardizing the greater objective of humankind's religious and philosophical freedom from persecution—or to state it more succinctly—to promote everyone's inherent and inalienable right to the freedom of individual thought and personal choice.
Subsequently it would require the research of disinterested parties to the esoteric traditions to get to the truth revealed from the records, before historical revisions would include Dr. John Dee's important role in the Rosicrucian movement. Today in the British Museum, Dee's significance to the early stages of the Renaissance as scientist, and philosopher-magician is highlighted on display. Many of his manuscripts and other contemporary publications revealing the intent of his work are also available in the British Library. Some of his more important writings also have been published in book form.
If ever there is an award for the man for all seasons, Dr. John Dee would probably be among the names nominated. His good name survived the long obscurity partly caused at the hands of his own brotherhood, and it now shines in the light of truth today under the scrutiny of those who would have no particular interest in promoting or not promoting an awareness of what he gave to humanity.
The esoteric traditions continue to recognize Dr. Dee for the powerful effect that his genius had intellectually and spiritually upon the world. Many freedoms enjoyed today are due to the effort and sacrifice, and the unrelenting devotion to service, of John Dee and others like him. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/2216/deejohn.htm
Barry Dunford.
Is there another dimension, not generally recognised, connected to the continuity of an esoteric spiritual tradition which is designed to help and guide the human race along a trajectory of spiritual evolution? This may incorporate a long term strategy involving various mystery schools and esoteric orders, and their ‘seeding’ specific knowledge into the human consciousness at various stages of its developing awareness. There is an esoteric tradition which tells of the presence of spiritual adepts who have apparently lived for hundreds, possibly thousands, of years. The feasibility of this is borne out by the apparent extreme longevity of members of the Noachian dynastic lineage as recorded in the Old Testament.
From a commentary on a 17th century treatise by the Abbé N. de Montfaucon de Villars, entitled Comte de Gabalis, the following illuminating exposition is provided: "In the Order of the Philosophers are enrolled the names of many Brothers who have feigned death in one place or who have mysteriously disappeared, only to transplant themselves to another. The burial place of Francis St. Alban has never been divulged by those who know. Lord Bacon’s death at the age of 65 is said to have occurred in the year 1626. It is significant that a rare print of John Valentine Andrea, author of certain mystical tracts of profound influence in Germany, appears to be a portrait of Lord Bacon at 80 years of age and bears a helmet, four roses, and the St. Andrew’s cross, the arms of St. Alban’s town....In the higher degrees of the Order, a Philosopher has power to abandon one physical body no longer suited to his purpose, and to occupy another previously prepared for his use. This transition is called an Avesa, and accounts for the fact that many Masters known to history seemingly never die."
Dr. Dee's learning was far and wide, a brilliant mathematician, whose study ranged from geo-cartography and calculus which was vital in navigating the New World for explorers, to astrology, alchemy, the Cabala, cypher writing, religion, architecture, and science. In short, Dee's metaphysics were a 'red' cross of the Hermetic tradition with a strong dose of mathematics. His library at the riverside village of Mortlake was considered the finest private collection in Europe containing thousands of bound books and handwritten manuscripts devoted to philosophy, science and esoterica. In comparison the University of Cambridge at the time had a mere 451 total books and manuscripts in their possession.
Noel Fermor in the journal Baconiana wrote that, "The Earl of Leicester's father, the Duke of Northmberland, employed Dee as a tutor to his children so that they would have a sound scientific upbringing. Northumberland became a notable scientist with a strong leaning toward mathematics and magnetism. Anthony Wood in his Athenae Oxoniensis, wrote "that no one knew Robert Dudley better than Dee." So it was quite natural for Leicester to introduce Dee to Elizabeth as she was to become the new Queen and it wasn't long before Dee advanced to become the court astrologer.
(Leicester signed his letters to Elizabeth with two circles containing dots symbolising he was her "Eyes")
Elizabeth was very much interested in the occult. Dee was responsible for choosing the most auspicious date for Elizabeth's coronation which was on January 15th, 1559. The Queen was so impressed by Dee that she eventually travelled with her court to Mortlake, for the purpose of seeing his great library.
Dee has been defamed through the centuries as a necromancer, but it's the opinion of many writers that his angelic-cabalistic- alchemical work, his Philosophers Stone, the"Monad Hieroglyphica"(1564) may have been a cover for covert operations carried on in the name of her majesty. The 007 was the insignia number that Elizabeth was to use for private communiques between her Court and Dee.
Dee signed his letters with two circles symbolising his own two eyes and indicating that he was the secret eyes of the Queen.The two circles are guarded by what may be considered a square root sign or an elongated seven. For Dee, seven was a sacred cabbalistic and lucky number.(Richard Deacon)
When the Spanish Armada loomed over the English Channel it was Dee as the wise sage who suggested to hold the course and be still. He had correctly anticipated that devastating storms would destroy the mighty Spanish Fleet and that it would be best to keep the English ships at bay. Some have suggested that it was Dee himself who conjured up that storm.
Whatever it was that allowed England to defeat the Armada, John Dee was having his finest patriotic moment. One can see why some commentators have Dee associated with being the inspiration for the protagonist Prospero (to hope for the future) from The Tempest. Francis Yates in her seminal exploration Majesty and Magic in Shakespeare's Last Plays, comments, "Dare one say that the German Rosicrucian movement reaches a peak of poetic expression in The Tempest, a Rosicrucian manifesto infused with the spirit of Dee, using theatrical parables for esoteric communication?"
Dee's wisdom of nature even extended into the field of architecture where Francis Yates in The Theatre of the World states that James Burbage consulted Dee on the design of the first theater. Later,"The Globe was created, says Yates, because in the Burbage tradition the design was to amplify naturally the voices of the plyers." This was accomplished by the geometrical resonance of the circled dome. Burbage relied on Dee's extensive architectural library for this construction.
Little has come down to us in terms of records of Francis Bacon and John Dee knowing each other but on the afternoon of August 11, 1582 there was an entry in Dee's journal that they met at Mortlake. Bacon was 21 years old at the time and was accompanied by a Mr. Phillipes, a top cryptographer in the employ of Sir Francis Walsingham who headed up the early days of England's secret service. They were there according to Ewen MacDuff, in an article, "After Some Time Be Past" in 'Baconiana', (Dec.1983)" to find out the truth about the ancient Hebrew art of the Gematria- one of the oldest cipher systems known, dating from 700 B.C.
They were seeking to discuss this with Dee because he was not only one of the leading adepts of this field, but a regular practitioner in certain levels of Gematria." Also, David Kahn in The Codebreakers suggests that because of Dee's great interest in the 13th century alchemist Roger Bacon, that he may have introduced Bacon to the works of Roger Bacon,"which may help explain the similarities in their thought."
The Precarious Politics of Hermetic Tradition in the King James Reign
There is no doubt of John Dee's ubiquitous influence during the Elizabethan age. When James became King, Dee's ideas on magic were no longer appreciated. James unfavorable and fearful attitude toward the occult was the opposite of Elizabeth's. Bacon became well aware that it was necessary to be very careful while advancing his scientific ideas to James and that any trace of Dee's weird angelic-alchemical study could jeopardize his own projects from taking hold.
Bacon's observation of the mis-treatment bestowed upon Dee by James served to reinforce that it was a different era and that the need to practice that Shakespeare maxim, "Discretion is the better part of valor" was imperative to anyone with a sweet disposition toward magic and mathematics or a secret society. Dee was even derided in the Ben Jonson play The Alchemist perhaps to placate James, yet another signal that this was an end of the liberal Elizabethan attitude toward Hermeticism. So it's not surprising that Bacon chose to hold back his Rosicrucian utopia The New Atlantis from publication until after his death as it portrayed a future world in which man could co-exist with his fellow man without the divine right of kings and the new tools that the magic of science would one day bring could also be in harmony with nature as well.
But it was Dee's colonization dream many years before who referred to the new world as "Atlantis." He would have been proud to have read Bacon's New Atlantis and seen Bacon's sympathetic portrayal of him as the magician Prospero, of The Tempest.
Francis Yates in The Rosicrucian Enlightenment suggests that," in Bacon's writings there is nowhere to be found any mention of Dee or his famous Monas Hierglyphica. Yates makes a further point by saying that, "It is a well known objection to Bacon's claim to be an important figure in the history of science that he did not place sufficient emphasis on the all-important mathematical sciences in his programme for the advancement of learning, and that he ignored these sciences by his rejection of the Copernican theory and of William Gilbert's theory of the magnet.
Bacon's avoidance of mathematics and Copernican theory might have been because he regarded mathematics as too closely associated with Dee and his 'conjuring' and Copernicus as to closely associated with Bruno and his extreme Egyptian and magical religion. This hypothesis is now worth recalling because it suggests a possible reason for a major difference between German Rosicrucianism and Baconianism. In the former Dee and his mathematics are not feared, but Bacon avoids them; in the former Bruno is an influence but is rejected by Bacon. In both cases Bacon may have been evading what seemed to him dangerous subjects in order to protect his projects from witch hunters, from the cry of 'sorcery' which as Naude' said, "could pursue a mathematician in the early 17th century."
It should be remembered that Bacon had a cautious and scientific approach to mathematics along with his great interest in cyphers.
Peter Dawkins in his book "Francis Bacon Herald of the New Age" would strongly disagree with Yates on Bacon's avoidance of mathematics. He writes, "nothing could be further from the truth: for number is a cypher and geometry a symbol for truth, and Francis Bacon was intensely interested in and a master of cipher and symbol, and of rhythm in language, using them repeatedly throughout all his works in various cryptic ways--for he saw mathematics as a vitally important occult or mystical science, and used it accordingly.
Mathematics coupled with analogy and allegory, constitute a principal means to the discovery of what Bacon has enticingly hidden." Dawkins later emphasizes that, "Francis Bacon considered mathematics to be a branch of metaphysics, capable of giving insights into the highest 'Forms' or archetypes--the laws and intelligences of the universe. Consequently, like Dr. John Dee, his early tutor, he was fascinated by mathematical cypher in both its numeric and geometric forms, and with its magical use.
Bacon gives both mathematics and analogy which he considers a science and calls "grammatical philosophy," a high place in his Great Instauration; which, when used together help to unlock the doors to that which Bacon has deliberately concealed-- including certain mysteries hidden in the Shakespeare plays. For instance, the two great books published in 1623 were the Shakespeare's Folio Comedies, Histories & Tragedies and Bacon's De Augmentis Scientiarum{the philosophical background and purpose of the Shakespeare plays} two masterpieces published together, since they are as twins, each being a key to unlock hidden treasures in the other-- two relating to the twin faculties of the mind--imagination and reason--and both drawing upon the third faculty, memory."
It should be noted that the following year 1624 the cypher book, Cryptomenytices was published and Dawkins points to this as "providing the cipher keys to open the 'crypt' of Rosicrucian wisdom hidden in both the philosophical and the poetical works of art of this great Master."
Yates admits to being a Stratfordian and of course does not realize the extent of Bacon's wisdom in protecting himself from censorship. She says, "We begin to understand that The Tempest was a very bold manifesto, and that Shakespeare was braver than Bacon."
If Yates could only glimpse how ahead of the game Bacon was she could only burst out and laugh at herself for writing this. But she is not the first modern day Shakespeare critic to underestimate Francis Bacon's foresight to write under a mighty pen-name and steer his Secret Free-Masonry-Group at the same time. It's like asking was Twain braver than Clemens? The absurd logic of this could be solved if Stratfordians applied the Baconian method (inductive logic with trial and error) into the Shakespeare Authorship.
Go one step further using this method of inquiry to cross reference a lost connection missing between the Rosicrucian literature of The Fama and the Confessio, The Chemical Marriage of Christian Rosenkrantz, The New Atlantis, The Tempest, with The King James Version of the Bible, The Advancement of Learning and Dee's Monad Hieroglyphic. Somewhere there lies a common thread, a code, meant for those who would cross reference all these words. Perhaps when the code is broken we will have the equivalent of Prospero's buried staff and recognize the impact of Dee and Bacon's relationship with their dedication to the enlightenment of all.
What Bacon learned from Dee outside of the importance of cyphers was not to have one's political and esoteric-artistic identity defined exclusively by the outside world. There was inner power for Bacon that no matter what happened to him he could still sacrifice his name, bury his staff like Prospero and wield a protective persona to express his artistic views for himself and his secret group of "Good Pens." This is responsible wisdom in action as a response to difficult political pressures. For Bacon due to the out of the ordinary set of circumstances surrounding his birth this pressure became a discipline for him (all his life) to maintain and remember that old saying, "keep your friends close and your enemies closer." Bacon knew from first hand experience when he said, as Shakespeare, "sweet are the uses of adversity."
Manly P. Hall had a book, Orders of Universal Reformation in which a woodcut from 1655 by Jacob Cats, shows an emblem of an ancient man bearing likeness to John Dee, passing the lamp of tradition over an open grave to a young man with an extravagantly large rose on his shoe buckle. In Bacon's sixth book of the Advancement of Learning he defines his method as, Traditionem Lampadis, the delivery of the lamp.
Mrs. Henry Pott writes in "Francis Bacon and His Secret Society,"The organization or method of transmission he (Bacon) established was such as to ensure that never again so long as the world endured, should the lamp of tradition, the light of truth, be darkened or extinguished."
In closing a comment from Noel Fermor from Baconiana 1981 "After all, in John Dee we have a man who had a profound influence on Renaissance thought and on the deep laid schemes of Francis Bacon for the betterment of mankind. Dee wrote, "Farewell, diligent reader; in reading these things, invocate the spirit of Eternal Light, speak little, meditate much and judge aright."For more on John Dee: visit The John Dee Society Web Site
The Secret: To Dare, To Will, To Know, To Keep Silent
Intelligence is the key to understanding the world today. What spies have in common with magicians is an uncanny ability to connect the seemingly unconnected, to notice what goes on behind the scenes and to see through misdirection ~ it takes one to know one. Both have learned to synthesize and interprete data, how to pace and lead people (hypno-patsies) with rapport. The opening gambit of psychological warfare and mind control is flattery.
As trained observers, magicians and spies are adept at people-reading and keeping secrets; both are actors -- performers. Both are in secret societies that rely on craft and often use collaborators or confederates, and mentors. How much different is stealth and surveillance than a spell of invisibility? Each have their rules of engagement in the Great Work and the Great Game. Clandestine Craft
Even some of the elements of tradecraft are the same. Both are cryptic, using encryptions and codes. Each has its own arcane language, symbols and rituals veiled from the profane. Remote Viewing or psychic spying is virtually identical with clairvoyance. Ceremonial psychodrama is played out in public, in personality cults and "ritual" murders.
Both use passwords and slogans for security. Cryptography is now ubiquitous. All domestic and foreign electronic communication is monitored by programs like Echelon. Spies and magicians both are cracking the Brain Code, the wetware of humanity. Cryptocracy refers to a type of government where the real leaders are hidden. There may possibly be a fake government that appears to be in charge and this fake government might not know themselves that they are not in charge. It can also be used when referring to similar arrangements in organisations, orders, sects and cults.
Everywhere is Ground Zero
In military terms psychic operations are called psychotronics. Adversaries are rogue psi operatives, psiwarriors who battle like sorcerers. Psychic self defense employs thought disruption, shielding techniques, mind drain and energy manipulation. Psionics is scientific magic ~ magecraft, the product of extraordinary human potential. Precogs, like analysts, are attuned to the future.
Deep Cover
They understand viscerally that things are often not what they seem. Both are masters of disguise, the hidden environment, intelligence, espionage, and covert action. Both aim to 'tweak the timeline' with small perturbations that pump up to macroscopic results, setting up currents of intentional influence. They also tweak minds by controlling the environment. No one can resist what they cannot detect.
Both are Inside Outsiders, working at the fringes of the System. The "outsider" aesthetic is charged by a desire to break free from the contrivances of tradition. They look boldly outside the system and deep within themselves for inspiration that arises directly from Creative Source. Both work sub rosa. This phrase comes from the Latin meaning 'under the rose' for confidentiality, black ops. It comes from the Masonic fraternal tradition. The rose is the emblem of Horus, God of Silence and Secrecy; the Tudor Rose shares tthe same root.
Dee was excited about a book, the "Steganographica" of Trithemius, the Abbot of Sponheim. He spent ten days copying a manuscript of this work and crowed to Sir William about its value. The "Steganographica" appears to be a textbook on codes and ciphers, all very valuable to spies and intelligence networks, but is really a hermetic text on angelic communication. Designed so that the codes and ciphers described in the first section of the book must be used to read the second section on angelic magick, Trithemius' masterpiece works like our modern interactive games. The reader has absorbed the mind-set or world view of the book by the time the important information is reached.
1527 13th July: John Dee born in London, England, son of Rowland Dee, a minor civil servant, and Johanna Dee (nee Phillips). 1542 Dee atttends St. John's College, Cambridge University, having already been schooled at London and Chelmsford (Essex). Dee, having already mastered Latin, would have studied grammar, logic and rhetoric; also arithmetic, geometry, astronomy (which in those days included Astrology), and music; as well as the three philosophies - Moral, Natural and Divine. It is also probable that he studied Greek and Hebrew. It has also been suggested (Clulee 1988), that this was when Dee first became acquainted with Hermeticism, and even (French 1972) Practical Alchemy - though both of these would not have been on the curriculum! 1546 Dee gets BA. He is given a fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge as Under Reader in Greek. 1548 Dee is awarded his MA. He goes to Louvain in Belgium to lecture in Mathematics. He fast establishes an international reputation for himself as a leader in the field. 1550 Goes to Paris to lecture on Euclid. This is so successful Dee receives offers of patronage from European Monarchs and nobles: however, Dee refuses them all, as he has set his sights on a career in England. Dee's success in Paris also causes hime to be sought out by European scholars. Around this time, Dee's lectures show the influence of Henry Cornelius Agrippa. 1551 Returns to England. He makes a favourable impression on the boy King Edward VI, from whom he receives an annuity. 1552 Dee is employed by the Earl of Pembroke. Around this time, he is also engaged by the Duke of Northumberland, a powerful nobleman, as tutor to his children: on the grounds that the Duke wants "the best scientific education in England." 1553 Edward VI dies. Lady Jane Grey becomes Queen with support of, inter alia, Northumberland (Dee's patron). However, 9 days later she is deposed by Mary I. Northumberland is executed, and Dee becomes an object of suspicion among supporters of the new queen, Mary. 1555 Dee, who numbers Astrology among his many talents, does some work for Princess Elizabeth by casting her horoscope and those of the Queen and her husband. Dee's enemies use this as an excuse to lay false charges of Treason and conjuring evil spirits. Dee successfully defends himself before the Star Chamber and subsequent interrogation by the Bishop of London. Dee is eventually released 3 months after being arrested, but the slur of being a conjurer of spirits will haunt him for the rest of his life... 1558 Mary I dies. Elizabeth I ascends the throne. Unlike her predecessor, Elizabeth is kindly disposed towards Dee - indeed, she sets the date of her coronation (17th November) by a horoscope she has asked him to cast. Propaedeumata Aphoristica published. This is a set of aphorisms setting out Dee's view of cosmology, astrology, and the roles of science and natural magic. There is a strong Hermetic influence pervading the text. 1562 Dee travels to the Continent. In Antwerp, he gets hold of a rare copy of Trithemius' Steganographia - a book of Cryptography and Angel magic, allowing the magician to know what is going on in the parts of the Earth as if by telepathy. Dee by his own admission is very impressed by his find. 1563 Leaves Antwerp for Zurich in Switzerland; and thence for Italy. 1564 Returns to Antwerp. Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica is published. c. 1565 - 1570 Dee returns to England and settles at Mortlake in Oxfordshire. He sets about establishing the best library in England at his own house. It eventually becomes at least the second largest collection in all Europe: around 1000 written books, and 3000 more other documents. As well as containing works on all the Sciences, it also includes Hermetic philosophy,alchemical works, classical Roman poetry, neoplatonist works, etc etc. 1570 - 1583 In between being England's greatest Philosopher and Mathematician (and Bibliophile), Dee during this time is feted at Court. Both noblemen and scholars regularly visit Mortlake to meet Dee and to inspect his library. At one point (in 1575), the Queen herself comes to visit. However, apart from a few works (See below) Dee does not publish much himself: and he likes to impart his wisdom only in private. 1570 "Mathematicall Preface" to Euclid's Elements of Geometrie published. Dee's approach is not just one of practical mathematics, but also "Mathesis". This is a kind of Mystical Mathematics � la Pythagoras - as if the secret language of the mind of God, which holds the Universe and all its inhabitants together, consists of numbers. Hence Magic is the art of discovering the Equations which govern the Universe. 1576 Since 1563, one John Foxe has been publishing a book called Actes and Monuments. This has included disparaging references to Dee as the "Greate Conjurer", as well as a number of other epithets suggestive of black magic. Since 1571 a copy of this book has been placed in every English Cathedral, and in most parish churches. Fed up with the slander, Dee makes a Plea to make Foxe stop calling him "a conjurer of divils". This is successful (perhaps we can infer the influence of members of Elizabeth I's court?) - all references to Dee are removed in the 1576 edition. 1581 Dee's first recorded attempt at Angel Magic, with the aid of a seer named Barnabas Saul 1582 Dee meets Edward Kelley for the first time, who is then using the assumed name of "Talbot". From March until the spring of the following year, Dee and Kelley receive the Sigillum Dei Aemeth, the Holy Table, a Lamen formed from the names of the Heptarchic Kings and Princes, a magic Ring, and seven tables of letters (forming the basis of the Tabula Bonorum and Tabula Collecta). It would appear that Dee and Kelley had a quarrel early in 1583, causing a hiatus in the work. 1583 September - Dee, Kelley (now apparently reconciled) and their respective families travel to the Continent. In Dee's absence, a mob, possibly suspicious of his magical activities, ransack Mortlake doing extensive damage to the Library. Meanwhile, Dee and Kelley's Angelic Magic at this time includes revelations concerning the 49 Good Angels, Liber Logaeth, and the Angelic Alphabet. 1584 In Prague, Dee meets Emperor Rudolf II. Meanwhile, Dee and Kelley are attracting criticism and malicious gossip, after all they are "Heretics" (i.e. Protestants) in Catholic Europe, and practising Magic. Rumours of conjuring demons again begin to fly. It is around this time (April - July) that Dee and Kelley receive the Tablet of Nalvage, Liber Scientiae, the elemental Tablets and Tablet of Union and the 48 Enochian Calls. Significantly, the Angelic Magic operations between the pair fizzle out from this point. 1585 In Cracow, Dee meets the King of Poland. 1586 In Prague, Dee, at a meeting with the Papal Nuntio (i.e. the Vatican Ambassador), makes a plea for Christian unity and love to end the terrible divisions between Catholics and Protestants. Dee, Kelley and their entourage then leave to go on their travels again. Dee later learns that his plea for unity incensed the Nuntio against Dee: even the Pope wrote to the Emperor to arrest the magicians and send them to Rome for interrogation. Although this doesn't happen, they are banned from Rudolf's territories. Dee and Kelley go to stay as guests of the Duke of Bavaria, at one of his castles at Trebona. The Duke manages to get the exclusion order mitigated. 1589 Dee and Kelley break up once and for all, quite soon after the notorious wife-swapping incident. Kelley convinced Dee that an Angel had told them to share their wives in common. Note that since Dee was not present at the time this angel spoke to Kelley. Apparently the incident did occur, although Dee unsuccessfully tried to erase this portion from his diary. Kelley remains behind when Dee, at Elizabeth I's behest, returns to England. Dee attempts to continue Angel Magic with limited success, using as seers his son Arthur, and one Bartholemew Hickman. Dee's influence at court starts to go into decline: most of his old friends and patrons are either dead, getting old - or just wilfully distant. Old gossip about Dee being a conjurer of devils begins to circulate again... 1594 Dee writes A Letter, Containing a most Briefe Discourse Apologeticall... to the Archbishop of Canterbury - it is published the following year. Dee's motive is to try and quash rumours that he is a necromancer: but the rumours still persist. 1595 After his break-up with Dee, Kelley stayed in Europe: he was knighted by the Emperor Rudolf II, and employed as his Alchemist. However, when the bullion was not forthcoming, Rudolf lost patience and had Kelley imprisoned. In November 1595, Kelley, aged 40, died, being fatally injured falling from a turret during an escape bid. 1596 Given the Wardenship of Christ's College, Manchester, but encounters hostility from the Fellows there on account of his reputation. 1603 Elizabeth I, who throughout her reign had enormous respect for Dee, dies. She is replaced on the throne by the King of Scotland, James VI (who becomes James I of England). He is a man known for his hatred of witchcraft, satanism and the Occult. Once again, Dee finds himself as an outsider at Court, in much the same way as in 1553. 1604 Dee, in a desparate attempt to clear his name once and for all, petitions the King to put him on trial so that accusations of summoning evil spirits and devils can be disproved. Note that if Dee had gone on trial and was found guilty he would have been sentenced to death and burnt at the stake. As it happens, the King does not decide to put Dee on trial, but in sparing him the ordeal he has denied Dee the chance to salvage his public reputation, now in tatters. 1605 Jane, Dee's wife, dies of the plague. Dee is forced to relinquish his post at Manchester, owing to the hatred from the Fellows - this reduces him to poverty. The only way he can keep from starving is to start selling books from out of his famous Library. 1608 John Dee dies at Mortlake, aged 81. http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.geocities.com/alex_sumner/images/dee.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.geocities.com/alex_sumner/dee.htm&h=371&w=342&sz=34&hl=en&&um=1&tbnid=cFzN-3oxE4nXHM:&tbnh=122&tbnw=112&prev=/images%3Fq%3Djohn%2BDee%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN
Francis Bacon and John Dee
The Rosicrucian manifestos were published beginning in 1614, following John Dee's death in 1608, although they had circulated in manuscript form previously. The work of the particular evangelical confederation he had activated secretly in 1586 came to be known as "the Rosicrucian movement."
There is no doubt by revisionist historians that Dee's hand was in the writing of the manifestos, nor doubt that Dee's influence privately continued to dominate the movement long after its beginning with his Luneberg meeting. Francis Bacon and Michael Maier, Robert Fludd, and numerous other highly learned and respected men of their time have been continously tied closely with the Rosicrucian work. In the past 20 years especially, however, the same work of the Rosicrucian movement from the earliest records in the 16th Century has now been tied inextricably to John Dee.
In the 17th Century Francis Bacon's name came to the fore in his advocation of a scientific approach to knowledge and learning in Advancement in Learning, his Novum Organum and in the utopian allegory, The New Atlantis; also, in his activities as a founding member of the Royal Society, which concerned itself with the scientific approach.
Although Dee personally tutored Bacon in his youth, training him in ancient arcane arts, the name and reputation of John Dee was shelved necessarily by his own loving brothers and sisters to ensure the continued work of the Rosicrucians. They needed to avoid jeopardizing the greater objective of humankind's religious and philosophical freedom from persecution—or to state it more succinctly—to promote everyone's inherent and inalienable right to the freedom of individual thought and personal choice.
Subsequently it would require the research of disinterested parties to the esoteric traditions to get to the truth revealed from the records, before historical revisions would include Dr. John Dee's important role in the Rosicrucian movement. Today in the British Museum, Dee's significance to the early stages of the Renaissance as scientist, and philosopher-magician is highlighted on display. Many of his manuscripts and other contemporary publications revealing the intent of his work are also available in the British Library. Some of his more important writings also have been published in book form.
If ever there is an award for the man for all seasons, Dr. John Dee would probably be among the names nominated. His good name survived the long obscurity partly caused at the hands of his own brotherhood, and it now shines in the light of truth today under the scrutiny of those who would have no particular interest in promoting or not promoting an awareness of what he gave to humanity.
The esoteric traditions continue to recognize Dr. Dee for the powerful effect that his genius had intellectually and spiritually upon the world. Many freedoms enjoyed today are due to the effort and sacrifice, and the unrelenting devotion to service, of John Dee and others like him. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/2216/deejohn.htm
Barry Dunford.
Is there another dimension, not generally recognised, connected to the continuity of an esoteric spiritual tradition which is designed to help and guide the human race along a trajectory of spiritual evolution? This may incorporate a long term strategy involving various mystery schools and esoteric orders, and their ‘seeding’ specific knowledge into the human consciousness at various stages of its developing awareness. There is an esoteric tradition which tells of the presence of spiritual adepts who have apparently lived for hundreds, possibly thousands, of years. The feasibility of this is borne out by the apparent extreme longevity of members of the Noachian dynastic lineage as recorded in the Old Testament.
From a commentary on a 17th century treatise by the Abbé N. de Montfaucon de Villars, entitled Comte de Gabalis, the following illuminating exposition is provided: "In the Order of the Philosophers are enrolled the names of many Brothers who have feigned death in one place or who have mysteriously disappeared, only to transplant themselves to another. The burial place of Francis St. Alban has never been divulged by those who know. Lord Bacon’s death at the age of 65 is said to have occurred in the year 1626. It is significant that a rare print of John Valentine Andrea, author of certain mystical tracts of profound influence in Germany, appears to be a portrait of Lord Bacon at 80 years of age and bears a helmet, four roses, and the St. Andrew’s cross, the arms of St. Alban’s town....In the higher degrees of the Order, a Philosopher has power to abandon one physical body no longer suited to his purpose, and to occupy another previously prepared for his use. This transition is called an Avesa, and accounts for the fact that many Masters known to history seemingly never die."
ST. GERMAIN’S TOP SECRET CODE REVEALED
The Triangle Book of St. Germain
By Iona Miller, 8/2007
MASONIC SECRET OF ST. GERMAIN: Longevity, Ye Olde-Fashioned Way
St. Germain had The Secret. That secret became a legacy of Manly Palmer Hall (MPH) and his Philosophical Research Society (PRS). It was his supreme treasure, which he kept safely hidden in his vault. The two parchment cipher texts now reside in the Getty Research Institute, likewise deep in their library vaults.
This wisest adept in Europe reserved his greatest gift for his wisest companions. St. Germaine recorded his version of THE SECRET for health, wealth and long life in his legendary TRIANGLE BOOK, and apparently made copies for his closest circle of initiates. But it seems the entire secret was never entrusted to a single individual, as the copies of the book are curiously not identical, containing different illustrations.
We might deduce that to properly work the formulae in the book, one required the Emblems and Sigils it described. Is this why Manly Palmer Hall possessed two copies of the book, each with different glyphs? It begs the point, were there other copies with even more illustrations required to initiate the whole current -- to attain magical immortality?
What we know is that both St. Germain and Manly Palmer Hall lived to a ripe old age and remained mentally vibrant. Can this obscure arcane text -- one of the rarest occult manuscripts -- be the secret of their longevity? The book is alleged to be Egyptian in origin. Hall can be seen with the book in a portrait, which appears as frontpiece in his FREEMASONRY OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS.
Here, for the first time, the text translation appears publically with the withheld 5 illustrations of the two copies, and examples of the arcane crypto key. Even in the originals, it is difficult to make out the precise glyphs of the sigils, but arguably their magical potency is intact. Sigils and emblems often contain hidden meanings, since they are visual shorthand, which can be "read" for their symbolism. Carl Jung used this method as the traditional basis of his alchemically inspired psychology.
Secrets have a way of keeping themselves, even when hiding in plain sight. The quality of these reproductions is limited by the photographic slides of the originals. They were taken during the 1970s surreptitiously in the PRS vault, most likely for another famous 20th Century adept. We can only conjecture why he resorted to subterfuge but such shenanigans are commonly reported in occult circles. Today, PRS says the book is available to view as a photocopy or microfilm of the originals, which were sold at auction but no one seems to have seen them.
LEGEND OF St. GERMAIN
St. Germain claimed to possess the secret of eternal youth, one of the two traditional goals of alchemy. He never seemed to age. For an entire century he maintained the physical appearance of a man between forty and fifty years old. He could do just about anything. Baron de Gleichen tells in Sourvenirs de Charles Henri, baron de Gleichen (1868), that according to his acquaintances, St. Germain had the appearance of a man of fifty years old.
The Comte de St. Germain, “der Wundermann,” is a legendary figure. Little historical fact is known of this Hungarian Adept, a genius or charlatan, depending on your point of view. The Rosicrucians claim he was Sir Francis Bacon in a previous, or perhaps even extended life. New Agers count him among the Ascended Masters. He is strongly linked with the Freemasons, Rosicrucians and Knights Templar. He could allegedly astral travel or bilocate and produced an elixir of youth.
The self-styled Count has shadowy origins and his birth and death dates are unknown, as is his true identity. Saint-Germain was thought to be the love child of the widow of Charles II of Spain, or a Sephardic Jew from Portugal, although Theosophists glorify him as the son of Francis Rakoczi II, the prince of Transylvania.
His birth is estimated around 1690. Some believe he still lives. But he either died around age 80-94, or pretended to die on February 27, 1784 in the German court of Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel, a fellow alchemist. His longevity is in close accord with the 100-year lifespan goal of The Triangle Book, give or take a decade.
Calling him “the man that doesn’t die,” many continued to insist that the jewel-trading Count was very much alive. Freemason documents indicate that he represented French Masons at a meeting in 1785. Madame de Genlis claimed to have seen him in Vienna in 1821. Several travelers in the 1800's were sure they saw the miracle worker in the Far East and other parts of the world.
Theosophist Madame Blavatsky said that she met the Count in 1896, incarnated as a "Master," or spiritual leader. In 1930 Guy W. Ballard, hiking in northern California, claimed to meet the Ascended Master on the side of Mount Shasta in his book Unveiled Mysteries (1934). He established the Saint Germain Foundation.
Fluent in all European languages, his aliases included: Christian Rosenkreutz, Prince Rakoczi, Marquis de Montferrat, Count Bellamare in Venice, Chevalier Schoening in Pisa, Cevalier Weldon in Milan, Count Soltikoff in Genoa, and Count Tazarogy in Schwalbach.
This polymath was a great entertainer, both as conversationalist and concert level violinist who composed music. He could improvise on the piano, also. The savant was a talented painter, linguist, diplomat and skilled pharmacist or chemist, as well as alchemist. His remedies including ayouth elixir were sought by those who came under his spell. He really enchanted his listeners.
Relating events of centuries past, the Count would deliberately lead credulous listeners to believe that he had been present. "These fools of Parisians believe that I am five hundred years old," he once remarked to a friend. "I confirm them in this idea because I see that it gives them much pleasure — not that I am not infinitely older than I appear." He attributed his youthful appearance in part to his sobriety and a diet mostly of oatmeal, (Magre). When he ate meat, he liked to stick to chicken. So, we could surmise he had a low cholesterol diet.
In 1743 he was reported in London, accused as a spy for the Stuarts. He went to France around 1748, where Louis XV employed him as a spy several times. Around 1760 he was forced to leave France for England. There he taught Count Cagliostro the Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry. We can presume he would have learned all the cipher methods of Sir Francis Bacon during his London visits, both for his secret societies and for espionage. New American Cyclopædia xiv. 266 says: "He is supposed to have been employed during the greater part of his life as a spy at the courts at which he resided."
By 1762 he was in St. Petersburg, meddling in the conspiracy to make Catherine the Great Queen of Russia. After returning to Paris in 1770, he prophesied the French Revolution to Marie Antoinette and her friend, Madame d'Adhémar, who wrote a story of his abilities as an Adept. Then he traveled through Germany, eventually dwelling in the state of Schleswig-Holstein.
The Count was an international spy, ringleader of secret societies, enlightened visionary and proponent of U.S. freedom, urging on the Founding Fathers, including Washington and Franklin, in their faltering moments. He worked behind the scenes for a United States of Europe. He carried much of Bacon's agenda and political philosophy forward in a rapidly changing world, ratifying the magical current of Roger Bacon, John Dee, Sir Francis Bacon, and himself.
TALES FROM THE CRYPTOGRAM
THE CODE OF ST. GERMAIN begins with the very shape of the book itself -- a downward-pointing triangle which means 'water' in the alchemical language. When it suggests the rite gives one the ability to raise all things submerged since the Great Flood, it may imply that this book itself is a kind of 'sea' which contains sunken treasures that can resurface through magical means.
The other element missing from view has been the cryptographic key to the cipher text. It is highly possible that other secrets remain "buried" in the text for those astute enough to "dive deeply" or "mine" this metaphysical database. Surely the surface text is just the tip of the alchemical iceberg.
One might immediately suspect even the Latin title page itself, which contains the intention of the author that this is a great gift for his wisest companions. Even the French text itself may be riddled with undiscovered ciphers, for St. Germain is known to have encoded secrets in up to eight languages at once -- mixing them together freely to further conceal their treasure.
The cryptographic text could still potentially conceal a variety of ciphers that should be explored as possibilities: simple substitution ciphers, key ciphers, wheel ciphers, Hermetic and qabbalistic ciphers, number codes, etc. A plethora of crypto methods were in common use at the time the Count either wrote the book, or transcribed it from an ancient text in his possession. The later is certainly possible because of the claim of Egyptian origins and its preservation in Asia, as described at the beginning of the translation.
THE CODE OF ST. GERMAIN
The unusual triangular shape of the book itself implies the Three Principles of alchemy -- Salt, Mercury and Sulpher -- body, soul and spirit. The upright triangle is a symbol of fire; reversed of water; and interlaced of the union of opposites, also known as the Star of David.
The triangle form could also suggest a triple meaning for the contents of the book: alchemical, kabbalistic and Hermetic. It is a recipe not only for experiencing a symbol in one's inner world but also for manifesting it in reality, for becoming a living embodiment of Spirit. The Triangle is also as essential as the circle in magic. The Triangle of Art, Solomon's triangle of evocation, is a protected space outside the magic circle into which spirits are compelled to appear. Many spirits are called up in St. Germain's Triangle text.
Typically, the central circle is inscribed with the sigil (seal) of the spirit to be invoked. The usual form is of a triangle, circumscribed with various words of power, containing an inner, blackened circle. The purpose of the triangle is to contain the manifested entity. They often have sigils. There is such an illustration in The Triangle Book, too.
The triangle is a 2-d representation of a pyramid, a virtual resurrection machine. There are 20 triangular faces in an icosahedron, eight in an octahedron, four in a tetrahedron, etc. The triangle, or tetrahedron is the geometric basis of all forms. Precious stones exhibit crystal structures. The atomic structure of the diamond, face-centered cubic close pack, is related to the alchemical squaring of the circle.
The Tetrahedron is the most basic shape to be found in the three dimensional universe of volume. The Merkaba Star Tetrahedron is actually two tetrahedrons interlocked to form a three-dimensional Star of David.
The configuration of the Star Tetrahedron is formed within the first eight cells of life. The Star Tetrahedron also models the energetic body of the human being, the blending of Heaven and Earth, Male and Female. It was called ‘Merkaba’ in the esoteric knowledge of Ancient Egypt.
SIGN OF THE WINGED DRAGON
In legend, the Philosopher's Stone is kept in the custody of the reawakened Dragon, the Adept who fully inhabits his or her Body of Light. Alchemy itself is a triple process of uniting the physical, psychological and spiritual. In Masonry, each line of the triangle itself symbolizes a kingdom of nature -- mineral, vegetable and animal. They stand for explorations the Master Mason needs for a complete education.
All these points may be clues to the nature of the "winged dragon" of the title page of The Triangle Book. In alchemy it is a symbol of the volatile elements. Appearing as a symbol of coagulatio in other alchemy texts, it suggests the pandaemonium of psychic images.
Psychologically, the dragon is the union of ordinary human reality with the Transpersonal Self and a passion for transformation. Some now say it is a symbol of DNA or the kundalini energy. Thus, it is a symbol of the Great Work.
This winged dragon is the symbolic superstar of The Triangle Book. In The Book of Lambspring. It represents the Anima Mundi, or Soul of the World, which is the sum total of planetary existence -- the holographic blueprint on which form is based, the informational level or primal source of being. It is said that medicine providing the gift of youth can be made from its venom.
So, the dragon is a healing power. The spiritual food of immortality signifies the ability of the ego to assimilate the previously unconscious aspects of the Self. This is the elixir of youth that creates the immortal body, equivalent to the Philosopher's Stone. The invocation with powerful godnames is combined with the dragon emblem to initiate the current. The rite couldn't be practiced without the Emblems and Sigils. http://trianglebook.weebly.com
The Triangle Book of St. Germain
By Iona Miller, 8/2007
MASONIC SECRET OF ST. GERMAIN: Longevity, Ye Olde-Fashioned Way
St. Germain had The Secret. That secret became a legacy of Manly Palmer Hall (MPH) and his Philosophical Research Society (PRS). It was his supreme treasure, which he kept safely hidden in his vault. The two parchment cipher texts now reside in the Getty Research Institute, likewise deep in their library vaults.
This wisest adept in Europe reserved his greatest gift for his wisest companions. St. Germaine recorded his version of THE SECRET for health, wealth and long life in his legendary TRIANGLE BOOK, and apparently made copies for his closest circle of initiates. But it seems the entire secret was never entrusted to a single individual, as the copies of the book are curiously not identical, containing different illustrations.
We might deduce that to properly work the formulae in the book, one required the Emblems and Sigils it described. Is this why Manly Palmer Hall possessed two copies of the book, each with different glyphs? It begs the point, were there other copies with even more illustrations required to initiate the whole current -- to attain magical immortality?
What we know is that both St. Germain and Manly Palmer Hall lived to a ripe old age and remained mentally vibrant. Can this obscure arcane text -- one of the rarest occult manuscripts -- be the secret of their longevity? The book is alleged to be Egyptian in origin. Hall can be seen with the book in a portrait, which appears as frontpiece in his FREEMASONRY OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS.
Here, for the first time, the text translation appears publically with the withheld 5 illustrations of the two copies, and examples of the arcane crypto key. Even in the originals, it is difficult to make out the precise glyphs of the sigils, but arguably their magical potency is intact. Sigils and emblems often contain hidden meanings, since they are visual shorthand, which can be "read" for their symbolism. Carl Jung used this method as the traditional basis of his alchemically inspired psychology.
Secrets have a way of keeping themselves, even when hiding in plain sight. The quality of these reproductions is limited by the photographic slides of the originals. They were taken during the 1970s surreptitiously in the PRS vault, most likely for another famous 20th Century adept. We can only conjecture why he resorted to subterfuge but such shenanigans are commonly reported in occult circles. Today, PRS says the book is available to view as a photocopy or microfilm of the originals, which were sold at auction but no one seems to have seen them.
LEGEND OF St. GERMAIN
St. Germain claimed to possess the secret of eternal youth, one of the two traditional goals of alchemy. He never seemed to age. For an entire century he maintained the physical appearance of a man between forty and fifty years old. He could do just about anything. Baron de Gleichen tells in Sourvenirs de Charles Henri, baron de Gleichen (1868), that according to his acquaintances, St. Germain had the appearance of a man of fifty years old.
The Comte de St. Germain, “der Wundermann,” is a legendary figure. Little historical fact is known of this Hungarian Adept, a genius or charlatan, depending on your point of view. The Rosicrucians claim he was Sir Francis Bacon in a previous, or perhaps even extended life. New Agers count him among the Ascended Masters. He is strongly linked with the Freemasons, Rosicrucians and Knights Templar. He could allegedly astral travel or bilocate and produced an elixir of youth.
The self-styled Count has shadowy origins and his birth and death dates are unknown, as is his true identity. Saint-Germain was thought to be the love child of the widow of Charles II of Spain, or a Sephardic Jew from Portugal, although Theosophists glorify him as the son of Francis Rakoczi II, the prince of Transylvania.
His birth is estimated around 1690. Some believe he still lives. But he either died around age 80-94, or pretended to die on February 27, 1784 in the German court of Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel, a fellow alchemist. His longevity is in close accord with the 100-year lifespan goal of The Triangle Book, give or take a decade.
Calling him “the man that doesn’t die,” many continued to insist that the jewel-trading Count was very much alive. Freemason documents indicate that he represented French Masons at a meeting in 1785. Madame de Genlis claimed to have seen him in Vienna in 1821. Several travelers in the 1800's were sure they saw the miracle worker in the Far East and other parts of the world.
Theosophist Madame Blavatsky said that she met the Count in 1896, incarnated as a "Master," or spiritual leader. In 1930 Guy W. Ballard, hiking in northern California, claimed to meet the Ascended Master on the side of Mount Shasta in his book Unveiled Mysteries (1934). He established the Saint Germain Foundation.
Fluent in all European languages, his aliases included: Christian Rosenkreutz, Prince Rakoczi, Marquis de Montferrat, Count Bellamare in Venice, Chevalier Schoening in Pisa, Cevalier Weldon in Milan, Count Soltikoff in Genoa, and Count Tazarogy in Schwalbach.
This polymath was a great entertainer, both as conversationalist and concert level violinist who composed music. He could improvise on the piano, also. The savant was a talented painter, linguist, diplomat and skilled pharmacist or chemist, as well as alchemist. His remedies including ayouth elixir were sought by those who came under his spell. He really enchanted his listeners.
Relating events of centuries past, the Count would deliberately lead credulous listeners to believe that he had been present. "These fools of Parisians believe that I am five hundred years old," he once remarked to a friend. "I confirm them in this idea because I see that it gives them much pleasure — not that I am not infinitely older than I appear." He attributed his youthful appearance in part to his sobriety and a diet mostly of oatmeal, (Magre). When he ate meat, he liked to stick to chicken. So, we could surmise he had a low cholesterol diet.
In 1743 he was reported in London, accused as a spy for the Stuarts. He went to France around 1748, where Louis XV employed him as a spy several times. Around 1760 he was forced to leave France for England. There he taught Count Cagliostro the Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry. We can presume he would have learned all the cipher methods of Sir Francis Bacon during his London visits, both for his secret societies and for espionage. New American Cyclopædia xiv. 266 says: "He is supposed to have been employed during the greater part of his life as a spy at the courts at which he resided."
By 1762 he was in St. Petersburg, meddling in the conspiracy to make Catherine the Great Queen of Russia. After returning to Paris in 1770, he prophesied the French Revolution to Marie Antoinette and her friend, Madame d'Adhémar, who wrote a story of his abilities as an Adept. Then he traveled through Germany, eventually dwelling in the state of Schleswig-Holstein.
The Count was an international spy, ringleader of secret societies, enlightened visionary and proponent of U.S. freedom, urging on the Founding Fathers, including Washington and Franklin, in their faltering moments. He worked behind the scenes for a United States of Europe. He carried much of Bacon's agenda and political philosophy forward in a rapidly changing world, ratifying the magical current of Roger Bacon, John Dee, Sir Francis Bacon, and himself.
TALES FROM THE CRYPTOGRAM
THE CODE OF ST. GERMAIN begins with the very shape of the book itself -- a downward-pointing triangle which means 'water' in the alchemical language. When it suggests the rite gives one the ability to raise all things submerged since the Great Flood, it may imply that this book itself is a kind of 'sea' which contains sunken treasures that can resurface through magical means.
The other element missing from view has been the cryptographic key to the cipher text. It is highly possible that other secrets remain "buried" in the text for those astute enough to "dive deeply" or "mine" this metaphysical database. Surely the surface text is just the tip of the alchemical iceberg.
One might immediately suspect even the Latin title page itself, which contains the intention of the author that this is a great gift for his wisest companions. Even the French text itself may be riddled with undiscovered ciphers, for St. Germain is known to have encoded secrets in up to eight languages at once -- mixing them together freely to further conceal their treasure.
The cryptographic text could still potentially conceal a variety of ciphers that should be explored as possibilities: simple substitution ciphers, key ciphers, wheel ciphers, Hermetic and qabbalistic ciphers, number codes, etc. A plethora of crypto methods were in common use at the time the Count either wrote the book, or transcribed it from an ancient text in his possession. The later is certainly possible because of the claim of Egyptian origins and its preservation in Asia, as described at the beginning of the translation.
THE CODE OF ST. GERMAIN
The unusual triangular shape of the book itself implies the Three Principles of alchemy -- Salt, Mercury and Sulpher -- body, soul and spirit. The upright triangle is a symbol of fire; reversed of water; and interlaced of the union of opposites, also known as the Star of David.
The triangle form could also suggest a triple meaning for the contents of the book: alchemical, kabbalistic and Hermetic. It is a recipe not only for experiencing a symbol in one's inner world but also for manifesting it in reality, for becoming a living embodiment of Spirit. The Triangle is also as essential as the circle in magic. The Triangle of Art, Solomon's triangle of evocation, is a protected space outside the magic circle into which spirits are compelled to appear. Many spirits are called up in St. Germain's Triangle text.
Typically, the central circle is inscribed with the sigil (seal) of the spirit to be invoked. The usual form is of a triangle, circumscribed with various words of power, containing an inner, blackened circle. The purpose of the triangle is to contain the manifested entity. They often have sigils. There is such an illustration in The Triangle Book, too.
The triangle is a 2-d representation of a pyramid, a virtual resurrection machine. There are 20 triangular faces in an icosahedron, eight in an octahedron, four in a tetrahedron, etc. The triangle, or tetrahedron is the geometric basis of all forms. Precious stones exhibit crystal structures. The atomic structure of the diamond, face-centered cubic close pack, is related to the alchemical squaring of the circle.
The Tetrahedron is the most basic shape to be found in the three dimensional universe of volume. The Merkaba Star Tetrahedron is actually two tetrahedrons interlocked to form a three-dimensional Star of David.
The configuration of the Star Tetrahedron is formed within the first eight cells of life. The Star Tetrahedron also models the energetic body of the human being, the blending of Heaven and Earth, Male and Female. It was called ‘Merkaba’ in the esoteric knowledge of Ancient Egypt.
SIGN OF THE WINGED DRAGON
In legend, the Philosopher's Stone is kept in the custody of the reawakened Dragon, the Adept who fully inhabits his or her Body of Light. Alchemy itself is a triple process of uniting the physical, psychological and spiritual. In Masonry, each line of the triangle itself symbolizes a kingdom of nature -- mineral, vegetable and animal. They stand for explorations the Master Mason needs for a complete education.
All these points may be clues to the nature of the "winged dragon" of the title page of The Triangle Book. In alchemy it is a symbol of the volatile elements. Appearing as a symbol of coagulatio in other alchemy texts, it suggests the pandaemonium of psychic images.
Psychologically, the dragon is the union of ordinary human reality with the Transpersonal Self and a passion for transformation. Some now say it is a symbol of DNA or the kundalini energy. Thus, it is a symbol of the Great Work.
This winged dragon is the symbolic superstar of The Triangle Book. In The Book of Lambspring. It represents the Anima Mundi, or Soul of the World, which is the sum total of planetary existence -- the holographic blueprint on which form is based, the informational level or primal source of being. It is said that medicine providing the gift of youth can be made from its venom.
So, the dragon is a healing power. The spiritual food of immortality signifies the ability of the ego to assimilate the previously unconscious aspects of the Self. This is the elixir of youth that creates the immortal body, equivalent to the Philosopher's Stone. The invocation with powerful godnames is combined with the dragon emblem to initiate the current. The rite couldn't be practiced without the Emblems and Sigils. http://trianglebook.weebly.com
Copyright © 2013-2014, Iona Miller,
All Rights Reserved, on all graphic and written content.
If you mirror my works, pls include the credit and URL LINK for reference.
[email protected]
http://ionamiller.weebly.com
Fair Use Notice
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
All Rights Reserved, on all graphic and written content.
If you mirror my works, pls include the credit and URL LINK for reference.
[email protected]
http://ionamiller.weebly.com
Fair Use Notice
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.