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Unmasking
an “Occult Force”
Place France
Year 1939
Event In 1939, on
the eve of World War II, Rudolf Hess advanced the latest
in a long list of anti-Masonic theories that had been
invoked for centuries as a pretext for persecuting Masons.
The Nazi deputy fuhrer wrote that the Third Reich was
threatened by a sinister Judeo-Masonic conspiracy, which
among its other crimes was fomenting the imminent conflict.
Hess and his fellow Nazis found a champion for this theory
in Bernard Fay, a prominent French historian. A scholar
of American civilization, Fay believed that a cabal of
Freemasons plotted both the American and French revolutions,
and he saw a similar conspiracy at work in twentieth-century
Europe. The 1940 |
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German occupation of France gave him a forum
for his views, and he became an enthusiastic instrument of Nazi
persecution.
In 1943, Fay helped concoct a lurid film called Forces Occultes,
the story of a young Frenchman who infiltrates the brotherhood
to expose its role in starting the war. The movie relied heavily
on sensational imagery, a giant spider creeping across the screen,
maps displaying vast zones of alleged Jewish and Masonic influence,
and a gloating Mason stretching his arms over a flaming globe.
While Fay displayed a flair for propaganda, he had far greater
impact as the Nazi-appointed administrator of the Bibliotheque
Nationale. As chief of the national library, he directed research
into the archives of France’s secret societies, coming
up with the names of some 170,000 “suspects.” The
information led to the deportation of 520 French Freemasons
and the death of 117.
After the war, Fay was sentenced by a war crimes tribunal to
life in prison. In 1953, after serving seven years, he was pardoned
by presidential decree. |
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A
Struggle for Supremacy
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The first sect Crowley joined was
the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret
society founded in England in 1888 to study the
occult. It attracted some of the leading intellectuals
of the time, including the Irish poet William Butler
Yeats. To practice its magic, Crowley rented Boleskine
House on Loch Ness in Scotland, named himself the
Laird of Boleskine, and set about trying to summon
up his guardian angel. Legend has it that Crowley
attracted a host of evil spirits instead.
It was Crowley’s own personal demons, however,
that undid him with the golden dawn. |
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The
Serpent of Wisdom coils around the
Cabalistic Tree represents the universe,
and the serpent’s path symbolizes
the route to supreme power.
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He
persuaded the order’s chief, Samuel Mathers,
who was living in Paris, to initiate him into
a higher grade of the multitiered sect. The
Golden Dawn’s London lodge was outraged
at this presumption, and fury intensified
when Crowley, ostensibly on Mather’s
behalf, tried to seize the London headquarters.
The order wanted nothing to do with Crowley,
Yeats later declared, “because we did
not think a mystical society was intended
to be a reformatory.” In 1900, both Crowley
and Mathers were ousted.
In 1911, Crowley joined another cult: the
Ordo Templi Orientis, or Order of the Templars
of the East, founded in Germany in 1902. The
basis of OTO was a belief that sex was the
key to man’s nature experience. This
central secret of the order conformed, coincidentally,
to ideas espoused by Crowley in his own writings.
Delighted to find like-minded souls, Crowley
agreed, 1912, to be head of the order for
Great Britain. |
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