Peter Levenda's new book...

[Kara Dellacioppa]

Have you guys taken a look at Levenda's new book The Hitler Legacy? Im only a couple of chapters into it and Ive learned so much about Levenda's life and intelligence connections which before I felt like i had to piece together from various blogs and obscure podcasts trying to figure him out.
Anyway the occult obviously figures heavily in the book...

on another note. Ive never seen Jay Dyer mentioned here before and I just started reading and listening to him a few months ago...

Dyer and Levenda seem to both have murky agendas coming from different places. Sometimes I feel like the whole "deep politics" thing has been come its own upstart industry, especially with the internet, i suppose it always was.. however sometimes when these researchers sounds interesting with good material but beneath the surface, i feel like Im just being sold another ideology or religion.. Ed Opperman is a great interviewer but a total evangelical christian. Levenda is into the occult, lately I feel like Dyer who seems to admire Joseph P Farrell has his heart in the Eastern Orthodox Church, James Corbett is an anti state libertarian. I dont think anything is bad about believing in any of these things, its just when you can tell it skews the research...

btw, Joseph Farrell one time taught at this extremely right wing fundamentalist christian school here where I live in orange county (and to call a school "extreme fundamentalist christian" is saying something because there is a lot of competition here..

anyway I guess i should have started my own thread

meh, Im feeling cynical today..

Hi Kara, I've read Levenda's Hitler Legacy.......and his earlier books too. It was certainly obvious that he had an interest in the Occult. I guess we all have our biases and see the World through the filter of them and our own individual lives and beliefs. Personally, I think if one can just see what the person's belief system is and take that into account, many who one might not agree with 100% still have valid research to offer in part or on the whole, depending. The thing about the 'research community', if there really is such a thing, that has long bothered me is not their biases and slant, but the infighting and/or lack of willingness to work with many others, for the most part. Each usually have a very small group they work with and won't help out others. Not all follow that 'rule', but it seems to be the general case. Yes, Corbett is an anti-government libertarian who denies anthropogenic climate change, and I think that clouds some of his research a little, but leaves a lot of the rest of it unscathed and useful [to me]. It is simply helpful to know where 'someone is coming from', and sometimes it takes a bit of work to find out.

Thank you Peter, I agree, I think as you get more into this research you really have to learn to both read more deeply into things but try and remain as detached as possible..

[R.K. Locke]

I've now finished Levenda's The Dark Lord and it has been fascinating and informative reading. Levenda is very obviously knowledgeable and experienced in aspects of Crowley's Thelema based religion as well as Grants's system as well. I've come away from the book knowing and understanding a great more about these two than I previously had.

I also came away alarmed.

Both Crowley and Grant, in my view, are entirely wrong headed - and yet both have considerable followings. Both focused their entire occult systems on sexual techniques - sex magick (1) - as a means of gathering the necessary energy (usually described as "power") in order to thrust their consciousness into what Grant called the Mauve zone (what used to be called astral travelling). The difference between them and others, so far as I can judge, is that they actively pursued knowledge of the dark/negative side of creation - hence the "Dark Lord". And again, so far as I can judge, the results they obtained confirmed their expectations. No surprises there, then.

It is true that anyone who operates in this area, sooner or later, does have to confront and absorb their own shadow (2). Doing so results in that part of the life energy (libido) that streams through one that has hitherto been siphoned off by the shadow is ultimately recovered and becomes available for positive use. That, combined with the cleansing technique that Israel Regardie called the Middle Pillar exercise (the circulation of light), plus other techniques including breathing, focusing and concentration exercises etc., all combine with the use of what Jung called "Active Imagination" are patiently developed over an extended period of time, for the purpose of accessing "that place between sleep and awake" that was described by J M Barrie in his book Peter Pan.

That realm is neither here, nor there, and neither then or now. It is alien but also world-like. The golden rules when travelling to this "far abroad" is to be polite and considerate, patient and questioning. Open doors when confronted with them. Ask questions of the intelligences you meet. Again politely, even when the answers you may receive are abrupt. The face you present is the face you will meet.

Untold numbers have been visitors in that land. Far more than is ever realized.

I have never before spoken so openly about these things before for obvious reasons. It is a subject that is very easily misunderstood and misinterpreted. But times are changing. The whole purpose underlying this is to become more conscious and more individually responsible for who you are. Recovering energy from the personal Shadow has the added benefit of marginally reducing the energy available to the Collective Shadow, simply because the latter is the aggregation of all the former. This is why Jung said that "man is the origin of all coming evil" and that "the only real danger that exists is man himself. He is the great danger". Many people are aware of the fact that Crowley called himself the Beast and ascribed to himself the number "666" using Gematria. That number as most of us know biblically is said to e the number of the Devil. However, far fewer people are aware that the number 666 is actually the number of man.

Use of the occult techniques of power as exemplified by Crowley and Grant are, for me, abusive, dangerous, unnecessary and for the most part for entirely the wrong motives. Use of what are usually referred to as lower techniques: sex magick and drugs etc., to reach these ends are, as Levenda rightly points out dangerous - often very dangerous - because conscious control is relinquished and because it is quite likely that an unbalanced - even a marginally unbalanced - personality will be further tipped into neurotic - and God forbid, possibly even psychotic behaviours. Whomsoever teaches dangerous techniques to another who then falls into these ways bears a considerable degree of responsibility for the outcome. Their card will be marked.

Besides this, there is really no need to proceed with such brute force when far more controlled and sympathetic means and measures are available. Only impatience and imprudence would permit such trespassing. Properly trained and schooled, the time and experiences spent in the there and then can be safely brought back to the here and now under control --- for slow absorption and digestion. Digestion will take many, many years to achieve. Decades, probably.

I hope the foregoing is of use to someone. God knows who though. ::


(1) If not sex, then the use of drugs etc., could be used in place of the sex rite.
(2) This is considerably different to dealing with the Collective Shadow, however - a much more dangerous and ill considered idea.

Thank you for sharing this David, Its very thoughtful. Ive been trying to wrap my head about these issue for the past couple of years. I also think that its important to look at the political historical context out of which Crowley and his acolytes were created. I think its ignorant to smear everything considered "occult" as "Satanic", which is a Christian concept. Crowley was a creation of the British Empire. I just realized not to long ago that Annie Besant (Theosophist leader) was responsible for creating the Indian Congress Party.

Annie Besant also had a connection with the Marx family, as you may know.


Re: the occult and geopolitics, I often harken back to this quote from Lars Schall's interview with Guido Preparata:

L.S.: You are writing in your book that Hitler's party was a front organization for a religious cult that was embodied by the Thule society. What was the core belief of that secret society and where did it came from?

G.P.: All is religion. All history is a reflection of the battle that spiritual forces wage against one another on other planes. It is not economics and least of all the survival instinct (whatever that is) that drives history, but the quest for power, and power in its elaborate institutional manifestations is a form of (psychical) space that utterly transcends the relationship of production and distribution, let alone the basic dynamics of the wolf pack, or the more elaborate political economy of the beehive.

Power is a purely human suggestion. Suggested by whom? That is the question.

That is, indeed, the question.

[Kara Dellacioppa]

Im looking up the interview now. I wasnt' aware of Annie Besants connection to Marx.

In Webster Tarpley's Just to Weird book on Mitt Romney. he has a passage where he makes a connection of Karl Marx's works being used by British agents to de stabilize other European nations. Interesting that his collaborator was Engels, a guy from a wealthy industrialist family. In his expose of Mormonism, he points out that in the 19th Century, the British elite were also big fans of Mormonism and that Britain was one of the biggest recruitment countries for Mormonism.. Anyway he makes interesting analogies of how the Brits used protestantism in Korea, Marxism in Europe, the Bahai Faith in Iran and the Mormons in America to destabilize countries on several continents... And Theosophy in India, etc etc...

[Magda Hassan]

It was mostly with Eleanor Marx as Charlie had died by then I think. The Eleanor committed suicide because she was married to a cad.

I also remember Conan Doyle writing a very good Sherlock Holmes story on the Mormons. Can't recall the name though. One of the bigger stories not the short ones.

[David Guyatt]

Im looking up the interview now. I wasnt' aware of Annie Besants connection to Marx.

In Webster Tarpley's Just to Weird book on Mitt Romney. he has a passage where he makes a connection of Karl Marx's works being used by British agents to de stabilize other European nations. Interesting that his collaborator was Engels, a guy from a wealthy industrialist family. In his expose of Mormonism, he points out that in the 19th Century, the British elite were also big fans of Mormonism and that Britain was one of the biggest recruitment countries for Mormonism.. Anyway he makes interesting analogies of how the Brits used protestantism in Korea, Marxism in Europe, the Bahai Faith in Iran and the Mormons in America to destabilize countries on several continents... And Theosophy in India, etc etc...

And as you know Kara, and just to mention in passing, Smith's Mormonism drew extremely heavily from Smith's grounding in Freemasonry and other magical practices, as detailed in the essay: Occultic and Masonic Influence in Early Mormonism, although there are plenty of other articles and books out there on this. As far as I can see, Smith had a huge appetite as a gold digging, wealth accumulating con man. Just like L Ron Hubbard I suppose...

[David Guyatt]

It was mostly with Eleanor Marx as Charlie had died by then I think. The Eleanor committed suicide because she was married to a cad.

I also remember Conan Doyle writing a very good Sherlock Holmes story on the Mormons. Can't recall the name though. One of the bigger stories not the short ones.

And Conan Doyle was very much involved in spiritualism and later became associated (as a discarnate entity) with a French occult lodge called The Polaires, who were (big drum roll) deeply embroiled in the Rennes le Chataeu treasure mystery, the Knights Templars and the Nazi treasure seeker, Otto Rahn, Aggartha, the Oracle etc. See the Coppens article The Wooden Book of Montsegur (streuth! Wooden books with palm leaves and Mormon books with gold pages... I need to wrap a wet facecloth around my forehead). The Polaires later became the London based White Eagle Lodge founded by Grace Cook.

And would anyone believe that here again we intersect with a core group around which the Polaires organized themselves.... (another drum roll)... namely "The Nine", which leads us rather conveniently back to Andrija Puharich.

Excuse me, I have to go and sit down. I'm dizzy.

Before departing I'll just that that a thousand years ago, I briefly met the successor of Grace Cook at the London HQ of The White Eagle Lodge. She seemed very nice. The Lodge's library was an occult library of some distinction. The Lodge itself was very largely female in character.

[David Guyatt]

I've now finished Levenda's The Dark Lord and it has been fascinating and informative reading. Levenda is very obviously knowledgeable and experienced in aspects of Crowley's Thelema based religion as well as Grants's system as well. I've come away from the book knowing and understanding a great more about these two than I previously had.

I also came away alarmed.

Both Crowley and Grant, in my view, are entirely wrong headed - and yet both have considerable followings. Both focused their entire occult systems on sexual techniques - sex magick (1) - as a means of gathering the necessary energy (usually described as "power") in order to thrust their consciousness into what Grant called the Mauve zone (what used to be called astral travelling). The difference between them and others, so far as I can judge, is that they actively pursued knowledge of the dark/negative side of creation - hence the "Dark Lord". And again, so far as I can judge, the results they obtained confirmed their expectations. No surprises there, then.

It is true that anyone who operates in this area, sooner or later, does have to confront and absorb their own shadow (2). Doing so results in that part of the life energy (libido) that streams through one that has hitherto been siphoned off by the shadow is ultimately recovered and becomes available for positive use. That, combined with the cleansing technique that Israel Regardie called the Middle Pillar exercise (the circulation of light), plus other techniques including breathing, focusing and concentration exercises etc., all combine with the use of what Jung called "Active Imagination" are patiently developed over an extended period of time, for the purpose of accessing "that place between sleep and awake" that was described by J M Barrie in his book Peter Pan.

That realm is neither here, nor there, and neither then or now. It is alien but also world-like. The golden rules when travelling to this "far abroad" is to be polite and considerate, patient and questioning. Open doors when confronted with them. Ask questions of the intelligences you meet. Again politely, even when the answers you may receive are abrupt. The face you present is the face you will meet.

Untold numbers have been visitors in that land. Far more than is ever realized.

I have never before spoken so openly about these things before for obvious reasons. It is a subject that is very easily misunderstood and misinterpreted. But times are changing. The whole purpose underlying this is to become more conscious and more individually responsible for who you are. Recovering energy from the personal Shadow has the added benefit of marginally reducing the energy available to the Collective Shadow, simply because the latter is the aggregation of all the former. This is why Jung said that "man is the origin of all coming evil" and that "the only real danger that exists is man himself. He is the great danger". Many people are aware of the fact that Crowley called himself the Beast and ascribed to himself the number "666" using Gematria. That number as most of us know biblically is said to e the number of the Devil. However, far fewer people are aware that the number 666 is actually the number of man.

Use of the occult techniques of power as exemplified by Crowley and Grant are, for me, abusive, dangerous, unnecessary and for the most part for entirely the wrong motives. Use of what are usually referred to as lower techniques: sex magick and drugs etc., to reach these ends are, as Levenda rightly points out dangerous - often very dangerous - because conscious control is relinquished and because it is quite likely that an unbalanced - even a marginally unbalanced - personality will be further tipped into neurotic - and God forbid, possibly even psychotic behaviours. Whomsoever teaches dangerous techniques to another who then falls into these ways bears a considerable degree of responsibility for the outcome. Their card will be marked.

Besides this, there is really no need to proceed with such brute force when far more controlled and sympathetic means and measures are available. Only impatience and imprudence would permit such trespassing. Properly trained and schooled, the time and experiences spent in the there and then can be safely brought back to the here and now under control --- for slow absorption and digestion. Digestion will take many, many years to achieve. Decades, probably.

I hope the foregoing is of use to someone. God knows who though. ::


(1) If not sex, then the use of drugs etc., could be used in place of the sex rite.
(2) This is considerably different to dealing with the Collective Shadow, however - a much more dangerous and ill considered idea.

Thank you for sharing this David, Its very thoughtful. Ive been trying to wrap my head about these issue for the past couple of years. I also think that its important to look at the political historical context out of which Crowley and his acolytes were created. I think its ignorant to smear everything considered "occult" as "Satanic", which is a Christian concept. Crowley was a creation of the British Empire. I just realized not to long ago that Annie Besant (Theosophist leader) was responsible for creating the Indian Congress Party.

I agree to the extent that words often confuse the subject. Crowley's occult life grew out of his detestation of his strict Christian sect upbringing, that, so far as I can judge, coloured his whole life thereafter. An enquiring mind that was wholly suppressed at an early age for dogmatic religious reasons can cause such a reaction. as a young boy, his mother used to refer to him as "the beast" and so he became The Beast - and he later enjoyed the notoriety of being called a Satanist. Indeed, he polished and enhanced that image at every opportunity.

In the occult field he was known to be a member of the Left Hand Path (thus avoiding the more judgemental label of Satanist, which, of course is a misnomer). Others are initiated into the brotherhood of the Right Hand Path. All that these two descriptions reveal, really, is that the universe is composed of polar forces and ocultic-ly speaking, those involved eventually are faced with a choice between these two great cosmic pulses. One is forward looking hoping to advance civilization through greater consciousness, the other is backward looking and harkens back to the embrace of ancient times of the chthonic Great Old Ones and, therefore, diminished consciousness. Generally speaking, anyway. It is so corny to just say that the choice is either love or power and yet that it what it is.

Jung famously said that: "where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other."

When I said above that a choice is made, I really do mean this. Without going into detail, the choice has to be made in a micro-second; there is no time to ponder or reflect or balance the pros and cons. You must give an instant answer that is determined by your whole being. Once the choice is made there is no changing or going back because that choice option thereafter atomizes never to manifest again. I realize and understand that this will sound a very fuzzy and weird, if not crackpot explanation - and is yet another reason why I have chosen to rarely speak of these things. There is no fence sitting in these matters. Just how do you rationally explain the unexplainable?

This whole discussion actually speaks of mankind's need for a scape-goating Mendes, the Baphomet of the Church re the Knights Templars and Crowley's anti-Christian Satan. By which I mean that mankind has always needed to project his own dark splinter of creation onto others and other things, whether it be a Pan goat, a shadowy dale or a totem such as a biblical serpent. It is never man who is to blame... And yet that is exactly who is to blame, obviously. The real task is to withdraw those projections and swallow them - and then be prepared to spend a very long time indeed, like a bloated Python, digesting them.

Yum.

[David Guyatt]

Having said all of the above, I think I need to add that while Levenda's approach - delving into the Mauve zone and drudging up the Old Great Ones - and my approach - the Shadow confrontation are dissimilar in technique, they are also remarkably similar too. At the end of his Dark Lord he speaks of the motives behind his approach. In the Introduction to The Hitler Legacy he repeats this as follows:

We have to stop being drunks. We have to stop looking for our keys under the street lamp because the light there is better. We have to look where we lost our keys in the first place: in the darkness and the shadows. It's harder, sure, but we have a much greater chance of success even though what we blindly touch and feel in the stygian night might make us squirm in revulsion. Regardless, our keys are there

With a few changes in words I could almost have written that paragraph myself.

However, the differences in approach are significant, even if the motives are very similar. Is it, therefore, simply a difference in the psychological temperament of two seekers? Maybe. Perhaps. Possibly.

Both are involved in understanding and knowing ourselves by immersion in the shadow world.

However, my view remains that for a proper understanding of the occult, one needs to read and understand Jung. And if you can find (and afford) a decent Analyst who still follows Jung's teachings (many, many do not) and is old school in their approach, then undergoing analysis with them is recommended. The very least accomplishment that is to be hoped for from analysis is a safe transition through the Shadow confrontation. In saying this I am speaking of a person who is already fairly psychologically balanced and who is on the individuation trail - rather someone who is seeking or needs analysis due to a neurosis or psychosis or other disharmony.

Jung's contributions to a deep understanding all religious flavours, the occult, alchemy, esotericism, Hermeticism, Taoism, spiritualism and numerous others is profound. There is no need for hooded gowns, incense, Atlantean calls, rods of power and all the other paraphernalia that accompany the occult wherever it goes. That is all theatre. And I dare say some feel a need for such props to proceed. But for me there are unnecessary and and a detraction.

Once during my time practicing and teaching Chinese martial arts, I attended a lesson in my Tai Chi masters house in London. His Pa-kua, Hsing-i and Yiquan master, Grand Master Han Xingyuan, was staying with him for three months. It was late afternoon and I was just about to go upstairs to the room used for changing, after the training session, as master Han was coming down the stairs. We stopped and looked at each other and began grinning. He was dressed in western pyjamas, an old flannel dressing gown and had a cigarette, curling smoke in his eyes, hanging from his mouth. I, on the other hand, was dressed in a loose, black Chinese trousers, Tai Chi slippers, and a dark blue Chinese cotton jacket bearing a symbol of the Pakua (upside down as he went on to point out). Our roles were reversed. I was the wannabe master of Chinese martial arts, he was a triple Chinese martial arts grand master presenting as a westerner.

That chance stairway meeting has never been lost on me: although theatre and props can aid, they are fundamentally unimportant.

I would also add that the Qabalah (using the bright side of the Tree of Life) is a road map of the Collective Unconscious and used in this way is an incredibly useful tool. However, proper instruction is required and for the most part, that instruction historically had never been publicly discussed (for all sorts of reasons) - although this changed with the publication of a tradition-breaching book by Dolores Ashcroft Nowicki in 1983, titled The Shining Paths. Even if you were to spend a lifetime in studying the occult in all it's intellectual avenues, it will largely amount to a futile effort unless you knew how to use it imaginatively in structured meditation as detailed in Dolores book. And the only valid reason for undertaking such journeys is to "Know Thyself". (1) Hence the words chiselled in the lintels above the entrance door Greek mystery temples for all to see: "Gnothi Seauton" - words also beloved by the alchemists.

(1) The Self is not to be confused with the ego - for a decent explanation see HERE

[Tracy Riddle]

Sorry, this thread is giving me a flashback to my youth:

"Rossignol's curious, albeit simply titled book, the Origins of a World War, spoke in terms of secret treaties, drawn up between the Ambassadors from Plutonia and Desdinova the foreign minister. These treaties founded a secret science from the stars. Astronomy. The career of evil."

- some made-up but cool-sounding stuff on the back of Blue Oyster Cult's Secret Treaties album (1974).

[R.K. Locke]

Lots of interesting stuff to mull over here. I can see how these ideas and concepts tie together a variety of philosophies (occult and otherwise) across cultures and time periods. Everything from Taoism to esoteric traditions to Wilhelm Reich.

Would this be a good example of the mastery of Chi?: