Illuminates of Thanateros

Crowley’s influence has transformed itself into a post-modern variation of magic, known as chaos magic, exemplified by the Illuminates of Thanateros (IOT), a secret society to which belonged not only Timothy Leary, but also Robert Anton Wilson as well as William S. Burroughs.[1] Revealing the source of his association with Satanism, Leary admitted: “we had run up against the Judeo-Christian commitment to one God, one religion, one reality, that has cursed Europe for centuries and America since our founding days. Drugs that open the mind to multiple realities inevitably lead to a polytheistic view of the universe. We sensed that the time for a new humanist religion based on intelligence, good-natured pluralism and scientific paganism had arrived.”[2] A former associate at Harvard, Charles Slack, who was then working as a journalist for a New York magazine, recalls when he asked Leary what the secret of his success was, who replied with one word: Faust:

“You’re joking,” I said when it sank in.
“No,” he replied, “but it often begins as a joke.”
“You mean you…  you don’t mean it. You didn’t.”
“Yes I did,” he said. “Didn’t I, Ed?”
“He sure did,” said Ed in a steady voice.
“Oh my God,” I said.
“But that’s exactly what I said, too, at the time.”[3]

The trickster archetype became an important model for modern occultism, particularly through chaos magic and Discordianism, which is dedicated to the worship of Eris, the goddess of chaos and a trickster. Their pranksterism, according to Ian Bear, writing in the neopagan journal Green Egg, is referred to as “Divine irreverence”:

The trickster is able to bring up in a humorous way issues that may still be too controversial to begin serious debates over. Willingness to parody ourselves protects us from becoming truly ridiculous, and renders parodies of us by our enemies utterly useless. If the New Agers were more willing to parody themselves, their culture might have filtered out some of its more absurd notions, and spared itself much vicious lampooning from without. It is the job of the Discordian to disrupt unhealthy patterns, including one’s own. It should be noted that making pointless wisecracks just as the energy is peaking in a ritual is not a positive use of irreverence.

On a larger scale the chaos magician is able to work vast changes unattainable through ordinary, orderly means.[4]

As explained by Nevill Drury in Stealing Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Modern Western Magic, “Chaos Magick was like the punk rock of modern occultism.”[5] Some chaos magicians also use psychedelic drugs in practices such as chemognosticism.[6] According to Grant Morrison, who wrote the foreword to Phil Hine’s Prime Choas in 1993:

‘It’ currently embraces aspects of the Crowley cult, shamanism, NLP [Neuro-Linguistic Programming], Reichian bodywork, Eastern thought, voodoo, Situationist theory, H.P. Lovecraft, Clive Barker, Walt Disney and anything else you might care to add to that list. Shattering and binding simultaneously, always up for a laugh, Chaos provides one useful model for the next stage in the collective upgrading of human consciousness.[7]

According to Brian Morris in Religion and Anthropology: A Critical Introduction, there are two key influences in the development of chaos magic. The first is H.P. Lovecraft and his Cthulhu Mythos, which is said to contain all the key elements of a “magical belief system” that is embraced by chaos magicians.[8] The second is artist and mystic Austin Osman Spare (1886 –1956), who is largely credited as the source of chaos magickal theory and practice. Spare was briefly a member of Crowley’s A∴A∴ but later broke from the order to work independently, advancing his own system of “New Sexuality.” Chaos magic is described by its practitioners as a “spiritual heir” to the school of magic inspired by Spare, which is a “fusion of Thelemic Magick, Tantra, The Sorceries of Zos [or Zos Kia Cultus] and Tao.”[9] Although Spare died before it emerged, many consider him to be the father of chaos magic, because of his repudiation of traditional magical systems in favor of a technique based on gnosis.

The two names most associated with the birth of chaos magic were Ray Sherwin and Peter Carroll, two young British occultists with a strong interest in ritual magic. In the late 1970s, Sherwin and Carroll began to publish a magazine called The New Equinox, a publication that serves as the official organ of Crowley’s A∴A∴. However, both men quickly became dissatisfied with the state of the magical arts and the deficiencies they saw in other occult groups. In 1977, they met at Burg Lockenhaus, a medieval fortress located in eastern Austria, near the Hungarian border, and formally arranged themselves into the Magical Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros, which is usually shortened to “the Pact.”[10] Since then, the Pact evolved into sixteen temples in the UK, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Australia and the USA. Leary’s eight-circuit model of consciousness is prominent in chaos magic, having been detailed in Chaotopia! by Dave Lee, a leading member of the IOT.

Lockenhaus was then owned by Paul Anton Keller, a writer of ghost tales. The castle was built around 1200, and in 1535 came into the possession of Francis II Nadasdy, the “Black Hero of Hungary,” and the scion of one of the most powerful and richest families of Hungary.[11] Francis married serial killer Elizabeth Bathory, the infamous “Blood Countess,” whose family were hereditary members of the Order of the Dragon.[12] Lockenhaus was named by Rudolf Steiner as the historic castle of the Knights Templar in his mystery drama, The Soul’s Probation.[13] However, the “indelible bloodstain” in the great hall, which is said to originate from the massacre of innocent Templars, turned out to be red algae on the moist brickwork.[14] The castle also features the so-called “Cult Room,” a crypt located in the center of the building, lit only by a hole in the ceiling, which was purportedly used for Templar rituals. The castle currently features a Templar museum, as well as a torture chamber equipped with an Iron Maiden.

According to Peter Carroll, the word “Illuminates” was used in accordance with the claimed tradition of calling those in such societies who have mastered the secrets of magic “the Illuminati.”[15] The word “Thanateros” is a combination of Thanat, the Greek god of death, and Eros, the god of sex. Their idea is that sex and death represent the positive and negative methods of attaining “magical consciousness,” though it of course appears to be an allusion to sex magic and human sacrifice, or necrophilia. Like Wiccans, the IOT identifies Thanateros with the “horned god” of the Ancient Mysteries, or Baphomet of the Templars, which they believed was falsely maligned as the “Devil” by the monotheistic religions.

The birth of chaos magic came about in the late 1970s, at about the time chaos science was beginning to be taken seriously by mathematicians, economists, and physicists and as the punk rock music scene was emerging. Chaos magic is magic adapted to the modern world. It consciously eschews the dogma of magical “orhordoxy,” deemphasizing the importance of tradition and symbolism in favor of what just works. For that reason, chaos magic freely adopts from other traditions and has often reinvented ritual by incorporating elements of modern times. This experimentation was the result of many factors, including the counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s, the wide publication of information on magic by “magickians” such as Aleister Crowley and Israel Regardie, the influence of Discordianism and Robert Anton Wilson, and the popularizing of magic by Wicca and Satanism, and the use of psychedelic drugs.

Timothy Leary’s eight-circuit model is prominent in chaos magic, having been detailed in Chaotopia! by Dave Lee, a leading member of the IOT.[16] In the preface of his 1976 book, What Does Woman Want? Leary explains how “Dr. Adams,” a Hindu scholar from Rutgers University, arrived at his Millbrook estate in the early 1960s and initiated him to an esoteric practice of the Hindu Chakra System. Leary assimilated this new teaching by replacing “chakra” with the modern term “circuit” and adding Western scientific terminology, in addition to recent breakthroughs in genetics and quantum physics towards the completion of Exo-Psychology.[17] The term “circuits” came from the first wave of cybernetics research and development in the United States in the 1970s.

First proposed by Leary, the eight-circuit model of consciousness was expanded on by Robert Anton Wilson and Antero Alli. Wilson talks about Leary’s model in several of his books, for example, in Cosmic Trigger, first published in 1977 and Quantum Psychology (1996). Wilson wrote Prometheus Rising, first published in 1983, as a guide book of “how to get from here to there,” an amalgam of Gurdjieff’s self-observation exercises, Alfred Korzybski’s general semantics, Crowley’s magical theorems, sociobiology, yoga, relativity, and quantum mechanics amongst other approaches to understanding the world around us. The book, which has found many readers among followers of alternative culture, also discusses the effect of certain psychoactive substances and how these affect the brain, tantric breathing techniques, and other methods and holistic approaches to expanding consciousness. The current edition also includes an introduction by Israel Regardie, an occultist and Aleister Crowley’s personal secretary and transcriptionist, widely known for his books and commentaries on the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

Phil Hine, a British writer and occultist, became the leader of the English branch of the IOT in the early 1990s after founder Peter Carroll stepped down as leading Magus. Hine attributed the sources of chaos magic to the development of chaos theory in the sciences, as well as the transmission of Discordianism from Robert Anton Wilson. According to Carole Cusack, “The broad Pagan tendency to find magic in life in general, rather than in formalized workings, is congruent with both the Discordian approach to magic, and the unstructured and non-hierarchical magic of Chaos magicians.”[18] Despite wide individual variation, chaos magicians (sometimes called “chaotes”) often work with chaotic and humorous paradigms, such as the worship of Hundun from Taoism or Eris from Discordianism.[19]

Choronzon Club 

Spare’s esoteric legacy was largely maintained by his friend, Crowley’s personal secretary, Kenneth Grant, the founder of the Typhonian OTO. According to Grant, the primary practitioner of the Spare’s Zos Kia system in the United States is Michael Bertiaux.[21] Bertiaux also heads the Choronzon Club, which can be traced back to 1933 with a small group of homosexual men split off from C. F. Russell’s original group in order to practice Crowley’s XI°. Russell was a member of the A∴A∴ and Crowley’s OTO, and founded his own magical order, the G.B.G. (variously explained as “Great Brotherhood of God” or “Gnostic Body of God”). Choronzon is a demon or devil that originated in writing of Edward Kelley and John Dee, who became an important element within the mystical system of Thelema, where he is the “dweller in the abyss.” Bertiaux is extremely reticent concerning this club’s secretive purpose and nature, which revolves around a core practice of exclusively male homosexual sadomasochism, with anal-sex as the central eleventh grade initiation. According to Ardashir Frequency 435, the Choronzon Club is as “close to outright Satanism as is possible within a conventional Thalamic framework.”[22]

Bertiaux is known for his book Voudon Gnostic Workbook, a compendium of various occult lessons and research papers spanning the sub-fields of Voodoo, Neo-Pythagoreanism, Thelema and Gnosticism, long considered by occultists one of the underground classics of twentieth century occultism. Bertiaux’s highly distinctive and idiosyncratic brand of magic also has esoteric affinities with Crowleyan Thelema, H.P. Lovecraft and the sex magic of Paschal Beverly Randolph. He currently describes himself as a hierophant of the Voudon Gnostic Current.[23]

In 1964, Bertiaux traveled to Haiti, where he studied with anthropologist Margaret Mead of the Cybernetics Group and wife of Gregory Bateson. In Haiti, Bertiaux was initiated into Haitian Vodoun, a derivation of the devil-worshipping African cult of brought to the Caribbean by African slaves, and then later mixed with Roman Catholicism, and European mysticism and Freemasonry. Bertiaux’s interpretation of Vodoun was strongly influenced by Martinism. In 1772, Martinez de Pasquales, the founder of Martinism, travelled to Haiti and appears to have influenced early mystic groups in the Caribbean. By the end of the eighteenth century, there were several Martinist orders in France as well as Haiti, where it tended to blend with Voodoo. After a period of lapse, Martinism was revised in Haiti in the 1890s, and between the two world wars the Neo-Pythagorean Gnostic Church came into being.[24]

Bertiaux had long been associated with the Ordo Templi Orientis Antiqua (OTOA), supposedly founded in 1921 in Haiti by Lucien-Francois Jean-Maine, who belonged to a Voodoo family tradition that went back to Pasquales. According to the order’s own history, Jean-Maine consecrated as a Bishop of the Gnostic Church in France by Emmanuel Fabre des Essarts (Synésius), who succeeded its founder Jules Doinel, and inspired by the ancient Gnostics and the Cathars, before it became the l'Église Gnostique Universelle (“Universal Gnostic Church”), the official church of the Martinist Order. It is claimed that Jean-Maine also exchanged several of his filiations with Papus at the time of his stay in Paris around 1910. According OTOA history, Papus’ death in 1916 allegedly split the French OTO. One wing was led by Jean Bricaud in Lyon, and approved by Reuss, while Jean-Maine headed the original Parisian branch. When he returned to Haiti in 1921, Jean-Maine founded the OTOA, supposedly based on Papus’ OTO charter which he had received. In 1922, Jean-Maine founded La Couleuvre Noire (“the Black Serpent”).

The OTOA also includes the mysterious Fraternitas Lucis Hermetica (FLH) of P.B. Randolph. It is said that the famous Maria de Naglowska—member of the Ur Group and the Brotherhood Polaires—studied Voodoo with Jean-Maine’s disciples from 1921 until 1930.[25] Jean-Maine’s son, Hector-Francois Jean Maine, was ordained by Robert Ambelain, a later successor of Bricaud as head of the Église Gnostique Universelle, in 1949 and once more in 1953, this time by Ambelain, Henri Dupont, Grand Master of the Martinist Order of Lyons, and his father. In 1970, Hector-Francois Jean Maine Jean-Maine’s “lines of Succession” were given to Bertiaux who succeed him as Sovereign Grandmaster of the OTOA, and in 1975, Grand Hierophant Conservateur of the Rite of Memphis Misraïm.[26]

Magickal Childe Bookshop

Bertiaux’s books, like those of Peter Carroll, are published by Weiser Books. Bertiaux’s work is also published by the Magickal Childe Bookshop, occult bookstore in Chelsea, owned by Herman Slater (1938 – 1992), an American Wiccan high priest. Born in a lower-middle-class Jewish neighborhood of New York, Slater experienced anti-Semitism at a very early age, which became one of the influences that led him to witchcraft. The Magickal Childe also served as the launching pad for the explosive growth of Aleister Crowley’s OTO in the city. Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea had just published their Illuminatus! trilogy, and interest in secret societies and occult lore was sweeping through counterculture circles. Grady McMurtry was attempting to revive the OTO in California and had just succeeded in having Crowley’s Thoth tarot deck published. According to one participant:

Punks and proto-goth/industrial types searched out obscure Satanic treatises and rare tracts from the seemingly defunct Process Church of the Final Judgement. Unrepentant hippies and uber-feminists found common ground in the gentle, woodsy eco-cult of the wicca, available in enough variant “traditions” to suit any palate with an appetite for sweets.[27]

According to Peter Levenda, many of the people mentioned in Maury Terry’s book The Ultimate Evil, which connected the David Berkowitz, known as the Son of Sam serial killer, and the Process Church, were part of his circle of friends. Between 1967-1969, noted Levenda, “there was a lot of mysticism going on in the United States, and the Bronx was no exception.”[28] They questioned the teachings of the Church, and with the war in Vietman in full swing, they also questioned the government. In addition to the works of Marx and Engels, Mao, Angela Davis and Abbie Hoffman, they also read Aleister Crowley, Eliphas Levi, and MacGregor Mathers.

“This web of relationships” explained Peter Levenda, “would increase once Herman Slater opened his famous store on Henry Street in Brooklyn Heights in 1972, like a crazy little magnet that attracted only those on the very fringe of society.”[29] In fact, Levenda admitted in Sinister Forces—which features a foreword by Paul Krassner—that he and this circle also had several friends in common with the Son of Sam himself, David Berkowitz. According to Levenda:

From that year until 1984 I found myself in the center of many of the incidents recounted in Terry’s book, at least those that involved the Warlock Shop, Brooklyn Heights, the OTO, and the various other secret societies and cults with their tenuous connections to the Scientologists, the Process Church of the Final Judgement, the Church of Satan, the Ku Klux Klan, the National Renaissance Party, and all the various witchcraft covens and personalities, from the Gardnerians to the Alexandrians and Welsh Traditionalists, from Raymond Buckland to Leo Martello and Margot Adler, from covens gay and straight and mixed, to covens clothed and “sky clad.” What was going on was much more blatant, much more vigorous, than even Terry suspected.[30]

OTO member James Wasserman was a book designer for Weiser Books. Wasserman worked with Brazilian occultist and claimants to successorship of the OTO, Marcelo Ramos Motta, and later Grady McMurtry. Wasserman founded one of the OTO’s oldest lodges, Tahuti Lodge, in New York City in 1979. He has played a key role within the Order in publishing the literary corpus of Aleister Crowley. Wasserman also wrote The Templars and the Assassins: The Militia of Heaven (2001) and republished Una Birch’s Secret Societies: Illuminati, Freemasons, and the French Revolution.

Necronomicon

Wasserman left Weiser in 1977 to found Studio 31, where he produced the Simon Necronomicon, a volume purporting to be the mythological Necronomicon made famous by H.P. Lovecraft, whose publication was sponsored by Herman Slater, owner of Magickal Childe. The reputed author of the Necronomicon, who assumed the pen name Simon, is to have been Peter Levenda, best known for his book Unholy Alliance, about Esoteric Hitlerism and Nazi occultism, and his Sinister Forces trilogy. Among his numerous bizarre associations, Levenda confesses to have been involved with ASPR (American Society for Psychical Research), to have “gate-crashed” St. Patrick’s Cathedral during the RFK funeral in 1968; to have been involved as a teenager with the American Orthodox Catholic Church that numbered David Ferrie; to have worked with one of the CIA agents who was part of E. Howard Hunt’s front operation, the Mullen Corporation; and for Bendix when they were training troops in Saudi Arabia, and later for a major Israeli bank sending coded traffic to Tel Aviv via telex. During the period 1968-1980, he claims to have met with members of the PLO, the IRA, the Weathermen, the Panthers, NORAID, the National Renaissance Party, the Klan, and so on.[31]

Simon describes himself in the preface to the second edition of the Necronomicon as, “attired in a beret, a suit of some dark fibrous material, and an attaché case, which contained—besides correspondence from various Balkan embassies and a photograph of the F-104 fighter being crafted for shipment to Luxembourg—additional material on the Necronomicon which provided his bona fides.” Referring to Simon, Wasserman explained, “we’ve known each other for decades and I could not create a better description of this unique individual—seemingly equally at home in the worlds of clandestine intelligence agencies, corporate boardrooms, and candlelit temples.”[32]

As Simon, Levenda threw parties with various forms of live entertainment and staged rituals presented by the various groups that collected around the shop, and which included science-fiction fans and occult and Wicca circles. Even Norman Mailer would attend, with his assistant Judith McNally, which whom Levenda was rumored to have had an affair. Levenda also had an affair with Bonnie Wilford, the wife of Chris Claremont, a noted comic book author of the X-Men, influenced by Robert Heinlein.[33]

Temple of Set

The Temple of Set, led by ex-Church of Satan member Michael Aquino, a major in the US Army Reserve, also  incorporated the Cthulhu mythos into their own version of Satanism. In 1975, Aquino took the majority of the Church of Satan’s membership into his new religious organization, which he called the Temple of Set. The temple was dedicated to Set, the ancient Egyptian god of chaos, sometimes interchangeable with the dying-god Osiris, and regarded by Grant as Sirius, which according to Albert Pike is the “blazing star” of Freemasonry. Aquino had also composed a “Call to Cthulhu” ritual before he left the Church of Satan, and adopted aspects of Lovecraft’s mythos. Aquino devised the “Ceremony of the Nine Angles,” which includes an evocation of Lovecraft’s deities, Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep and Shub-Niggurath.

The council that governs the Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan also call themselves the Council of Nine, sharing a name with the group of discarnate entities supposedly contact by Andrija Puharich’s Round Table Foundation and the Esalen Institute. Similarly, Michael Aquino, as the official head of the Temple of Set, rules the organization through a council of nine. In the South Park episodes “Imaginationland Episode II” and “Imaginationland Episode III,” Imaginationland was led by a “Council of Nine” consisting of the nine most revered of all imaginary characters: Aslan, Gandalf, Glinda, Jesus, Luke Skywalker, Morpheus, Popeye, Wonder Woman and Zeus.

The Temple of Set is also associated with the Aeon of Set, an esoteric Aeon wherein Death himself dies. Supposedly begun in 1975, the Aeon of Set is associated with Kenneth Grant’s Typhonian Order. The Temple of Set invoked the Prince of Darkness and on June 21, 1975, Aquino supposedly received a direct revelation from Satan, later published as The Book of Coming Forth by Night (1985). In the book, Satan identified himself as Set, presented the twentieth century as the beginning of a new satanic dispensation and included Crowley’s prophecy of a new Age of Horus, marked by power politics and mass destruction.[34]

Impressed by the power and conquests of the Third Reich, Aquino also dabbled in Nazi occultism. In Church of Satan, his account of his time within the organization, Aquino provides a communication he sent to prominent members, including LaVey, in 1974, where he discusses in detail the relationship between Nazism and Satanism:

According to Satanic criteria, the importance of Nazi Germany is that it succeeded in touching the very core of human behavioral motivation factors. In short, Adolf Hitler knew what really makes people tick, and he formed a political party designed to make those desires legitimate and respectable in German society. As you know from the Satanic Bible, people are motivated basically by crude and bestial emotions—greed, lust, hatred, envy of others’ success, desire for power, desire for recognition, etc. Civilization has repressed such anarchic emotions in order that people may live together with a certain amount of peace. When one deliberately unleashes those emotions, consequently, there is going to be a bit of unpleasantness—war, domestic purges, or the like.

The keys are there for those who can read them. They are spelled out in extraordinary detail in the most obvious place: Mein Kampf.[35]

Michael Grumbowski, formerly of the Order of the Black Ram affiliated with James Madole’s National Renaissance Party (NRP), joined the early temple and became a magister and member of the central council.[36] An interest in Nazism and Nazi occultism is also evident in the extensive Temple of Set reading list, which includes Mein Kampf, Hitler’s Secret Conversations 1941–1944, Alfred Rosenberg’s Race History and Other Essays, and Madison Grant’s infamous 1916 work of scientific racism, The Passing of the Great Race.[37] The reading list also includes Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene and Carl Sagan’s The Demon Haunted World. During a series of tours of NATO installations in England, Belgium and Germany, arranged by the World Affairs Council, Aquino held a magical ceremony at Wewelsburg Castle used by Himmler’s Ahnenerbe.[38] In 1982, in a secret chamber inside the castle known as the Walhalla, or Hall of the Dead, Aquino performed a ritual invocation of the Prince of Darkness.[39]

Men in Black

In 1976, Manuel Cabrera Lamparter was made Bertiaux’ representative for Spain and Portugal. Lamparter is the Gnostic Bishop of the Ecclesia Gnostica Latina. Also a bishop of Lamparter’s church is Allen H. Greenfield, an American occultist and writer. Greenfield was elected to the mystical episcopate of the Neopythagorean Gnostic Assembly in 1986 and again in 1994, and further consecrated within the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) by Frater Superior Hymenaeus Beta in 1987 and later again by their U.S. Grand Master General David Scriven, but has long parted ways with the OTO in favor of the broadly-based free illuminist movement. A past member of the Society for Psychical Research and the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (from 1960), Greenfield has twice been the recipient of the UFOlogist of the Year Award of the National UFO Conference (1972 and 1992). According to Robert Anton Wilson, Greenfield’s Secret Cipher of the UFOnauts—a work dedicated to Kerry Thornley—discusses UFOs in terms derived from Carl Jung.[40] According to Greenfield:

The Knights of Malta’s viewpoint infiltrated organized occultism and UFOlogy through the connection between William Dudley Pelley’s pro-Nazi Silver Shirts prior to World War Two, and the occult Black Lodge within the Third Reich, centered in the SS, the Ahnenerbe Society, and the appropriately named “Black Order” - descended from such black magical bodies as the Thule Group and the Vril Society as detailed in Secret Cipher of the UFOnauts.[41]

According to Greenfield, the various myths and symbols of secret societies are coded messages about “communication between human and Ultraterrestrial forces warring for control of the Earth.”[42] These “Ultraterrestrial forces” are most commonly associated with Sirius. They visited Earth in ancient times, establishing a core of priest-kings who preserved the secret tradition of contact. Ancient mythologies speak of an amphibious creature who instructed mankind named Oannes, equated with Enoch, Hermes and remembered as Saint John in Freemasonry. Such a creature was the mythological ancestor of the Merovingians, progenitors of the “grail” lineage of the Priory of Sion mythos. According to Greenfield, this mythology “recurs through all of recorded history, from ancient Sumer to modern stories of UFOnauts and Men in Black.”[43]

In his introduction to Greenfield’s Secret Rituals of the Men in Black, Johnathan Sellers explains this is the significance of the “Authentic” or “Johannite Tradition” which lead back to the Golden Dawn, the Asiatic Brethren, Sabbatai Zevi and ultimately the Kabbalists of Provence who made contact with “Elijah.” According to Sellers:

Who, then, are the Men in Black? In the context explored here, they are the great Mystery men of the Authentic Tradition, in part; and they can also be those entities or forces that show up or are summoned forth in rituals of Ceremonial Magick, in part. In addition, in the classical UFOlogy model, they are those mysterious beings that usually appear in threes, arriving out of nowhere, for the purpose of silencing those who would go public with knowledge about UFOs. UFOlogists, for the most part, do not like the Men in Black.[44]

Greenfield was given the mystical title and charter as Tau Sir Hasirim by Bertiaux. Greenfield reports that according to Michael Bertiaux, “highest-ranking public initiate-adept known by the present writer,” the Rite of Memphis-Misraim was a “front” for “Ultraterrestrial technology.” He adds in Secret Rituals of the Men In Black:

As a Conservator and Hierophant of a distinct branch of these rites, he would surely know, and our findings, reinforced by extensive “hands on” knowledge of Masonic and Cryptomasonic rituals as well as the Secret Cipher of the UFOnauts itself, clearly demonstrates that Bishop Bertiaux’s assertion is nothing less that the straightforward truth.[45]

In particular, according to Greenfield, are the Knights of Malta who “are involved in privately ‘selling’ cooperation between Ultraterrestrial Forces of dubious motivations and Terrestrial governments and industrial groups.” Greenfield claims to have personally interviewed an anonymous Knight of Malta who met with the esoteric leadership of the Third Reich in 1937, attended by Haushofer, to “sell” the Nazi regime on contact with what he called “the coming race.” When asked by Greenfield in 1979 to explain what he meant, he answered:

The Ultraterrestrials, of course. The Germans had noted their ‘ghost rockets’ in Sweden, and were aware of their power. Most of the older Nazis present, though, were former members of the Thule Society or the archaic Vril Society, and took me to be talking about Tibetans or Aryan supermen or some such bunk. Except Haushofer, who knew better, and the “Man with the Green Gloves” who, though supposedly a Tibetan himself, was certainly an Ultraterrestrial.”[46]

Similar claims were put forward by the controversial Trevor Ravenscroft’s The Spear of Destiny, published in 1972. Several years after the World War II, Ravenscroft claims to have met Walter Johannes Stein, whose research served as the basis of Evola’s Grail theories. According to Alec Wynants, however, Ravenscroft admitted during their interview that he had never actually met Stein, but “talked to him only via a medium.”[47] According to Ravenscroft, Stein claimed to have found an important book in a bookshop, a second-hand copy of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, formerly owned by Hitler, whose notes revealed the significance of the Holy Lance, the spear of Longinus used to pierce the side of Christ at the crucifixion, which Hitler supposedly believed could grant its owner unlimited power to perform either good or evil. According to Ravenscroft, the Nazi missions to Tibet had the aim of establishing contact with the Aryan forefathers in Shambhala and Agharti, adepts of the Vril, and also mentions the recurring story of the establishment in Berlin of the Society of Green Men, and their mysterious leader the “Man with the Green Gloves.”

Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica

Greenfield is also a bishop of the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (EGC), the ecclesiastical arm of the OTO, which was created by Crowley as a schismatic branch of the Église Gnostique Universelle (“Universal Gnostic Church”) of the Martinist Order. In 1979, Crowley’s successor Grady McMurtry separated the EGC from the OTO, and made it into an independent organization, with himself at the head of both. However, in 1986 his successor, Hymenaeus Beta, folded the church back into OTO. Hymenaeus Beta is William Breeze, an American musician who had been connected with the occult since the 1970s, having been involved in the publishing of Aleister Crowley’s Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on The Book of the Law, edited by Kenneth Grant. Breeze was member of the band Coil and also worked with Velvet Underground cofounder Angus MacLise, and Psychic TV, headed by Genesis P-Orridge.

A friend of William S. Burroughs, P-Orridge founded Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY), an offshoot Illuminates of Thanateros (IOT), which practiced chaos magic. In 1981, P-Orridge spearheaded the Industrial Records release of the spoken word version of Burroughs’ “The Last Words of Hassan Sabbah.” The Process Church’s rituals were later adopted and utilised by the band Psychic TV and the group that formed around it, TOPY. Several TOPY members had previously been involved with the Process Church.[48] P-Orridge worked with longstanding church member Timothy Wyllie to produce a book featuring reproductions of the church’s magazines and reminiscences of several members. It was published as Love, Sex, Fear, Death: The Inside Story of The Process Church of the Final Judgment by Feral House in 2009.

Breeze also associated with Harry Everett Smith—who was consecrated a bishop of the EGC in 1986—Kenneth Anger, and James Wasserman along with other employees of Weiser Books. Under Breeze’s leadership the EGC has expanded greatly, and in recent years several books and articles dealing with the church have been published by its Clergy, notably by Tau Apiryon & Tau Helena, James Wasserman & Nancy Wasserman, Rodney Orpheus & Cathryn Orchard, and T Polyphilus. Rodney Orpheus is known for his work with the musical group The Cassandra Complex. Phil Hine was a founder and co-editor of Pagan News between 1988-1992, in partnership with Rodney Orpheus, and is a former editor and contributor to Ian Read’s magazine Chaos International. Before founding his own band Fire + Ice in 1991, Read had joined Sol Invictus, a band founded by Tony Wakeford, another member of the IOT.[49] The name “Sol Invictus,” which is Latin for “the unconquered Sun,” derives from the Roman cult of the same name, which was closely associated with the cult of Mithras. Wakeford’s membership in the British National Front, a British neo-fascist and neo-Nazi party, and the association of his band Above The Ruins (a reference to Evola’s Men Among the Ruins) with the Nazi groups like Skrewdriver and Brutal Attack, has meant that Sol Invictus has been accused of neofascism.[50]

[1] Frater Fäustchen. “Für und wider Magie und Liber MMM” in Shekinah no. 1. I; Douglas Grant. Magick and Photography, Ashé Journal, Vol 2, Issue 3, (2003).

[2] Timothy Leary. Flashbacks: a personal and cultural history of an era: an autobiography (Putnam, 1990), p. 109.

[3] Stevens. Storming Heaven, p. 281.

[4] “Those Wiccan Waccos.” Retrieved from http://hyperdiscordia.crywalt.com/neopagan_discordia.html

[5] Drury. Stealing Fire from Heaven.

[6] Andrieh Vitimus. Hands-on Chaos Magic: Reality Manipulation Through the Ovayki Current (Llewellyn Worldwide, 2009).

[7] Phil Hine. Prime Chaos: Adventures in Chaos Magic (Original Falcon Press, LLC, 2009)

[8] Brian Morris. Religion and Anthropology: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2006) p. 303.

[9] The New Equinox (1978).

[10] Peter Carroll. “The Pact (IOT) - The Story So Far.” IOT North America. Retrieved from http://iota.thanateros.org/about.php

[11] Bob Curran. Encyclopedia of the Undead: A Field Guide to Creatures that Cannot Rest in Peace (Career Press, 2006) p. 72.

[12] Wolfgang Duld. Das-Qumran-Arefakt (BoD – Books on Demand). p. 247.

[13] Rudolf Steiner & Rita Stebbing. Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life: 1861–1907 (Lantern Books, 2006). p. 249

[14] Renate Mackay. Das mittlere Burgenland. (Novum Publishing gmbh, 2011). p. 111.

[15] Peter J. Carroll. Liber Null & Psychonaut, (York Beach, Maine: 1987)

[16] Fäustchen. “Für und wider Magie und Liber MMM.”

[17] Antero Alli, “The Eight-Circuit Brain” Reality Sandwich (2010). Retrieved from https://realitysandwich.com/21523/eight_circuit_brain

[18] Carole M. Cusack. “Discordian Magic: Paganism, the Chaos Paradigm and the Power of Imagination;.” International Journal for the Study of New Religions 2.1 (2011) p. 133.

[19] Jesper Aagaard Petersen. Contemporary religious Satanism: A Critical Anthology. (Ashgate Publishing, 2009), Ltd. p. 225.

[20] Gyrus. “Chaos and Beyond: An Interview with Phil Hine” Dreamfish (October 1997).

[21] Kenneth Grant. Cults of the Shadow (New York: Samuel Wiser, 1976).

[22] Ardashir Frequency 435. The Demons of Tiamat, the New Gods and the Exploration of the Nightside (Nightside Publications, 2012). p. 170.

[23] Nevill Drury. The New Age: Searching for the Spiritual Self (London: Thames and Hudson, 2004), p. 246.

[24] Drury. The New Age, p. 246.

[25] Peter-Robert Koenig. “Ordo Templi Orientis Antiqua — A Gnostic Inflation.” Parareligion.ch Retrieved from http://www.parareligion.ch/sunrise/otoa.htm

[26] Ibid.

[27] Alan Cabal. “The Doom that Came to Chelsea” New York Press (June 10, 2003)

[28] Ibid.

[29] Peter Levenda. Sinister Forces—The Manson Secret: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (TrineDay, 2011).

[30] Ibid.

[31] Peter Levenda. “A Word About the Necronomicon” Peter Levenda’s Journal.

[32] James Wasserman. In the Center of the Fire: A Memoir of the Occult 1966-1989 (Ibis Press; First Edition edition, 2012)

[33] Ibid.

[34] Goodrick-Clarke. Black Sun, p. 215.

[35] Letter, M. A. Aquino to Thomas and Colleen Huddleston, Arthur Zabrecky, and Stephen Hollander, July 1, 1974. Quoted in Aquino. Church of Satan, p. 367; cited in Mathews. Modern Satanism, p. 148.

[36] Mathews. Modern Satanism, p. 86.

[37] Ibid., p. 87.

[38] Constance Cumby. New Age Monitor, Vol. 1, Ho. 2, (June, 1986).

[39] Ibid.

[40] Robert A. Wilson. Everything is Under Control (HarperCollins, 2009). p. 412.

[41] Allen Greenfield. Secret Rituals of the Men In Black (Lulu.com, 2005), p. 28.

[42] Ibid., p. 2.

[43] Ibid., p. 3.

[44] Ibid., p. xv.

[45] Ibid., p. 2.

[46] Ibid., p. 28.

[47] Alec Macellan. The Secret of the Spear – The Mystery of The Spear of Longinus, p.116

[48] Christopher Partridge. “Esoterrorism and the Wrecking of Civilization: Genesis P-Orridge and the Rise of Industrial Paganism.” In Pop Pagans: Paganism and Popular Music. Donna Weston and Andy Bennett (eds). (Durham: Acumen, 2013), p. 202.

[49] David Keenan. Coil-Current 93-Nurse With Wound (S a F Pub Ltd, 2003)) p. 173.

[50] “Gary Smith on Manoeuvres.” Who Makes the Nazis? (September 287, 2010).

Volume Four

1. MK-Ultra

2. Council of Nine

3. Old Right

4. Novus Ordo Liberalism

5. In God We Trust

6. Fascist International

7. Red Scare

8. White Makes Right

9. JFK Assassination

10. The Civil Rights Movement

11. Golden Triangle

12. Crowleyanity

13. Counterculture

14. The summer of Love

15. The Esalen Institute

16. Ordo ab Discordia

17. Make Love, Not War

18. Chaos Magick

19. Nixon Years

20. Vatican II

21. Priory of Sion

22. Nouvelle Droite

23. Operation Gladio