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  • Homage to Pan: Rosaleen Norton – The Witch of Kings Cross

    Homage to Pan: Rosaleen Norton – The Witch of Kings Cross

    From New Dawn Special Issue 3 (June 2007)

    Rosaleen Norton (1917-1979) has been described as Australia’s best known witch. She was a controversial and ‘colourful’ character in Sydney’s Kings Cross district during the 1950s and 1960s and was known to the public as an eccentric, bohemian witch-lady and artist. She wore flamboyant, brightly coloured blouses and vivid bandanas, puffed on an exotic engraved cigarette holder, and plucked her eyebrows so that they arched in a somewhat sinister curve. Norton also claimed certain distinctive body markings that she possessed were a sign that she was “born a witch.”

    Slight in build with curly black hair and a smile that revealed irregular teeth, Norton always had something of a magnetic presence that made her stand out in the crowd. The publication of her limited edition art book The Art of Rosaleen Norton in Sydney in 1952 – which also contained poems by her lover Gavin Greenlees – aroused considerable media controversy. Norton’s publisher and sponsor, Walter Glover, was charged in Sydney with releasing an obscene publication and copies sent to New York were confiscated and burnt by US Customs.

    During this period of extensive media publicity Rosaleen Norton became known in the public mind as an artist whose provocative paintings of half-human, half-animal forms were even more controversial than Norman Lindsay’s risqué nude figures. Norton depicted naked women wrestling with reptilian elementals or flying on the backs of winged griffins, gods who were both male and female, and demonic forms with menacing claw-tipped wings. During the 1950s Norton’s controversial paintings and drawings seemed to embody a deep-seated pagan impulse and ran counter to orthodox religious sensibilities.

    Norton’s Background

    Rosaleen Norton was born in Dunedin in 1917, the third of three sisters. Her father, Albert, was a captain in the merchant navy and a cousin of composer Vaughan Williams. The Nortons migrated from New Zealand in 1925 and settled in the Sydney suburb of Lindfield. As a teenager Norton was expelled from high school because of her allegedly “depraved nature” which her headmistress claimed “would corrupt the innocence of the other girls.” She then studied for two years at East Sydney Technical College under the sculptor Rayner Hoff. During this time she became interested in studying everything she could find about witchcraft, sorcery and magic and she was soon well versed in the occult writings of notable magical practitioners like Dion Fortune, Aleister Crowley and Eliphas Levi. In 1940, at the age of 23, she began to experiment with self-hypnosis as a means of inducing automatic drawing.

    Norton was already familiar with the trance methods of the Surrealists and especially admired the work of Salvador Dali and Yves Tanguy who, like the other artists in their movement, had explored techniques of encouraging the subconscious mind to manifest its visionary contents. Sometimes the surrealists drew rapidly so that forms came through unimpeded by the intellect. Others experimented with drugs or documented their dream experiences with great detail in order to develop a greater knowledge of the ‘alternative reality’ of the subconscious mind.

    Norton found that she could shut off her normal consciousness by means of self-hypnosis and could transfer her attention to an inner plane of awareness. As she noted in a lengthy interview conducted in an interview with the psychologist L.J. Murphy at the University of Melbourne in 1949: “These experiments [with self-hypnosis] produced a number of peculiar and unexpected results… and culminated in a period of extra-sensory perception, together with a prolonged series of symbolic visions.” Norton spent several years after this studying various systems of occult and mystical thought, including Buddhist and other examples of Eastern literature as well as standard works on Kabbalah, Theosophy and Western magic.

    During this period Norton also began to focus more specifically on the magical forces associated with the Great God Pan, whose spirit she felt pervaded the entire earth. Her studies had taught her that the ancient Greeks regarded Pan as lord of all things – symbolising the totality of the elements and all forms of manifest being. He was therefore, in a very real sense, the true god of the world. Pan was a maintainer of the balance of Nature and also had at his command an invisible hierarchy of lesser spirits who could help him in his work of ruling and sustaining the earth.

    Norton painted a large-scale interpretation of Pan, complete with horns, pointed ears, cloven hooves and musical pipes, and mounted it on the wall of her Kings Cross flat, where it effectively became the focal point of her magical altar. She also conducted magical ceremonies dressed in a tiger-skin robe to honour his presence, and would often experience him as a living reality when she entered a trance state. Meanwhile, her art continued to reflect the entities she encountered in her visions, including a variety of devilish creatures, half animal-half human pagan deities, and various supernatural motifs.

    The Gods, In Their Own Right

    Many occultists have drawn on Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s concept of the ‘collective unconscious’ to explain their relationship with the archetypal forces of the mind. Jung believed that at a deep, collective level of the psyche lay a rich and potent source of sacred archetypal imagery, and that these numinous forms provided the very basis of religious and mystical experience, irrespective of the cultural context involved. In other words, gods and sacred mystical images were really an extension of the universal human experience.

    A number of occultists have rejected this view, however, claiming instead that the gods live apart from the collective minds of humanity and are not merely projected ‘thought-forms’. Rosaleen Norton agreed with this latter perspective. For her, the gods existed in their own right. She believed she was able to encounter Pan, Hecate and Lucifer, not as extensions of her own consciousness, but as mythic beings from a higher plane of reality who would grace her with their presence if it pleased them, and not subject to her will. She believed she had discovered some of the qualities of these gods within her own temperament, and that this provided a sense of natural affinity. This made their invocation much easier and more effective than would have been the case had there not been some sort of innate bond. Norton maintained that she entered the realm of the gods on the astral planes – an inner world of spirit accessed through magical trance – and that on different occasions the gods would reveal different dimensions of their own magical potency.

    Rosaleen Norton regarded Lucifer, for example, not so much as an embodiment of ‘evil’ as humanity’s natural adversary. He bound and limited man when it appeared that he was growing too big for his boots. He tried to trick man, not out of malice but with the positive intent of exposing the limitations of the ego and revealing the essential falseness of man’s pride in his own existence. Rosaleen also regarded Pan as a very significant deity for the present day, a force in the universe which protected and conserved the natural beauty and resources of the environment. For her, Pan was alive and well in the anti-pollution lobbies and among the Friends of the Earth!

    Hecate, on the other hand, she felt to be more imposing – an often frightening, shadowy goddess flanked by cohorts of ghouls and night-forms, a dealer in death and a purveyor of curses. But there was a magical bond to be found here too. Norton regarded magic and witchcraft as her protection and an inspiration in a hostile, ungenerous world. However, her own brand of witchcraft hardly brought her abundance. She lived simply, with few possessions, and certainly without any measure of wealth. If ever she cursed people with “witch current,” she said, it was a means of redressing the balance of events – a legitimate use of the magical art.

    Rosaleen Norton’s paintings show a certain similarity of style to those of Norman Lindsay, for whom she occasionally posed as an artist’s model. But while for Lindsay the world of the supernatural could only offer decadent and exotic themes for his art-making, for Norton this realm was a perceptual reality – and this is very much reflected in her work. There are fire elementals, ablaze with light; devils with dual banks of eyes, indicative of their different planes of perception; cats with magical awareness; horned beings with sensual cheeks and a strange eerie light playing on their brow.

    Norton maintained that her art arose as the result of the direct magical encounter. Energies filtered through her, she said, as if she were a funnel. She transmitted the current during a state of self-induced hypnotic trance. If the gods were alive in her, her artistic skills would then allow these gods to manifest, in varying degrees, in her drawings and upon her canvases. Norton always denied that she portrayed the totality of the god. She could depict only those qualities the god chose to show. The gods existed in their own right, on a plane far removed from the everyday world of human consciousness – but were directly accessible to her through her techniques of magical trance.

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    Was Norton a Satanist?

    During her colourful career as the ‘Witch of Kings Cross’ Rosaleen Norton was frequently accused of being a Satanist. When she exhibited her paintings and drawings at the Apollyon and Kashmir coffee-shops in Kings Cross during the 1950s, both locations were described in the tabloid press as the haunt of the “Devil’s cult” and on occasions visitors to these coffee-shops would mischievously request a cup of “bat’s blood.”

    When New Zealand migrant Anna Hoffmann claimed in September 1955 that she had attended a Black Mass with Norton in Kings Cross, the story was featured with sensationalist headlines on page one of a daily newspaper. Even though Hoffmann’s charges were later found to be fabrications and Hoffmann herself was jailed for two months and described as a “menace” by the presiding magistrate, the image of Norton as a ‘Satanist’ or ‘Devil-worshipper’ persisted during the 1950s, and even up into more recent times. For her own part, Norton went to great lengths, both during media interviews and sometimes also during various court proceedings, to explain that the “horned god” Pan was a pagan deity from the tradition of ancient Greek mythology and that her practice of witchcraft had no connection with the Christian Devil. Nevertheless, it is easy to see how members of the public may have misconstrued Norton’s occult imagery in the conservative social climate of post-World War Two Australia.

    Norton was unquestionably drawn to the ‘night’ side of the psyche and she herself described her art in those terms. Black Magic, one of several controversial artworks exhibited at the University of Melbourne in 1949, and against which charges of obscenity were subsequently brought, could certainly cause offence to any practising Christian, with its imagery of bestial lust, a winking nun, and a bare-breasted woman mounted on a crucifix. However, while many of Norton’s paintings and drawings feature provocative and irreverent subject matter, it is quite another matter to assume they promote a Satanic perspective.

    When Norton was accused in the popular media of overseeing blood-sacrifice rituals during a “Kings Cross Black Mass” she was both upset and offended by the remarks. Norton had always had a strong affinity with Nature, and with animals in particular, since her early childhood. As visitors to her apartment invariably attested, Norton was always accompanied by numerous pets, including cats, lizards, frogs, turtles and mice, and she always maintained that she would never cause animals harm. The very notion of ritualistic, Satanic ‘blood sacrifice’ was completely abhorrent to her. The evidence provided by her own artistic work and comments made to the popular press and in journalistic articles strongly suggests that while Norton was unquestionably both pagan and “heathen,” and often provocative in her presentation of “images of the night,” she was not a practising Satanist in the literal sense. Her witchcraft cult in Kings Cross included altars dedicated specifically to Pan and Hecate, and her coven rituals made no reference to the Christian Devil.

    So how can we sum up the magical personality of the ‘Witch of Kings Cross’? Rosaleen Norton was a colourful bohemian eccentric, a gifted trance-magician and a controversial visionary artist who developed her occult persona during a conservative period of Australian history when the populace at large was unsympathetic to the pagan beliefs she espoused. Most did not understand her ritual homage to the Great God Pan and branded her simplistically as a Devil-worshipper – a distortion of her actual perspective. When Norton’s limited edition art book was withdrawn from sale in 1952 on a charge of obscenity it was only allowed back into the marketplace when two “offending” erotic magical images had been blacked out. So Rosaleen Norton can be seen as a perennial ‘occult outsider’, an urban misfit in post-War Sydney. Nevertheless, she remains one of Australia’s most significant esoteric figures and can be considered a precursor of the more recent worldwide neo-pagan revival. She was also a competent mystical poet. Norton regarded the following poem, Dance of Life, as an expression of her personal magical credo:

    In the spiral horns of the Ram,

    In the deep ascent of midnight,

    In the dance of atoms weaving the planes of matter is Life.

    Life spins on the dream of a planet,

    Life leaps in the lithe precision of the cat,

    Life flames in the thousandth Name,

    Life laughs in the thing that is ‘I’.

    I live in the green blood of the forest,

    I live in the white fire of Powers,

    I live in the scarlet blossom of Magic,

    I live.

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  • Maria de Naglowska, A Herald of the New Era

    Maria de Naglowska, A Herald of the New Era

    From New Dawn 135 (Nov-Dec 2012)

    When Winston Churchill called Russia “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” he could as well have been describing a daughter of Russia named Maria de Naglowska. She was a poet, a journalist, a translator, an author, an occultist, and a mystic (the latter perhaps most of all), but few know anything about her. Those who have ever heard of her probably know her as the translator of P.B. Randolph’s Magia Sexualis1 (which she did far more than translate).2 Others, who have shown more curiosity about her, will say that she was a Satanist (not true, though it is an impression that she fostered).3 It has taken many years to get any reliable facts about her life, partly because she told different stories about herself.4 Her most important writings were published in very small editions (now almost impossible to get) and never translated into English. Consequently, this woman whose works should occupy a significant place in the history of Western religion, is now practically unknown, especially in English.

    Maria de Naglowska was born in St. Petersburg in 1883, the daughter of a prominent Czarist family.6 She went to the best schools, and got the best education that a young woman of the time could get. She fell in love with a young Jewish musician, Moise Hopenko, and married him against the wishes of her family. The rift with Maria’s family caused the young couple to leave Russia, going to Germany and then to Switzerland. After Maria had given birth to three children, her young husband, a Zionist, decided to leave his family and go to Palestine. This made things very difficult for Naglowska, who was forced to take various jobs as a journalist to make ends meet. While she was living in Geneva she also wrote a French grammar for Russian immigrants to Switzerland. Unfortunately, Naglowska’s libertarian ideas tended to get her into trouble with governments wherever she went. She spent most of the 1920s in Rome, and at the end of that decade she moved on to Paris.

    While in Rome Maria de Naglowska met Julius Evola, a pagan traditionalist who wanted to reinstate the pantheon of ancient Rome. Evola was also an occultist, being a member of the Group of Ur and counting among his associates some of the followers of Giuliano Kremmerz. It is said that Naglowska and Evola were lovers. It is known, at least, that they were associates for a long time. She translated one of his poems into French (the only form in which it has survived), and he translated some of her work into Italian.

    While occultists give a great deal of weight to Naglowska’s relationship with Evola, it is clear that there must have been other influences. Some believe that she was influenced by the Russian sect of the Khlysti, and some believe that she knew Rasputin (whose biography she translated). Maria, though, gave the credit for some of her unusual ideas to an old Catholic monk whom she met in Rome. Although Maria said that he was quite well known there, he has never been identified.8

    Maria said that the old monk gave her a piece of cardboard, on which was drawn a triangle, to represent the Trinity. The first two apexes of the triangle were clearly labelled to indicate the Father and the Son. The third, left more indistinct, was intended to represent the Holy Spirit. To Maria, the Holy Spirit was feminine. We don’t know how much was the monk’s teaching and how much was hers, but Maria taught that the Father represented Judaism and reason, while the Son represented Christianity, the heart, and an era whose end was approaching. To Maria, the feminine Spirit represented a new era, sex, and the reconciliation of the light and dark forces in nature.

    It is mostly this idea of the reconciliation of the light and dark forces that has gotten Maria into trouble, and caused her to be thought of as a Satanist. Maria herself is partly responsible for this, having referred to herself as a “satanic woman” and used the name also in other ways in her writings. Evola, in his book The Metaphysics of Sex, mentioned her “deliberate intention to scandalise the reader.”9 Here is what Naglowska herself had to say about it:

    Nous défendons à nos disciples de s’imaginer Satan (= l’esprit du mal ou l’esprit de la destruction) comme vivant en dehors de nous, car une telle imagination est le propre des idolâtres; mais nous reconnaissons que ce nom est vrai.

    We forbid our disciples to imagine Satan (= the spirit of evil or the spirit of destruction) as living outside of us, for such imagining is proper to idolaters; but we recognise that this name is true.

    In 1929 Naglowska moved to Paris, where she got the unwelcome news that she would not be given a work permit. Deprived of the ability to be employed in a regular job, she would have to depend on her own very considerable survival skills. She began work on the book for which she is best known today, her “translation” of Magia Sexualis,10 by Paschal Beverly Randolph. This work by the American hermetic and sex theorist is known only in Naglowska’s “translation.” I have put the word “translation” in quotation marks because it is really a compilation. Only about two-thirds of the work can be identified as being from Randolph. The rest is from sources only beginning to be identified, or from Naglowska herself, and the organisation of the material is clearly her contribution as well.

    While Naglowska was working on Magia Sexualis, she began giving lectures or “conferences” on an original teaching of her own. She called it the Doctrine of the Third Term of the Trinity. Her “conferences” were at first often held in cafés. The proprietors of these venues were pleased with the influx of patrons and often gave Maria free food and coffee. In a short time her following grew to the point where she could afford to rent a large, bare room, which held thirty to forty people11 for her private meetings.12 It was thus that Maria survived.

    Maria’s income was supplemented by her publishing endeavours. After the 1931 publication of Magia Sexualis, Naglowska turned to writing original works. One of these, Le Rite sacré de l’amour magique, a metaphysical novelette apparently containing elements of her own life, was published as a supplement to her street newspaper in early 1932, having earlier been serialised there.13 The little newspaper, to which she and other occultists contributed, was called La Flèche, Organe d’Action Magique. It was the public voice of her magical group, La Confrérie de la Flèche d’Or.

    Later in 1932 Naglowska published La Lumière du Sexe, recently published in English as The Light of Sex.14 In 1934 she published Le Mystère de la Pendaison, or The Hanging Mystery.15 These two books were required reading for even First Degree initiation into Naglowska’s magical group,16 and contained all of the doctrine of her new religion, the Third Term of the Trinity, and much of its ritual. They are thus of paramount importance for understanding Maria de Naglowska and her teaching. They are also, unfortunately, quite rare, having been originally published in small editions of about five hundred copies. To my knowledge, the recently published translations are the first that have been made of any of Naglowska’s original works into English.

    Naglowska is said to have been very psychic. She predicted the catastrophe of World War II,17 and in 1935 she foresaw her own death.18 Knowing that she was going to die, she refused to reprint The Light of Sex and The Hanging Mystery, which had both sold out. She told her followers that nothing would be able to be done to spread her teachings for two or three generations. She went to live with her daughter in Zurich, and it was there that she died, at the age of 52, on 17 April 1936.

    Maria was influential among the Surrealists, and they seem to have influenced her own writing. Naglowska’s sessions are said to have been attended by the avant-garde and the notorious of the time, including Man Ray, William Seabrook, Michel Leiris, Georges Bataille, and André Breton. Jean Paulhan, for whom L’Histoire d’O was written, is also said to have attended. I have not yet been able to trace these often-made claims to reliable, original sources, so for the present they should be regarded as hearsay. We know, however, that surrealist poet and painter Camille Bryen was a member of Naglowska’s group,19 as the writer Ernest Gengenbach appears to have been, and it seems significant that one of the best studies of Naglowska was done by another surrealist, Sarane Alexandrian.20 Maria’s French was impeccable and her style clean and powerful, but she used words in a symbolic, highly idiosyncratic way. Shortly before she left Paris, she told her disciples that her teachings “would need to be translated into clear and accessible language for awakened women and men who would not necessarily be symbolists.”21 Taking this as my directive, I have added extensive explanatory notes to the English translations of her books.

    Due to the small editions and her refusal to reprint them, plus her early death and the unfortunate arrival of World War II, Maria’s influence seems hardly to have extended beyond Montparnasse. This is now changing. With the perspective granted by time we can see that Naglowska was an important mystic of the twentieth century. At the very least she deserves a place in the history of religion for having achieved within the Western tradition the full, non-dualistic realisation typified by the major Upanishads. In so doing, she has bequeathed to us a vision that, while idiosyncratic, is also powerful and uplifting.

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    A Naglowska Reader

    The Doctrine of the Third Term of the Trinity

    The Divinity is triple: the Father, the Son, and the Mother.

    The Father is the setting out, or the fall, from the Origin toward the level of division and multiplicity.

    The Son is nostalgia and the will to universal redemption, combated by the Adversary inherent to His nature: Satan.

    The Mother is the return toward the Origin, after the definitive combat and the reconciliation in the Son of His two opposing natures: the Christic nature and the satanic nature.

    The Son detaches himself from the Father and divides himself in two: He is double.

    The Mother proceeds from the Father and the Son, and contains both of them: She is triple.

    Only the Father is homogeneous.

    The three aspects of the Trinity – the Father, the Son, the Mother – are successive in time, but simultaneous in their Eternal Presence in the regions that are not involved on the level of division and multiplicity.

    The succession – Father, Son, Mother – is justified thus:

    The Father is the Male principle, which accomplishes the act of negation of the Unique Spirit; it is love oriented toward the flesh.

    The Son is the principle of the second negation, that which in the flesh rejects the flesh; it is love oriented toward the unreal, the love of the infertile heart. The Son is neither Male nor Female: he is on this side of the two divine sexes. He is, because of that, beyond sexed beings.

    The Mother is the reestablishment of the Male principle in the inverse sense: She affirms the Unique Spirit, and her love, taking rise in the flesh, is oriented toward spiritual realisation. She consoles and glorifies the Son, for She makes concrete the dream of sublime purity in multiple life. The Mother pacifies the combat between Christ and Satan, in leading these two contrary wills onto the same path of unique ascension. The Mother proceeds from the Father and from the Son, and is successive to them in temporal subordination, because negation is not converted to affirmation except by means of the second negation.

    When the work of the Mother is accomplished, that of the Father recommences, for the three aspects of the Divine Trinity are repeated endlessly.

    In human history, the three divine phases are reflected in the form of three types of religions, which succeed each other constantly, determining three types of civilisations, which we find in the cycle – or triangle – to which we belong in these three religion-civilisations: Judaism, Christianity, and the religion of the Third Term, being announced now.

    The symbol of Judaism – a religion of the Father – is the rod hidden in the ark. Its ethic protects reproduction of the species.

    The symbol of Christianity – a religion of the Son – is, on the one hand, the cross, and on the other, the sword: renunciation of the sex act and scorn for life. But in the shadow of the Christ, the worshipers of Satan make divine the womb of the woman in secret orgies, which maintain the dynamism of the march forward. The white mass of the transubstantiation is thus attenuated by the black mass of the re-dynamisation of the flesh, which, without that, would become anaemic.

    The symbol of the third religion – the Religion of the Mother – is the arrow launched toward heaven. The golden mass, which it will establish, will glorify the real love of the flesh, in order to release from the latter the renovating and ascendant spirit, which will make all things new upon the earth.

    Blessed are those who shall assist at this mass.

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    * * *

    A Selection of Favourite Naglowska Quotations

    The doctrine of the Third Term of the Trinity recognises and honours the Only Living God: Life.

    Each particle of the visible world is not a part of God (= Life), but a complete symbol of the latter.

    Don’t exaggerate anything. Be calm and well disposed. Develop within yourself the great virtue of the heart: balance.

    Having given each animal, each plant, each element its name, Adam would have destroyed the world if, in the night that followed that day of words, God (=Life) had not pulled out a rib to oppose him with the woman: Eve!

    O Disciple! Today woman has found the way. The key of the great secret has been unveiled to her who has been able to repulse the maleficent gift of reason and only let shine in herself the pure light of intelligence.

    Disciple, you who wish to listen to us, learn this: “temptations” come from God and not from Satan.

    New wine needs to be poured into new glasses.

    No man can carry within himself the root of his life. Like the foliage of a tree, we all depend on a single root, which is common to us all and from which no one can make themselves independent, without dying definitively and without causing a more or less considerable hurt to the entire human plant.

    God cannot die, because in His Essence He is Life, Life that manifests, grows, and changes. The visible world exists because of that.

    The skeptic is limited. He does not grasp the deep sense of things, because he only wants to fix his attention on the exterior surfaces. The deeper reality escapes him because of this.

    The new sun has barely risen in the shadows that surround us, and the Divine Mother, Humanity, is starting to give birth.

    Now, my friend, an answer can be sufficient, but it can never be perfect, for no one can form an adequate idea of the Truth, because it is never what it will be tomorrow.

    One cannot give anything to mankind if the time for the gift has not come.

    But at the last minute, and when the pain is at its peak, a woman will openly proclaim where the plagues and calamities are coming from. She will place her foot on the head of the Serpent and will remove from its unclean mouth the tail that it has been biting for so long. Then the Light of Sex will flash forth and peace will reenter the spirit of mankind.

    Woe to the perverse and perfidious men who, with their vile smile and their lips bathed in abject drivel, still hinder the holy sacrifice of the Golden Mass.

    What is dead belongs to death and what is living belongs to life, and if you confuse the future with the past, you create confusion on the paths where building is to be done.

    To penetrate into the heart of the mysteries, everything must be considered in its symbolic sense, and Man, whose three sacred points (the Three Angles) are found respectively in the head, in the heart, and in the organ that one does not name because one is ignorant of its light, symbolises, in himself, the totality of Life (= God).

    Being caprice and dance and gaiety, He is what He is…

    We are not going toward Unity, we are Unity, since the origin which never was.

    You can’t return to your mother’s womb to come out again with a new name, but you can plunge yourself back into the woman who receives you with love, to draw from her the light that you are lacking.

    But the very thing that was a fault can become, must become, redemption.

    Blessed are those who watch in the dark hours of the night of the ages.

    There will then be no more, in the mystic music, of the sombre allusions that bend the crowds to the ground, and the golden petals, trembling above the tapers, will be a sign of love, joyous for all.

    We shall deliver ourselves then to the new Mass not, as before, veiled like penitents, but as beautiful flowers of a splendid garland, each leaf of which breathes the sun.

    The beautiful time, the new era, the rebirth of the light upon earth, must be our creation.

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    Footnotes

    1. P. B. Randolph, Magia Sexualis, trans. Maria de Naglowska (Paris: Robert Télin, 1931). English translation forthcoming in 2012 from Inner Traditions International.
    2. Magia Sexualis has survived only in Naglowska’s French translation. It is composed of several works written by Randolph (notably The Mysteries of Eulis, and Seership) plus material from other sources, probably including Naglowska’s own ideas. Naglowska greatly improved the style and organisation of Randolph’s material.
    3. This question has been well covered in Appendix B of The Light of Sex.
    4. The “alternate” versions can be found, for example, in René Thimmy, La Magie à Paris (Paris: Les Éditions de France, 1934), 69-71. Also in Sarane Alexandrian, Les Libérateurs de l’amour (Paris: Éditions du Seuil), 186-7, which is more reliable. The most reliable version, though, is that in Marc Pluquet’s La Sophiale: Maria de Naglowska, sa vie – son oeuvre. (Montpeyroux: Éditions Gouttelettes de Rosée, n.d.), 3-6.
    5. Maria de Naglowska, The Light of Sex (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2011).
    6. I have drawn most of the details about Naglowska’s life from the short biography titled La Sophiale, written by her favourite student, Marc Pluquet. It is, by far, the most reliable source.
    7. Pluquet, La Sophiale, 3-6.
    8. Maria de Naglowska, “Mon chef spirituel,” La Flèche, Organe d’Action Magique 10 (February 15, 1932), 2-3.
    9. Julius Evola, The Metaphysics of Sex (New York: Inner Traditions International, 1983), 261.
    10. Randolph, Magia Sexualis.
    11. According to Pluquet in La Sophiale, there were only 30-40 people in the hall when it was full, and the overflow stood in a baie vitrée, or glassed-in bay, which separated the hall from the entrance. The hall in question was the old Studio Raspail at 46 Rue Vavin (not to be confused with the present cinema on Bd. Raspail). The building now houses an Italian restaurant that has a capacity of 120 seats. The space may have been enlarged, or it may not. The low divider that formed the baie vitrée is still there, but it no longer seems to have glass over it. It would take a sizable crowd to fill the space and still have overflow standing in the entryway. On page 14 Pluquet states that all of these “conferences” were taken down in shorthand by a certain Mr. Dufour. Unfortunately, these shorthand notes have not yet surfaced.
    12. Pluquet, La Sophiale 8,14.
    13. Maria de Naglowska, Le Rite Sacré de l’Amour Magique (Supplément de La Flèche Organe d’Action Magique, Paris: 1932). An English translation of this work, The Sacred Rite of Magical Love, was published by Inner Traditions International in February 2012.
    14. Maria de Naglowska, The Light of Sex.
    15. An English translation, Advanced Sex Magic: The Hanging Mystery Initiation, was published in 2011, by Inner Traditions, International.
    16. Pluquet, La Sophiale, 12.
    17. Maria de Naglowska, “Avant la Guerre de 1936,” La Flèche Organe d’Action Magique 20 (January 15, 1935): 3.
    18. Pluquet, La Sophiale, 14.
    19. Ibid., 7.
    20. Alexandrian, Les Libérateurs de l’amour, 185–206.
    21. Pluquet, La Sophiale 14.

    © New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
    For our reproduction notice, click here.

  • Assassination of the Humanitarian Princess: The Killing of Diana

    Assassination of the Humanitarian Princess: The Killing of Diana

    This article was published in New Dawn Special Issue Vol 9 No 1 (February 2015)

    1992 was the year that the relationship between Princess Diana and other senior British royals changed irreversibly. In June Diana collaborated with UK author Andrew Morton in a book which exposed Prince Charles’ relationship with his lover Camilla Parker-Bowles and Diana’s mistreatment by senior members of the royal family. The reaction was swift. Within 11 days of the book’s publication Diana received a bombshell letter from her father-in-law, Prince Philip. The letter alarmed her and Morton says that she sought out a solicitor to help draft a reply.1

    Within months the Queen had moved to set up the royal Way Ahead Group – a committee dedicated to helping the royal family deal with major issues and planning the way forward. Its first meeting was held in November 1992 and in the following month the Queen requested the formal separation between Charles and Diana. This was announced in the House of Commons on 9 December.

    In October 1995 Princess Diana penned a note in which she stated that she feared for her life and believed Prince Charles was “planning ‘an accident’ in my car.”2 She left the note with her butler, Paul Burrell, for safe-keeping. Later that month Diana met with her lawyer, Lord Victor Mishcon. He wrote the next morning that Diana had told him efforts could be made to “get rid of her… by some accident in her car such as pre-prepared brake failure.”3 Mishcon had this note typed up and kept it in his safe.

    Five days after that lawyer’s meeting Diana pre-recorded the famous ‘Panorama’ interview with BBC journalist Martin Bashir. In the program – which went to air on 20 November – Diana declared “there were three of us in this marriage,” that she doubted Charles could adapt to being King, recounted her mistreatment by the royals, and stated she was a “very strong person” who would “fight to the end.”4

    Diana also told several friends and family that she feared for her life and believed she could be killed in “an accident.”

    Later that month her fears were vindicated when the brakes in her regularly-serviced Audi failed as she drove through the streets of London. She wrote about it to her close friends. Simone Simmons said she received a letter that said: “The brakes on my car have been tampered with. If something does happen to me it will be MI5 or MI6.”5

    The month following the ‘Panorama’ interview, just seven days before Christmas, Diana received a hand-written letter from the Queen requesting her to divorce Prince Charles.

    The decree absolute came into effect on 28 August 1996, but it was much more than a marital divorce. The Queen also moved to strip the princess of her HRH title and effectively remove her from the royal family.

    Earlier, in March, Diana had been driving in London when she was hit by an out of control Fiat Uno. Her driver’s door was smashed in and witnesses said it was amazing she escaped unhurt. Although the police investigated this crash, their report has never been released.

    Diana Starts Campaigning to Eradicate Landmines

    Then around July 1996 Diana started taking an interest in the worldwide scourge of unexploded landmines and began collecting information and building a dossier on the industry. Her primary concern was humanitarian – to help the victims and to campaign for the eradication of all landmines.

    In January 1997, launching her involvement in the campaign, Diana made a highly-publicised visit to Angola – this was the nation with the highest number of victims. She was filmed walking through minefields and stated that she sought to “focus world attention on this… largely neglected issue.”6

    The following month she received a high-profile death threat. During a phone call from Nicholas Soames, Britain’s Minister of the Armed Forces, Diana was told to drop her anti-landmines campaign. Soames went on to say: “You never know when an accident is going to happen.”7

    Although shaken, Diana told her friend Simone Simmons – who witnessed the call – that she was undeterred: “We must do something. We cannot allow this slaughter to continue.”8

    Diana’s anti-landmine dossier grew in size to become several inches thick and she left copies with Simmons and another friend, Elsa Bowker. Her butler Paul Burrell said it contained “every fact of the landmine mission.”9

    On 12 June 1997, just under 12 weeks before she died, Diana delivered a landmark speech at the Royal Geographic Society in London. She outlined the nature and scope of the landmine problem, she talked about the “evil that men do” and spoke about her vision to “end this plague on Earth.”10

    Meeting the Al Fayeds

    It was around this time Princess Diana accepted an offer from long-time family friend and owner of Harrods, Mohamed Al Fayed, to holiday with his family at his St Tropez villa in mid-July. The offer extended to Diana and her two sons, William and Harry. At that time Al Fayed was viewed by the British Establishment as a person of ill-repute – he had recently been heavily involved in the “cash for questions” scandal that helped bring about the downfall of Britain’s Tory Government in May 1997.

    Both these actions – Diana’s increasingly public determination to eradicate the mines and taking William, the future King of England, on holiday with the Al Fayeds – were seen as a major challenge to the Establishment.

    In the following days two critical high-level decisions were made.

    First, senior royals called a special unscheduled meeting of the Way Ahead Group (WAG), chaired by the Queen. This meeting took place on 23 July and was preceded two weeks earlier by a special preparatory meeting attended by senior royal household officials, including the Queen’s private secretary, Robert Fellowes. The preparatory meeting was held on 8 July – three days before Diana and the princes left on the contentious Al Fayed holiday – and the full WAG meeting occurred on 23 July – three days after the holiday had concluded.

    The second decision was for an arrangement to be made for friend of Diana, Rosa Monckton, to organise a holiday with Princess Diana. Monckton was a person who had two very close connections to MI6 – her brother Anthony was a MI6 officer working in Zagreb and her husband Dominic Lawson was a MI6 agent who was editor of the Sunday Telegraph.

    Whilst in Hong Kong Monckton called Diana and arranged a one-on-one yachting holiday around the Greek islands, to take place in mid-August.

    Diana, William and Harry left for the St Tropez holiday on 11 July, amidst a storm of controversy. Following their return nine days later, a romance developed between Diana and Mohamed Al Fayed’s son, Dodi.

    On 30 July Diana broke off her nearly two year relationship with boyfriend Hasnat Khan and the following day left with Dodi on a week-long Mediterranean cruise.

    Their romance blossomed throughout August, interrupted only by two events – the pre-arranged Monckton cruise and Diana’s three-day anti-landmine visit to Bosnia on 8 August.
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    Monckton Cruises with Diana for Intel

    Diana and Monckton left for the Greek islands on the 15th – “it was just the two of us” Monckton later told the inquest.11 What she didn’t say was that their hired 20 metre boat, the Della Grazia, was shadowed by three super-yachts chartered by MI6, the Marala, the Sunrise and the Sea Sedan. These were used as decoys to distract the media – who were not looking for a smaller vessel, and despite a massive search, never actually found the boat Monckton and Diana were on.12

    This strategy provided Monckton with five uninterrupted days on the ocean – time to seek inside information on Diana’s thoughts and intentions, to satisfy her intelligence masters.

    Diana and Monckton returned from that holiday on 20 August – and 11 days later Diana lay dead in a Paris hospital.

    On 22 August Diana and Dodi departed from Stansted airport headed for their final Mediterranean cruise. The two lovers would never see England again.

    The following day they visited Repossi’s jewellery store in Monte Carlo. Diana saw and liked an engagement ring from the “Tell Me Yes” range. Dodi later arranged for that same ring to be transferred to Repossi’s Paris – he purchased it from there just hours before the couple died.

    Diana and Dodi finished up their cruise in Sardinia and on the afternoon of Saturday, 30 August, they flew from Olbia to Paris, landing at Le Bourget airport at 3.20pm.

    They were met by French police who provided an escort for the initial part of the journey into the city.13 The police later denied they were aware of Diana’s presence in France, falsely claiming the first they knew she was there was when they heard about the crash that occurred later that night.14

    Threatened by Large, Dark Motorbikes

    During that journey and other travels through the streets of Paris that evening the couple’s Mercedes was threatened by large, dark motorbikes, some carrying pillions. Witnesses in the car and back-up Range Rover described these bikes as “behaving dangerously.”15 The Mercedes driver, Philippe Dourneau, said they were “coming from all angles, from front and behind – they were all over the place.”16 They took many flash photos on these trips – none of which have ever been published. The evidence indicates they were operating as fake paparazzi, helping to create an environment where later the real paparazzi could be falsely held culpable for the crash.

    Initially the couple travelled to Villa Windsor and then into the city, arriving at the Ritz Hotel – owned by Mohamed Al Fayed – at 4.35pm. Whilst there Diana made phone calls and had her hair done and Dodi visited Repossi’s and purchased the engagement ring.

    They left the hotel at 7pm, heading for Dodi’s apartment near the Arc de Triomphe. Once in the apartment – where their luggage had earlier been taken from the airport – the couple relaxed, showered and prepared to leave for dinner, which was to be back at the Ritz.

    They left for the hotel at 9.30pm. Didier Gamblin was on security at the apartment and said the fake paparazzi went “completely crazy” and “set off like lunatics to follow the car.”17

    Ritz CCTV records Diana and Dodi arriving at the front entrance of the hotel at 9.50pm. They initially went to the restaurant for dinner, but were stressed from the intimidating actions of the fake paparazzi and soon moved themselves upstairs to the sanctuary of the Imperial Suite.

    The Decoy Plan – But Who Planned It?

    It is after this that a decoy plan surfaced – a plan to leave for the return trip to the apartment from the rear of the hotel in a third car, whilst the primary Mercedes and the back-up Range Rover sat outside the front entrance, acting as decoys to divert the paparazzi.

    Dodi approved a plan for the use of a third car to leave from the rear – but he was not told there would be no back-up car, only one bodyguard and a driver who was not licensed to chauffeur.

    The evidence indicates the plan was devised by intelligence officers working from outside the hotel, employing two of the Ritz’s senior staff as agents – Henri Paul, the acting head of security and Claude Roulet, the vice-president of the hotel.

    Henri Paul was the designated chauffeur – but he was not a driver, had never driven any Ritz guests in his 11 years at the hotel, and did not possess the required chauffeur’s ‘Grande Remise’ licence. To top it off, his best friend, Claude Garrec, told the police Henri didn’t like driving and “If he could avoid [it] he would.”18

    Henri Paul had been receiving large sums of money from sources unknown in the months leading up to the crash. He had links to French and British intelligence agencies and on the night of his death was carrying 12,565FF ($2,500) on his person.

    The third car was the only other car available – a Mercedes S280 with untinted windows, whose regular driver was Olivier Lafaye. Every evening Lafaye would finish work, return to the Ritz and park his vehicle in the same section of the Vendôme car park. He told the police that the other chauffeurs took their vehicles home – he was the only one without a garage.19

    On that Saturday evening Lafaye parked his Mercedes S280 at 8.15pm. At 8.20 Claude Roulet is shown on CCTV leaving the Ritz Hotel. It is likely Roulet pointed out this Mercedes to other agents, who then had ample time to tamper with the vehicle prior to its final departure after midnight. Later evidence revealed that Diana – a person who many witnesses said always wore her seat belt – was sitting in the right rear seat with a jammed belt.20

    Henri Paul departed from the hotel at 7.01pm, but quickly returned at 10.06 following the couple’s arrival. After 11pm he made four separate visits to the paparazzi waiting out the front of the Ritz. Henri was providing regular updates on how long it would be before the couple appeared. It was essential to the MI6 plan that the paparazzi were still present when Diana and Dodi departed – they would try to follow the car and later be falsely blamed for the behaviour of the fake paparazzi, the assassins.

    Detailed Account of Diana’s Final Fatal Journey

    The Mercedes S280 departed from the rear of the Ritz Hotel at 12.18am – there was no back-up car, only one bodyguard, untinted windows and at least one jammed seat belt in the back.

    Some paparazzi were outside the rear and they immediately followed. Those out the front were quickly alerted and some of them joined the pursuit at the Place de la Concorde, where the Mercedes was held up by red lights.

    Large unidentified motorbikes also joined in from around the Concorde. The Mercedes was pressured by constant flashing of cameras – many photos were taken but they have never been published.

    The principal car left quickly from Concorde and witnesses on the riverside expressway saw a speeding Mercedes surrounded by several large, dark motorbikes. As the vehicle approached the exit it would take to head for Dodi’s apartment, a blocking motorbike was seen on its right.

    Failure to make the appropriate exit forced the Mercedes S280 towards the Alma Tunnel. As it neared the tunnel one witness saw the motorbikes “in a cluster, like a swarm around the Mercedes.”21 People saw photos being taken – again unpublished.

    Two separate witnesses saw the Mercedes – which was already in the left lane – overtaken on the left by one of the motorbikes carrying a pillion. At the same time, just as Henri entered the tunnel, he was confronted on the right by a slow-moving white Fiat Uno straddling the two lanes.

    As the motorbike got in front, a bright flash was seen and Henri immediately lost control of the Mercedes. A split-second later the Mercedes side-swiped the Uno and then zig-zagged left, right and left before crashing into the 13th central pillar of the tunnel, at around 100 kph.

    The car bounced back from the pillar, swung around 180 degrees and came to rest near the wall, facing the tunnel entrance.

    It was 12.23am on Sunday, 31 August 1997.

    Witnesses saw motorbikes and cars fleeing the tunnel – even though it is against the law in France to not stop and render assistance. None of the fleeing vehicles – including the white Fiat Uno – has ever officially been identified. And none of the drivers or riders have ever come forward.

    The two people on the driver’s side – Henri Paul and Dodi Fayed – died on impact, and the two on the passenger’s side – Princess Diana and bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones – survived the crash.

    The French ambulance service (SAMU) immediately started receiving calls from passers-by. Dr. Arnaud Derossi was manning the phones and he allocated an ambulance carrying Dr. Jean-Marc Martino.

    That ambulance left the Necker Hospital base at 12.28am and arrived at the crash scene at 12.40am. It took 12 minutes to travel 2.3 km – Diana’s ambulance travelled to the scene at around 11½ kph.

    Upon arriving Martino straightaway phoned the base and spoke to Dr. Derossi, who then immediately left the base heading to the crash scene. It was left to an auxiliary to notify the base’s off-duty doctor, Marc Lejay, who was asleep at the time.22

    Death by Doctors?

    Princess Diana was heard talking by several witnesses, saying “Oh my God” and “what’s happened?”23 When the doctor performed the standard Glasgow Coma test to assess her condition in the car, she scored very well – 14 on a scale of 15.24

    However there was reason to suggest there could be an internal injury – Diana had been involved in a fatal, high speed crash and wasn’t wearing a seat belt. This possibility was confirmed after Diana was finally transferred into the ambulance, 43 minutes after the crash. The initial examination revealed there was thoracic trauma bruising.25

    From that point it became even more imperative that Diana was transferred immediately to a hospital – the thoracic trauma was a clear sign there could be a life-threatening internal injury.

    Instead though, these two doctors – Martino and Derossi – tarried. The ambulance remained in the Alma Tunnel until 1.41am, one hour and 18 minutes after the crash.

    And worse, they poured catecholamine into her to increase her blood pressure (BP), even though the BP was 70 and high enough to comfortably make the 5 km trip to the hospital.

    And on top of that, Dr. Derossi informed the base there was “nothing for the thorax,” twice, even though he already was aware of the thoracic trauma.26 This ensured the hospital would not have a thoracic specialist on hand when Diana arrived.

    After leaving the scene the ambulance travelled at what one witness described as “walking pace.”27 Then within sight of the hospital gates it stopped for five minutes. A journalist who followed the ambulance described it as “rocking” while stationary.28 He also witnessed a doctor transferring from the front to the back.29

    Whatever they were doing inside the ambulance, it required four people – Drs Martino, Derossi and two interns (Barbara Kapfer and a person called “Fadi”).

    There has never been a credible explanation for a stoppage so close to the hospital.

    Martino delivered Diana to the La Pitié Salpêtrière Hospital at 2.06am – it was now one hour and 43 minutes since the crash.

    Six minutes after arriving Princess Diana stopped breathing. She would never breathe again, despite the best efforts of the hospital’s doctors.

    Dr. Bruno Riou ticked the suspicious death box on the death certificate.30 The public prosecutor’s office was then forced to order an autopsy, which was conducted by Professor Dominique Lecomte. She found no suspicious circumstances.

    Dr. Riou was never asked why he was suspicious.

    Conflicting Evidence Points to the Cover-Up

    Later that morning Professor Lecomte carried out an autopsy on the driver, Henri Paul. Samples taken were tested early the following day – the results indicated the driver had a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 1.74, three times over the French limit.

    This conflicted with evidence in the hotel prior to the departure of the Mercedes. Many witnesses testified that Henri was not drunk and this was supported by the CCTV footage, which showed him walking and acting normally.

    Later testing revealed the blood had a carbon monoxide (CO) level of 20.7%. The combination of elevated BAC and CO meant Henri would have been incoherent, had a migraine headache and found it impossible to stay upright.

    Yet that is not what the CCTV and witnesses saw.

    A close analysis of Professor Lecomte’s autopsy of Henri Paul reveals she made at least 58 errors in her conduct and documentation.31 The police files reveal there were two lots of documentation for the one autopsy – each recording different samples taken and differing body measurements, weight and height.32

    The evidence points to two bodies being in the room at the time of the autopsy – one was Henri Paul’s and the other was a person who had died in a fire with smoke inhalation.

    Samples were taken from both bodies, but kept separate. The other person’s samples were used for the BAC testing and years later Henri’s true samples were used for DNA testing. The DNA-tested samples were never BAC tested and the BAC-tested samples were never DNA tested.

    The paparazzi and Henri Paul were fraudulently set up to take the blame for the death of Princess Diana.

    The truth is that the crash was orchestrated by MI6 (with assistance from the CIA and France’s DGSE and DST) on the orders of senior members of the British royal family, with the acquiescence of Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac and Bill Clinton – the leaders of the three leading Western arms-dealing nations.

    Diana Princess of Wales – our humanitarian princess – was murdered in one of the most shocking inter-governmental operations followed by one of the most extensive cover-ups of our time.

    The late John Morgan wrote two explosive books exposing the conspiracy to murder Princess Diana. Information on How They Murdered Princess Diana: The Shocking Truth, and Paris-London Connection: The Assassination of Princess Diana, can be found at princessdianadeaththeevidence.weebly.com. Both books can be purchased from Amazon.com.

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    Footnotes

    1. Andrew Morton, Diana: In Pursuit of Love, Michael O’Mara Books, 2004, 76
    2. Inquest evidence: INQ0010117
    3. Inquest evidence: INQ0006335
    4. ‘The Panorama Interview’, BBC, 20 November 1995, www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/diana/panorama.html
    5. Simone Simmons with Ingrid Seward, Diana: The Last Word, St Martin’s Press, 2005, 179
    6. www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU0APrqxUxc
    7. Diana: The Last Word, 178-180
    8. Ibid., 180
    9. Inquest transcripts: 16 Jan 08: 27.11
    10. ‘Responding To Landmines: A Modern Tragedy And Its Consequences’ by Diana, Princess Of Wales. Keynote Address at a one day seminar co-hosted by the Mines Advisory Group and the Landmine Survivors Network, London, 12 June 1997, http://gos.sbc.edu/d/diana.html
    11. Inquest transcripts: 13 Dec 07: 139.18
    12. ‘The Media Swarm Greek Isles, In Search Of Diana’, Philadelphia Inquirer, 18 August 1997
    13. Rene Delorm, Diana & Dodi: A Love Story, Tallfellow Press, 1998, 154
    14. Inquest transcripts: 14 Nov 06 statement read out 21 Nov 07: 57.22
    15. Inquest transcripts: Kez Wingfield: 2 Sep 97 Statement read out 18 Dec 07: 145.9
    16. Inquest transcripts: 3 Sep 97 Statement read out 29 Oct 07: 67.17
    17. Inquest transcripts: 3 Oct 97 Statement read out 7 Mar 08: 103.14
    18. Paget Report, 14 December 2006, 162-3
    19. Paget Report, 14 December 2006, 244-5
    20. Paget Report, 14 December 2006, 421
    21. Paget Report, 14 December 2006, 439
    22. Inquest transcripts: 11 Dec 07: 7.13
    23. An example: Xavier Gourmelon: Paget Report, 14 December 2006, 513
    24. Inquest evidence: INQ0004774
    25. Inquest transcripts: 24 Jan 08:124.16; Inquest evidence: INQ0004774
    26. Inquest transcripts: 11 Dec 07: 14.9, 28.23
    27. Inquest transcripts: Pierre Suu: 28 Feb 06 Statement read out 11 Mar 08: 150.4
    28. Inquest transcripts: Thierry Orban: 23 Sep 97 Statement read out 17 Oct 07: 13.7
    29. Inquest transcripts: Thierry Orban: 23 Sep 97 Statement read out 17 Oct 07: 13.3; Pierre Suu:28 Feb 06 Statement read out 11 Mar 08: 150.22
    30. Prof. Bruno Riou, Witness Statement, 7 March 2006, reproduced in Diana Inquest: The Documents the Jury Never Saw, edited by John Morgan, 2010, 375-6
    31. John Morgan, Cover-Up of a Royal Murder: Hundreds of Errors in the Paget Report, 2007, 188-194
    32. John Morgan, Diana Inquest: The French Cover-Up, 2010, 50-68

    © New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
    For our reproduction notice, click here.

  • Who Did Kill Rasputin?

    Who Did Kill Rasputin?

    From New Dawn Special Issue Vol 8 No 3 (June 2014)

    Before the First World War the Russian royal family, the Romanovs, were heavily involved in occult activities. In the years between 1900 and 1905, the French occultist Dr. Gerard Encausse (Papus) made several visits to Russia for undisclosed reasons. In fact, he had been personally invited to the country by Tsar Nicholas II and was holding magical séances at the royal palace in St Petersburg for the tsar and his German-born wife, the Tsarina Alexandra. Both were interested in Spiritualism and the occult.

    Dr. Encausse was a member of a French magical society called the Kabbalistic Order of the Rosy Cross (CORC). This was founded in France in 1888, the same year as the famous Order of the Golden Dawn in England. Dr. Encausse claimed to have been initiated into a Golden Dawn lodge in Paris run by Samuel Liddell Macgregor Mathers and his wife Moina. The Marquis Stanilas de Guaita and Josephin Peladan, two prominent French occultists, had created the CORC. Peladan had been born into an eccentric and fanatical Roman Catholic family who were supporters of the restoration of the French monarchy. His brother, Adrien, practised as a homeopathic doctor and had many wealthy and titled patients. He claimed to have been initiated in 1858 into a secret Rosicrucian order in Toulouse which had survived since the Middle Ages.

    At the magical rituals held at the royal palace, Dr. Encausse attempted to conjure up the tsar’s dead father, Alexander III, who was also interested in Spiritualism. In fact, Alexander had invited the English medium D.D. Home to Russia to hold séances attended by aristocrats and members of the royal court.

    In the early 1900s Russia was on the brink of revolution. There were riots in the streets, strikes, and rumours of mutiny in the armed forces. Against this turbulent background of civil disorder, the weak Tsar Nicholas II sought advice from the ‘Other Side’ on how to handle the situation. The message that came back from the spirits advised the tsar to resist the subversive and revolutionary forces threatening his throne, or he would lose control of Russia and topple from power. If the tsar did not take immediate action to deal with the deteriorating situation, then his authority and rule would be seriously undermined.

    Despite this warning, Nicholas refused to act decisively and with the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, the situation spiralled out of control as the spirits had predicted. This led to Nicholas losing his throne and eventually his life at the hands of Bolshevik revolutionaries. The vengeful Bolsheviks massacred his family and seized power from the democratic government set up after the tsar abdicated.

    After his last visit to St Petersburg in 1905, Dr. Encausse stayed in contact with the tsar, and the occultist and the monarch exchanged letters at regular intervals. In this correspondence, they discussed various esoteric matters of mutual interest. However, Dr. Encausse confided to his fellow occultists that in his opinion Nicholas was a weak and easily influenced person who relied too much on his spiritual sources. The French magician believed that the tsar should instead listen more to his ministers and take their advice on the day-to-day running of the country.

    The ‘Mad Monk’

    The French occultist became particularly worried about how the tsar and tsarina had fallen under what he regarded as the malefic influence of a charismatic wandering ‘holy man’ called Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin. Rumoured to have been involved with the unorthodox religious sect known as the Khlysty or ‘People of God’, Rasputin managed to be invited to the royal court. As a result, he became the spiritual advisor, friend and confidante of the Tsarina Alexandra and also forged relationships with other Russian aristocrats.

    The Khlysty were a neo-Gnostic sect condemned by the Russian Orthodox Church because of their practices of flagellation and sexual indulgence to make contact with God and achieve spiritual enlightenment. At this time there were many quasi-religious sects in Russia and numerous wandering holy men and healers such as Rasputin.

    How much the tsarina knew of Rasputin’s background is not known, but she must have been aware he was using his personal charm and hypnotic powers to seduce many of her female courtiers. Although there is no evidence they had a sexual affair, Alexandra seems to have been infatuated with the unkempt ‘holy man’. She was in awe of his magical powers after he used his healing abilities to save the life of her haemophiliac son, the heir to the imperial throne. From then on, she would not allow anyone to say a bad word against him.

    Despite his wild physical appearance, Rasputin exerted a strange power over women, especially wealthy ones. It was said this was due to his ability to withhold orgasm for long periods. One aristocratic lady said the experience of making love with Rasputin was so pleasurable that she actually fainted during it. Such comments have led some writers to suggest the ‘Mad Monk’, as his enemies dubbed him, was a skilled adept in Tantric techniques from Eastern occultism and a practitioner of sex magic.

    Many friends of the Romanov royal family and members of the Russian government warned the tsar that Rasputin’s influence over his wife was sinister and evil. Dr. Encausse also wrote to Nicholas and warned him that in Kabbalistic terms the holy man was an unholy vessel like Pandora’s famous box of misfortune. As such, he contained all the “vices, crimes and filth of the common Russian people.” Prophetically, the French occultist said if the vessel was ever broken (i.e. Rasputin was killed) all its “dreadful contents will spill across Russia” destroying everything they touch.

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    Prelude to The Great War

    In the 1900s it was widely expected there would soon be a war involving the major European powers. It was alleged that at a secret conference in Brussels, attended by leading Freemasons and members of secret societies as early as 1905, a plot had been hatched to bring down the Romanovs along with the other crowned heads of Europe. As the Great War approached, it was believed Rasputin was their secret weapon in achieving this aim.

    The First World War broke out in August 1914 following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife the Archduchess Sophia of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When they were killed in Sarajevo, Bosnia by members of a secret society of Serbian nationalists known as the Order of the Black Hand, Rasputin warned the tsar not to let Russia get involved in a war with Germany. The monk predicted that if the Russian armed forces joined with those of Britain and France against Germany and their Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian allies, the country would suffer “a terrible defeat.” In the violent civil disorder to follow, the monarchy would fall from power. For once, the tsar ignored the advice of his ‘spiritual sources’ and committed the imperial Russian army and navy to the allied cause against Germany.

    Following the assassinations in Sarajevo, Tsarina Alexandra sent Rasputin several urgent telegrams asking for his advice about the international situation. Rasputin replied that on no account should Mother Russia get involved if, as was widely expected, war broke out among the major European powers. If she did, “It will be the finish of all things.” It is presumed Rasputin was not aware Russian secret agents had been implicated in the assassination plot. Allegedly, the Russian military attaché in Belgrade had paid 8,000 roubles to the leaders of the Order of the Black Hand. The attaché had also told them that Tsar Nicholas II would support the cause of Serbian nationalism if war broke out between Russia and the Austro-Hungarian-German alliance.

    It was also rumoured that in early 1914 representatives of the Black Hand had secretly met with members of the politically subversive French Masonic lodge of the Grand Orient at the Hotel St Jerome in Toulouse, France. At this meeting the assassination of Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph and Archduke Ferdinand had been discussed. The plot was organised by the Black Hand with renegade elements of French Masonry and allegedly had the tacit support of the Russian tsar. The idea was to create the right conditions for a war between the European monarchies leading to their destruction, although why Nicholas II would support the anti-royalist plan remains unclear as he had all to lose from it.

    Following the murder of Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Kaiser Wilhelm told the Austro-Hungarian ambassador in Berlin that military force had to be used to neutralise Serbian nationalism and he offered his country’s support in any action the empire decided to take. The Kaiser quoted intelligence reports that suggested Russia would not intervene. On 28 July 1914, four weeks after the assassinations, the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia. In response to this, Tsar Nicholas ordered the Russian army to mobilise. The Kaiser warned the tsar that unless his forces stood down he would mobilise German troops. Five days later, when this ultimatum had been ignored, Germany declared war on Russia and the First World War began.

    When war was declared, Rasputin said if he had not been ill he would have travelled to St Petersburg to see the tsar personally. If this had happened, he boasted, Russia would never have entered the war and he would have single-handedly changed the course of world history. The pro-war elements claimed Rasputin was a pacifist and a pro-German traitor. It was even said the holy man was a secret agent working for the German intelligence service. The Germans had allegedly planted him in the royal palace to give the tsar and tsarina false advice and counsel.

    As the war dragged on, the rising casualties at the front and food shortages at home led to strikes and riots, and open hostility to the Romanovs surfaced among the population. This unrest was aided and abetted by the subversive activities of left-wing socialist and revolutionary agitators who wanted to replace the existing regime with a worker’s republic. Rasputin meanwhile had received a psychic premonition of impending doom and believed his life was under threat. In 1916 he wrote to the tsar spelling out the consequences to Russia and the Romanov dynasty if he was killed. He said should he be murdered by common assassins who were Russian peasants, whom he described as his “brothers,” the royal family would have nothing to fear. If, however, his killers were aristocrats, then “brother will kill brother” and no nobles would be left in the country.

    Several political factions in Russia had previously attempted to stop Rasputin’s influence on the royal family by violent means. In 1913 a conspiracy was revealed to kidnap the mystic monk, castrate him because of his sexual activities, and then kill him. Rasputin, however, was tipped off about the plot and managed to evade capture.

    A year later, on 19 July, a prostitute attacked Rasputin while he was holidaying at the Black Sea resort of Yalta, later to be the meeting place of the Allied wartime leaders towards the end of the Second World War. The prostitute stabbed Rasputin in the stomach, but despite losing a considerable amount of blood, he managed to survive the attack. When questioned by police, the woman said she had tried to murder the so-called ‘holy man’ because he was a heretic and ‘fornicator’ who had seduced a nun. She was diagnosed as unfit to stand trial due to insanity and was committed to a mental hospital. This appears to be an official cover-up.

    Significantly perhaps, the assassination attempt on Rasputin occurred only weeks after the murder in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife by members of the Black Hand secret society.

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    Enter the SIS

    Rasputin’s prediction of his own death came eerily true in December 1916, when a group of right-wing aristocrats conspired with the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6 or Military Intelligence Department Six) to kill him. The SIS was a branch of the Foreign Office set up in 1909. According to Michael Smith’s book Six: A History of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service: Part 1: Murder and Mayhem 1909-1939, at the beginning of the First World War the head of SIS in London, known by the code letter ‘C’, made overtures to the Russian intelligence service. This was because of serious British concerns about the commitment of Tsar Nicholas II to the war effort. In September 1914, ‘C’ was granted permission by the Foreign Office in London and the Russian government to send several military officers to set up a SIS bureau in Petrograd, the new name for St Petersburg. Its name had been changed because the original sounded too German.

    One of the SIS officers, Lieutenant Stephen Alley, was a fluent Russian speaker who had been born in a village near Moscow. Before the war he worked in Russia for the Maikop & General Petroleum Trust, an American oil company owned by the future US president Herbert Hoover. The company was building a new oil pipeline across southern Russia to a port on the Black Sea. When war broke out, Lt Alley left the company and joined the British Army. He was then recruited by military intelligence, joining the SIS. Because of his Russian background, Lt Alley was sent to Petrograd posing as a military attaché to the British Embassy.

    The British intelligence officer soon discovered there were members of the Russian government, especially in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who were worried about the way the war was going. Some went so far as to support a separate peace treaty with Germany. Apparently there had been several clandestine meetings between officials of the two countries at the Russian and German embassies in Rome. It was said the Grand Duke of Hesse in Germany had even been in personal touch with the German-born tsarina. He had urged her to use her influence with her husband and members of the Russian government to seek a peace agreement.

    In November 1915, Lt Alley was in charge of what the SIS Russian bureau termed ‘background intelligence operations’. Two other officers, who had been recently sent out from SIS’s London headquarters, assisted him. One of them, Lt Oswald Rayner, was originally given the task of secretly opening and examining telegrams and letters. The SIS was particularly interested in the activities of neutral Swedish shipping companies believed to be supplying goods to Germany in defiance of the Royal Navy’s blockade.

    Before joining the Secret Service, Rayner had worked in Finland, then a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire. He taught English and befriended a wealthy local couple who funded his further education at Oxford University, where he studied modern languages. At Oxford, he became friendly with Prince Feliks (Felix) Yusupov, a member of one of the wealthiest and most influential aristocratic families in Russia. Rayner then worked as a correspondent for The Times newspaper in London and later joined the civil service where he became a friend of the future wartime prime minister, David Lloyd George. When war broke out in 1914, Rayner joined the British Army. He was commissioned as an officer and assigned to ‘special duties’ with the SIS. Like Lt Alley, his fluency in Russian had him sent to Petrograd to join the British Secret Service unit operating in the city.

    With persistent rumours circulating that the Russian government was keen to make peace with Germany, the SIS began to focus on the specific stories about Grigory Rasputin, his alleged involvement in a pro-German anti-war peace movement and his peculiar influence over the tsarina. Their intelligence suggested the holy man was either the leader or at the very least a leading mover in a so-called ‘peace party’ made up of politically prominent Russians.

    As a result, several right-wing pro-war elements within the Russian aristocracy were counter-plotting to remove Rasputin permanently so he could not influence the tsar and tsarina with his views. One of these conspirators, a member of the Duma or Russian parliament, Vladimir Purishkevich, approached a SIS officer offering information on the plot. He told the officer a plan had been drawn up to “liquidate Rasputin.” At the time, the officer was unaware that three of his SIS colleagues, Alley, Rayner and an ex-Indian Army officer Captain John Dymoke Scale, were in fact closely involved in the plot to kill Rasputin.

    Lt Alley and Capt Scale had become suspicious of the tsarina’s close relationship with her spiritual advisor. Knowledge of Rasputin’s pro-German sentiments was common knowledge by 1916. Even The Times accused him of being a Germanophile whose influence at the Russian royal court was described as both “potent” and “baleful.” Capt Scale described Rasputin as a “drunken debaucher” who was adversely influencing Russian government policy and “clogging the war machine.” It was becoming evident the Mad Monk had to be neutralised, and this could only be achieved by his death.

    The Plot to Kill Rasputin

    The key figure in any British Secret Service involvement in a plot to terminate Rasputin with ‘extreme prejudice’ would be Lt Oswald Rayner. This was because of his long friendship with Prince Yusupov who was the leader of the conspirators. The prince invited the holy man to a ‘party’ at his family’s palace on the banks of the River Neva in Petrograd. Yusupov persuaded his wife, Princess Irina, the niece of Tsar Nicholas, to lure the monk to the party, although she was not actually going to be present. It was a typical British Secret Service ‘honey-trap’ operation that has been carried out many times since. Also present at the party was a prominent aristocrat, the Grand Duke Dimitry Pavlovich, the tsar’s second cousin; an army officer, Lieutenant Syukhotin, who was a close friend of the prince; Vladimir Purishkevich; an army medic Dr. Stanilaus de Lazoret – and the SIS officer Lt Oswald Rayner.

    The usual version of events is that Rasputin was first given some small chocolate cakes and wine laced with cyanide. When these had no apparent effect, he was shot in the chest at close range with a revolver. The holy man apparently survived this, attacked his would-be killers and managed to escape from the house. The assassins pursued him and he was shot three more times. His body was then bundled into a car and driven to the Petrovsky Bridge over the River Neva, where it was thrown into the icy waters. Despite the poison and several gunshot wounds, Rasputin was still alive, if barely, when he was tossed into the river and drowned.

    In reality, when Rasputin arrived at the prince’s home he was given copious amounts of alcohol until he was drunk. He was then tortured, beaten with a leather cosh on the testicles. There may have been a sexual element to this, but the aim was to get Rasputin to confess to his anti-war activities and name the other pro-German conspirators involved. Finally, he was shot several times using at least three different weapons. It is alleged that Rayner used his standard Secret Service issue Webley revolver to fire the last shot that finally finished off Rasputin. His body was then disposed through a hole in the ice of the frozen river.

    It is not clear if the senior officer running the SIS Russian bureau in Petrograd was fully aware of the involvement of Rayner and the other British officers in Rasputin’s murder. He expressed total surprise at the news when relaying it to ‘C’ in London. There is indication the three SIS officers had not received official sanction for the operation. They acted without London’s approval because they feared that the plan for a Russian peace treaty with Germany was well advanced. In fact, under torture Rasputin had even named a date in January 1917 when it would be signed.

    Two of the three SIS officers seemed to have been quickly posted elsewhere. Capt Scale was not even in Russia when the operation was carried out. He had already been sent to Romania to assist in a SIS operation to prevent the invading German army from capturing and using the oilfields and grain stores in the country by sabotaging them. He was later to return to Petrograd where rumours were still rife that the British Secret Service had somehow been involved in Rasputin’s death.

    Lt Oswald Rayner was transferred to SIS’s Stockholm office, but Lt Alley stayed in Russia and took over as head of the bureau. He eventually was given the role of liaison officer with the new provisional government and had the task of persuading them to keep the faith by pursuing the war with Germany. He was later sacked from SIS for allegedly refusing to carry out an order to assassinate one of the Bolshevik revolutionary leaders – Josef Stalin. The real reason was said to be that ‘C’ in London wanted to get rid of Lt Alley. It is possible this was because of the lieutenant’s alleged involvement in the plot to torture and murder Rasputin.

    The reaction to and consequences of the death of the Mad Monk were immediate, confirming the holy man’s own predictions about the event at the hands of the aristocracy. The Russian peasantry held him in great regard and reverence. When the news of his violent death spread, he was treated like a religious martyr and the finger of suspicion was pointed at the royal palace. Following the murder, rumours began to circulate of a right-wing coup by army officers to oust Tsar Nicholas II because he was a weak leader who was losing the war for Russia. The secret police investigated these stories, but in fact the real threat to the tsar’s continued rule and precarious position came from extreme left-wingers and, ironically, the supporters of a liberal democratic form of government.

    Fall of the Monarchy

    In March (or February by the Old Calendar still used in Russia) 1917, food riots broke out in Petrograd and other major Russian cities. Troops sent to put them down instead sided with the hungry demonstrators and joined them in their protest. As law and order broke down, a new liberal democratic provisional government was appointed to run the country. Faced with widespread and mounting criticism and a violent reaction to his policies, Nicholas decided the best thing for the country was to abdicate in favour of his younger brother, Grand Duke Michael. Unfortunately, the new tsar did not have the support or confidence of the peasants and, more importantly, the police and armed forces. In turn, Michael was forced to abdicate and he passed his executive powers to the provisional government. This move was widely applauded in Western capitals, as it was mistakenly believed that Russia was entering a new era of democracy replacing the autocratic rule of the tsars.

    Unfortunately, divided by internal disputes and trying to fight an increasingly unpopular war, the provisional government ruled for only eight months until November (or October) 1917. During this short period of democratic rule, it did manage to promote freedom of speech, religious worship and assembly and ended the censorship of the press. This freedom was short lived as in July 1917 a group of soldiers, sailors and Bolsheviks attempted to seize Petrograd. They were only prevented from doing so by the intervention of regular army units who were still loyal to the provisional government.

    Kaiser Wilhelm, himself interested in Spiritualism with an extensive private library of occult books, also decided to interfere in Russia’s internal affairs. He allowed the Bolshevik revolutionary leader Vladimir Illyich Lenin to return to Russia from Switzerland via Germany with his followers in a sealed train. Lenin promised Kaiser Wilhelm that if he managed to seize power by overthrowing the provisional government the war would be ended. On his arrival in Russia, Lenin was greeted by jubilant crowds and finally on 7 November (October) 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power. Troops from the garrison in Petrograd mutinied and, assisted by sailors and an armed workers’ militia called the Red Guard, they stormed the Winter Palace.

    Russia’s New Government

    The Bolshevik revolution was not bloodless by any means as in 1918 fighting broke out between the new Soviet government and the so-called ‘White Russians’ led by aristocrats still loyal to the monarchy. The Allies intervened and American, British, French and Italian troops landed on Russian soil. Their mission was to help the White Russians in the civil war and to seize materials stored in the ports of Archangel and Murmansk so they would not fall into the hands of the Germans. From October 1919 until January 1920, Allied forces blockaded the Russian coast and supplied the White Russians with military equipment.

    Despite their intervention, the Allies failed to prevent the ultimate defeat of the White Russian forces and the eventual establishment of the Soviet Union. In 1918, Tsar Nicholas, his wife and their children were brutally murdered by the Bolsheviks in the cellar of a house in Ekaterinburg, where they had been held captive. Rasputin’s prediction had come true. Nicholas had tried to seek asylum in Britain, but his cousin King George V, persuaded by his government, refused him and his family refuge. The king never fully recovered from the guilt he felt over the matter. Ironically, one of the first acts of the new Bolshevik regime was to ban all religious sects, occult groups and secret societies that had flourished in imperial Russia under the rule of the Romanov dynasty.

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  • The Great Beast on Politics: Aleister Crowley’s Thelemic State Revealed

    The Great Beast on Politics: Aleister Crowley’s Thelemic State Revealed

    From New Dawn Special Issue Vol 10 No 3 (June 2016)

    For those who believe the spiritual realm intersects with the mundane, there are a multitude of references across time and place that warn of a spiritual ‘combat’. Saint Paul and John of Patmos spoke of such things, as did Hopi elders, Jeremiah, the Hindu holy texts, the Voluspa of the Norse, the Muslim historical philosopher Ibn Khaldun, and our Western counterparts Oswald Spengler and Julius Evola, as well as René Guénon who wrote of the present era as the ‘reign of quantity’. Many thinkers such as Evola, Guénon and Rudolf Steiner, speaking from first-hand experiences, identified a conspiracy by ‘Black Adepts’ to enslave humanity to matter (the physical realm), detached from the cosmos and separated from the Divine.

    Among those who warned of this increasing dehumanisation was the ‘infamous’ British occultist Aleister Crowley, scourge of respectable English society during the 1920s, portrayed by the tabloid press as a ‘Satanist’ and ‘the wickedest man in the world’, but also an operative for the British secret service in both the major 20th century world wars.1 Far from being a ‘Black Magician’, Crowley sought to oppose the ‘Black Adepts’ in what he, along with Steiner, Evola and Guénon, et al, saw as an occult war. Crowley’s doctrine, when applied to the political, social and economic spheres, is contrary to that of the Anti-Traditionalist and Counter-Traditionalist currents addressed by Evola and Guénon. Thelema is aristocratic rather than communistic, despite incongruous allusions by Crowley to Adam Weishaupt and the Illuminati.2 Thelema is the antithesis of Illuminism, Jacobinism, secular humanism and other such currents that emerged from Freemasonry.

    Crowley explained that while the Yellow School “stands aloof,” “the Black School and the White are always more or less in active conflict.”3 He wrote of the nexus between the Black School and Freemasonry, and how Masonry had been taken over and redirected by the Black Masters and their adepts. According to Crowley:

    The meaning of masonry has either been completely forgotten or has never existed, except insofar as any particular rite might be a cloak for political or even worse intrigue.4

    Crowley also referred to English Masons “in official relationship with certain masonic bodies whole sole raison d’etre is anti-clericalism, political intrigue and trade benefit,” despite English Masonry supposedly eschewing such motives.5

    Thelema & Nietzsche

    To the mass movements and doctrines that were sprouting in the name of ‘the people’ but can only result in tyranny, Crowley offered what he intended to be the religion of a new Aeon, Thelema, the Greek word for Will.

    “There is no law but do what thou wilt”6 is the dictum of Thelema, misunderstood precisely for what it is not: anarchism and ego-driven individualism of the type promoted by the ‘Black Adepts’ in the name of democracy, liberalism, human rights and other popular clichés designed to fracture and deconstruct society as a dialectical process for reconstructing a ‘new world order’. Crowley unequivocally stated that “do what thou wilt” “must not be regarded as individualism run wild.”7

    The essence of Thelema is the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Crowley lists Nietzsche as one of the ‘saints’ of Thelema in the Gnostic Catholic Mass.8 It is Nietzsche dressed up with mysticism and religious garb. But Nietzsche also presented his doctrines in quasi-religious and mystical ways, calling his most well-known book after the name of the founder of Zoroastrianism, Zarathustra, and writing Thus Spoke Zarathustra in the style of an Old Testament prophet. The dictum of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is Will. The means of achieving one’s will is through “self-overcoming”9 that requires the sternest discipline upon oneself. Nietzsche wrote in opposition to Darwinian evolution,10 stating that human evolution would be willed, not the result of random genetic mutations. This next step of human evolution would result – if able to ‘cross the abyss’ of self-destruction – in the Over-Man. In this – misconceptions to the contrary – one is most brutal towards oneself, not others.

    True Self

    Schooled in the occult by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where Egyptian mythology was in vogue, Crowley coated Thelema with a largely Egyptian façade. His ‘bible’, ‘The Book of the Law’, Liber Legis, an automatic writing scripted in Cairo by Crowley in 1904, is said to be a transmission from “the Gods” through an entity named Aiwass, or Aiwaz, depending on the numerological significance, which Crowley on other occasions referred to as his own ‘Holy Guardian Angel’, or ‘Higher Self’.

    In Thelema this is the ‘True Self’. The only purpose in life is to discover one’s True Self and follow that path regardless of the hardships; equivalent to Nietzsche’s self-overcoming, the individual’s battle against his or her own weaknesses and all obstacles that stand in the way of following one’s path. This requires, states Crowley, the harshest self-discipline, and is far removed from hedonism and self-indulgence. It is what the Muslims call the ‘greater Jihad’, the fight within oneself. It does not justify any sociopathic disregard for others.

    Thelema’s other primary dictum is “Every man and every woman is a star.”11 Since every star has its own orbit, the course of one’s star should not, if the law of Thelema is correctly applied, conflict with another’s orbit or the path of a True Self. Again Crowley was clear: “The highest are those who have mastered and transcended accidental environment… There is a good deal of the Nietzschean standpoint in this verse.”12

    Thelema, in recognising that everyone has a True Self, does not recognise that the brightness of all stars is equal. Hence, Thelema eschews socialist and other neo-Jacobin – and New Age – ideologies that demand universal equality. Again, Crowley is clear when describing Thelema as a stellar religion, “reflecting the highly organised structure of the universe,” which includes “stars that are of greater magnitude and brilliance than the rest.”13 Equality is rejected: “The is no creature on earth the same. All the members, let them be different in their qualities, and let there be no creature equal with another.”14

    Thelema was intended for the creation of a new aristocracy, one neither blood nor money based, but the merit of one’s own struggle. Crowley advocated the Nietzschean revival of a “master morality and a slave morality,”15 meaning that the great mass of people would always have servile characteristics, hence, “the slaves shall serve”:16 their characteristics are to follow those who are innately aristocratic and capable of fulfilling their True Will to the fullest extent. The masses are “that canting, whining, servile breed of whipped dogs which refuses to admit its deity”; “the natural enemy of good government.”17 The new aristocracy would be able to pursue long-range goals without the encumbrances of pandering to democratic whims.18 This aversion to mass politics shuns the democratic vote, “the principle of popular election [being] a fatal folly,” resulting in the election of “mediocrity”: “the safe man, the sound man, and therefore never the genius, the man of progress and illumination.”19

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    Thelemic State

    That is not to say any Thelemic state would be a crushing tyranny as per socialism. To the contrary, Crowley eschewed all levelling doctrines. He shared the views of other creative types of the time, including his arch rival in the Golden Dawn, W.B. Yeats, and the Italian philosopher Julius Evola, that all arising mass movements including Bolshevism, Fascism, and the emerging consumer society with its cultural levelling, were very much negative developments.

    Thelema was also intended as a fighting creed or more aptly, a knightly creed, to wage a Thelemic holy war against creeds that aim to suppress freedom. The ‘new Aeon’ is, after all, one of ‘force and fire’, presided over by the hawk-headed god Horus. Crowley saw an era of conflict preceding the new Aeon, in which the new “aristocrats” would be in conflict with the masses: “and when the trouble begins, we aristocrats of freedom, from castle to the cottage, the tower or the tenement, shall have the slave mob against us.”20 Again one sees the focus for the new aristocracy on character rather than either wealth or birth; a new aristocracy that, like Nietzsche’s Over-Man, emerges through struggle.

    Crowley described a government following a Thelemic course as one in which, far from a hedonistic free-for-all, “set[s] limits to individual freedom. For each man in this state which I propose is fulfilling his own True Will by his eager Acquiescence in the Order necessary to the Welfare of all, and therefore of himself also.”21

    Crowley advocated the organic state, or what was in his time known as corporatism, of which Fascism was an effort. The doctrine of the organic or corporate state (as in corpus, or body) was a broad movement across the world, often influenced by Catholic social doctrine as a vestige of Tradition, contending with both capitalism and Bolshevism. In the organic state, as the term implies, society is regarded as analogous to a living organism: the government is the brain co-ordinating each organ (classes, professions), while the body is composed of cells (individuals). This organic conception of society parallels Traditional societies, as explained by Evola,22 in which the socio-economic structure was a pyramidal hierarchy with the guilds at its foundation. Again, Crowley was specific, describing the organic state very cogently:

    In the body every cell is subordinated to the general physiological Control, and we who will that Control do not ask whether each individual Unit of that Structure be consciously happy. But we do care that each shall fulfil its Function, with Contentment, respecting his own task as necessary and holy, not envious of another’s. For only mayst thou build up a Free State, whose directing will shall be to the Welfare of all.23

    In fulfilling one’s True Will the individual (cell) contributes to the social organism. This is a Traditional view of society where every individual’s calling is a reflection of his character as part of the cosmos. Anything subverting this order, such as class struggle – “not envious of another’s” task as Crowley put it – could be described as a cancer in the social organism, disrupting the correct function of the cells and organs of society.

    The socio-economic structure of a Thelemic state would return to the guilds as in Medieval society, in which work is not economic drudgery but one’s divine calling. There was no class struggle in the Medieval world, whether of a capitalist or Marxist nature. Economic competition was alien to the Medieval mind. In the European Medieval period, guilds were the fundamental organs of society. Crowley alluded to the guilds when describing the structure of his magickal order, Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO):

    Before the face of the Areopagus24 stands an independent Parliament of Guilds. Within the Order, irrespective of Grade, the members of each craft, trade, science, or profession form themselves into a Guild, making their own laws, and prosecute their own good, in all matters pertaining to their labour and means of livelihood. Each Guild chooses the man most eminent in it to represent it before the Areopagus of the eighth Degree, and all disputes between the various guilds are argued before that Body, which will decide according to the grand principles of the Order.25

    Crowley’s OTO is here seen as a society in microcosm. Crowley’s ideas on the organic state, and the role of the arts, are most closely reflected in the very brief time of the Free State of Fiume, created by Italian war hero and eminent man of letters, Gabrielle D’Annunzio. The Free State of Fiume attracted idealists from all over Italy – Anarchists, Fascists, Futurists and Traditionalists – into a remarkable experiment,26 albeit one that seems to have been oddly unmentioned by Crowley, despite existing when he was present in Italy (1920).

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    Economics of Leisure & Art

    Crowley said that once obligations to the social order are met, there should be “a surplus of leisure and energy” that can be spent “in pursuit of individual satisfaction.”27 Again, we hark back to the pre-industrial epoch of Europe, when the artisan and peasant in a village-based economy, worked according to his social obligations, but had an abundance of leisure that today seems utopian.

    Such a renewed social order would include a realistic approach to money as a means of exchange rather than as the commodity it became over the course of centuries. As mentioned in New Dawn,28 Crowley addressed the issue:

    What is money? A means of exchange devised to facilitate the transactions of business. Oil in the engine. Very good then: if instead of letting to flow as smoothly and freely as possible, you baulk its very nature, you prevent it from doing its True Will. So every “restriction” on the exchange of wealth is a direct violation of the Law of Thelema.29

    It seems likely that Crowley was introduced to new economic theories through A. R. Orage, editor of The New Age, from whence T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and the New Zealand poet Rex Fairburn also learned about economics.30

    In a Thelemic state, one might envisage usurers being dragged through the streets and pilloried in stocks, if not worse, and then declared a literal outlaw.

    Once the material needs of the people are met there would be leisure to pursue higher callings in life. It suggests the ‘self-realisation’ and ‘hierarchy of human needs’ model of the humanistic psychology of Maslow et al, if one seeks a current theory.

    Again, this returns to a bygone era where the peasantry and townsfolk had an abundance of holy-days. The work week was five and a half days.

    People also rested on the day of the patron saint of their guild and of their parish, and there was, of course, a complete holiday on Sundays and on holy days of obligation. These were very numerous in the Middle Ages – 30 to 33 a year, according to the province.31

    The work day was based on sun-rise and sun-set, which meant fewer working hours during winter, and a few hours longer in summer. Popular theatre was lively, and actors were widely drawn from the village folk. Not only religious themes but burlesque, satire, romance and history were themes.

    Crowley proposes a state in which people are free to pursue higher cultural attainments.

    These things being first secured, thou mayst afterward lead them to the Heavens of Poesy and Tale, of Music, Painting and Sculpture, and into the love of the mind itself, with its insatiable Joy of all Knowledge.32

    Realising that ‘stars’ are of unequal brilliance, Crowley condemned “the cant of democracy,” stating it was “useless to pretend that men are equal,” and that most are content to “stay dull.”33 Given every opportunity, most would be content satisfying their material needs, with no horizons beyond “ease and animal happiness.” Those whose True Wills are to ascend the social hierarchy would form “a class of morally and intellectually superior men and women.”34

    Crowley addressed the problems of the machine age, relevant to the present technocratic era, where man is becoming an economic cog. What Crowley said about industrialisation is prescient in light of the modern technological age, with its ongoing dehumanisation and life increasingly virtual and detached from interpersonal bonds, whether individual, family, or community. Paradoxically, the oligarchic interests promoting all this do so behind catchcries of ‘brotherhood’ and a ‘new world order’. Hence Crowley, like Oscar Wilde,35 W.B. Yeats, et al, lamented the destruction of craftsmanship that proceeded apace after the Industrial Revolution. One might say prior to that since the mercantile spirit of the Reformation made economics the master, again in the name of ‘freedom’. Crowley wrote:

    Machines have already nearly completed the destruction of craftsmanship. A man is no longer a worker but a machine-feeder. The product is standardised; the result mediocrity… Instead of every man and every woman being a star, we have an amorphous population of vermin.36

    Today, in place of the machine-feeder there is the data-feeder, while products remain standardised, including the arts, aggravated by mass techno-entertainment.

    Crowley’s vision was that of the Thelemite as Knight fighting every tyranny that suppressed the human will:

    We have to fight for freedom against oppressors, religious, social or industrial, and we are utterly opposed to compromise, every fight is to be a fight to the finish; each one of us for himself, to do his own will, and all of us for all, to establish the law of Liberty… Let every man bear arms, swift to resent oppression… generous and ardent to draw sword in any cause, if justice or freedom summon him.37

    It seems we still await the emergence of such Knights of Thelema, although one suspects that like Yukio Mishima, the modern age Samurai, these Knights would be quickly liquidated by the weapons of mass destruction in the hands of religious lunatics, whether in the name of Jesus, Allah or YHWH, leaving little scope for chivalric combat.

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    Footnotes

    1. Richard Spence, ‘The Magus was a Spy: Aleister Crowley and the Curious Connections Between Intelligence and the Occult’, New Dawn 105, November-December 2007, 25-30
    2. Weishaupt is listed as a ‘saint’ in Crowley’s Gnostic Catholic mass. Magick in Theory and Practice, Samuel Weiser, 1984, 430
    3. Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears, Falcon Press, 1983, 66
    4. Crowley, 1986, 68-69. Crowley also writes here of Masonic ‘Christian’ degrees being changed in the USA to enable the initiation of ‘Jewish bankers’.
    5. Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986, 697. Rudolf Steiner was also similarly critical of English Masonry.
    6. Crowley, Liber Legis, Samuel Weiser, 1976, 3:60
    7. Crowley, The Law is for All, Falcon Press, 1985, 321
    8. Crowley, Magick, 430
    9. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Penguin Books, 1969, 136-138
    10. KR Bolton, ‘Nietzsche Contra Darwin’, in Southgate, ed., Nietzsche: Thoughts & Perspectives, Vol. 3, Black Front Press, 2011, 5-19
    11. Liber Legis, 1: 3
    12. Crowley, The Law is for All, 175
    13. Crowley, The Law is for All, 143-145
    14. Crowley, The Law is for All, 228
    15. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil, Penguin, 1984, 175
    16. Liber Legis, 2: 58
    17. Crowley, The Law is for All, 192
    18. Crowley, The Law is for All, 193
    19. Crowley, Liber CXCIV, ‘OTO. An intimation with references to the Constitution of the Order’, para. 10, The Equinox, Vol. III, No. 1, 1919
    20. Crowley, The Law is for All, 192
    21. Crowley, The Book of Wisdom or Folly, Samuel Weiser, 1991, Liber Aleph Vel CXI, De Ordine Rerum, clause 39
    22. Julius Evola, Men Above the Ruins, Inner Traditions, 2002, 224-234
    23. Crowley, The Law is for All, 251-252
    24. Supreme court.
    25. Crowley, ‘OTO. An intimation with references to the Constitution of the Order’, para. 21
    26. Bolton, Artists of the Right, Counter-Currents Publishing, 2012, 27-30
    27. Crowley, The Law is for All, 230
    28. Bolton, ‘A Secret History of Money Power’, New Dawn Special Issue Vol. 10, No. 2, 55, 58
    29. Crowley, Magick Without Tears, Falcon Press, 1983, 346
    30. Bolton, New Dawn, 58
    31. Hugh O’Reilly, ‘Medieval Work and Leisure’,
      www.traditioninaction.org/History/A_021_Festivals.htm
    32. Crowley, The Law is for All, 251
    33. Crowley, The Law is for All, 192
    34. Crowley, The Law is for All, 227
    35. Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, Black House Publishing, 2012
    36. Crowley, The Law is for All, 281
    37. Crowley, The Law is for All, 317

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