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Miguel Serrano
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/12/20

Miguel Serrano: The Dalai Lama’s “friend” and chief ideologist of “esoteric Hitlerism”

"Miguel Serrano”, writes his interviewer, Isidro Palacios, “was the only [!] western foreigner who traveled to meet the Dalai Lama as the monk-emperor of the Tibetan Buddhists fled from the holy land of Tibet to the south because of the Chinese invasion. Our conversation partner [Serrano] traveled from India into the Himalayas where his meeting with the Dalai Lama took place, and since then a close friendship has existed between him and the now Nobel prize winner” (Palacios, 1990, p. 2). Who is this “close friend” of the Kundun then?

Miguel Serrano was born in Santiago, Chile in 1917. Between 1947 and 1948 he visited Antarctica for the first time, to which he later undertook many journeys. One of the massifs which he explored on an expedition there bears his name today. Between 1939 and 1945 he published the esoteric journal, La Nueva Edad [The New Age]. He was active as a diplomat for Chile in several countries, including India, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Austria. He also worked as an ambassador at the International Atomic Energy Commission in Vienna and at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). Largely unnoticed by the public, Serrano has been in friendly contact with numerous prominent national socialist and fascist figures since the seventies: with Léon Degrelle, Otto Skorzeny, Hans-Ulrich Rudel, Hanna Reitsch, Julius Evola, Herman Wirth, Savitri Devi, and the French Waffen SS man and author Saint Loup. The Chilean returned to his country of birth and lives some kilometers from Santiago (as of 1999).

He published numerous books with an occult/poetic content. Even his work best known in the West, in which he recounts his encounters with the German poet Hermann Hesse and the depth psychologist C. G. Jung, displays a great deal of occultist speculation when one reads it attentively. Serrano titled his book The Hermetic Circle: Conversations, Correspondence, and Memories of Hermann Hesse and C. G. Jung. This title alone should signal that the author had formed an esoteric brotherhood with Jung and Hesse, a sort of triumvirate of magicians who had gained admittance to the archetypal storehouses of the human subconscious and are unique in the twentieth century. Jung was sympathetic towards the Chilean who had courted him. He wrote an effusive foreword to Serrano’s tale, The Visit of the Queen of Saba: “This book is unusual. It is a dream amidst other dreams, one could say, and completely different to the spontaneous creations of the unconscious with which I am familiar” (Serrano, 1980, p. 7). Serrano was also a great admirer of the American poet, Ezra Pound, who sympathized with the Italian fascists. Together with Pound’s widow (Olga Rudge) and Prince Ivanici, Serrano had a commemorative stone erected in Italy.

His occult studies took him to all parts of the world. He saw himself as a modern Percival (Parsifal) and Minnesinger, who went in search of the Grail under the protection of his diplomatic passport. “The life of an ambassador is a farce and a folly”, he said in an interview in the journal Cedade, “My post allows me to meet with people of value like the Dalai Lama, Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Hanna Reitsch (Hitler’s famous female war pilot) and others” (Cedade, 1986). Switzerland, Westphalia, the mountains of Salzburg, the Pyrenées, his travels in search of the Grail led him through all these “geomantically” significant sites, but likewise to the Himalayas, Patagonia, and Antarctica.

The Chilean was rightly considered the occult eminence of modern, international fascism. Meanwhile, his phantasmagoric writings have also developed a fanatic following in the German neo-nazi scene: It is the Chilean author’s obsessive intention to convince his readers that Adolf Hitler was an avatar (a divine incarnation) or a tulku, and ever will be, since he lives on in another body in another sphere, that of the kingdom of Shambhala. According to Serrano, the Führer will reappear as the doomsday ruler and fight a terrible battle, and that in the next few years.
How did this bizarre fantasy arise?

Shortly after the Second World War a mysterious “master” from the beyond is supposed to have appeared to the Chilean and said to him: “Hitler is a initiate, he can communicate with those dwelling on the astral plane. I do not know who his spiritual leaders are, but I have decided to help him. Hitler is a being with an iron, unshakable will which he inevitably put into effect. He never yielded. I was in contact with him.” (Serrano, 1987, p. 21).

After this appearance of his spiritual guru, Serrano was absolutely convinced that he had been entrusted with the mission of the century: the worldwide dissemination of Hitlerismo Esoterico (of “esoteric Hitlerism”).
Whilst still performing his international duties as a Chilean Ambassador he held himself back, although he carried the idea in his heart from the nineteen fifties on. During this period he published books of a poetic/esoteric content with several respectable western publishers which, although they without exception include tantric topics (especially the “female sacrifice”), studiously avoid mentioning the name of Adolf Hitler. Only in 1978 did the Chilean first dare to go public with an open profession of belief in the German Nazi dictator, and published El Cordón Dorado — Hitlerismo Esoterico [The Golden Ribbon — Esoteric Hitlerism]. In the mid-eighties the almost 650-page, large-format book, Adolf Hitler, el Ùltimo Avatâra [Adolf Hitler, the Last Avatar], followed. Serrano summarizes the results of his extensive occult research into this topic with the concise statement that, “esoteric Hitlerism is tantric” (Serrano, 1987, p. 330).

Shambhala: The center of “esoteric Hitlerism”:

In the following sections, we hope to show just how much of his fascist world view Serrano owed to Tantrism. It is of especial interest in connection with this study that he recognized “esoteric Hitlerism” as a central doctrine from the kingdom of Shambhala: “In fact”, the author says, “Shambhala is indeed the center of esoteric Hitlerism. The entrance to it [the realm of Shambhala] was to be found in the vicinity of Shigatse or near Gyangtse [in southern Tibet]. Through my investigations I arrived at the conclusion that our center [i.e., that of Serrano’s occult order] had also been located there. The connection between Hitlerism and the Tibetans or Mongolians was also not immediate, but indirect, in as far as they established contact with the Hyperboreans (the Aryan gods of the north) and made free passage and the transmission of physical messages possible. Tibetans and Mongolians were their vassals who had to guard the magic entry gates to their world. ... When I visited Berchtesgaden [the Obersalzberg to which Hitler retreated time and again], my attention was constantly captivated by a tellurian force, a tangible vibration in the air, which instantaneously linked this point with the Tibetan Himalayas and trans-Himalaya: Hitler’s high-lying refuge with the Lhasa of the Dalai Lama, with Shambhala. For some particular reason, esoteric Hitlerism had chosen this point, which is full of direct connections, magnetic vibrations, and those which touch the stars, as the holy center of its order (the SS), and it had avoided letting a final physical struggle, which could have harmed this area, take place there” (Serrano, 1987, p. 32). In his book, NOS, Serrano defines the kingdom of Shambhala as “one of the hidden subterranean cities in which is performed the tantric initiation that transforms, transmutes and transfigures matter. There are people who say that it was the capital of Agarthi” (Serrano, 1984, p. 186). Before Shambhala was relocated in the Himalayas by the hyperborean (Nordic) siddhas, it was a kingdom at the North Pole.

Shambhala and Agarthi are thus the two occult regions (or cities) from which the national socialist dictator, Adolf Hitler, was sent to our planet. According to Serrano the two locations lie in a magic realm beneath the surface of the Earth. “Thus the submerged Agarthi and Shambhala are to be found there, which the Tibetans and Mongolians speak of as the seat of the king of the world, and also the symbolic orient of the [Knights] Templar and the true Rosicrucians. Thus the unknown leaders of these two orders, as well the organization of esoteric Hitlerism [the SS], betook themselves there. And from there Hitler clearly received instructions” (Serrano, 1987, p. 32).

Following the Second World War the rumor (which Serrano seizes upon thankfully) arose in occult circles that Hitler had settled a brotherhood of Tibetan lamas in Berlin, who stood in direct contact with the kingdom of Shambhala. After the Russians entered the city the members of the order committed suicide ( Ravenscroft, 1988, p. 262ff.).

But Hitler — Serrano says- did not suicide; rather he was able to return to his subterranean home of Shambhala. “Hitler lives. He did not die in Berlin. I have seen him under the earth. ... I kept this secret for many years; then it was dangerous to reveal it, and it was even more difficult to write about it”, the mysterious master we have already mentioned explained to his pupil, Serrano (Serrano, 1987, p. 37). The “Führer”, however, did not flee to Tibet as is assumed in other occult speculations. Serrano doubts such assumptions, since on the basis of his researches he reached the conclusion that the mythic realm of Shambhala was relocated from the Himalayas to the South Pole (Antarctica) following the war and that today the entrance to the underground imperium may be found there. Hitler is thus said to have traveled to Antarctica.

In the near future, the “Führer” with ascend to earth from the subterranean Shambhala (now at the South Pole) for a second time, with a powerful army of UFOs in fact. (At another point Serrano reports that Hitler will lead his army on a white horse, like the Rudra Chakrin, the wrathful wheel turner from Shambhala.) The “last avatar” (Hitler) will plunge the planet into a terrible apocalyptic war between the forces of light (the hyperborean Aryan race) and the powers of darkness (the Jewish race). The Jews, who currently rule the world, will be exterminated and the Nazis will found the Edidad Dorada (the “golden age”) and the “Fourth Reich”.

Serrano took his “fantasies” literally. To seek his spiritual leader (or the tulku Hitler), the Chilean diplomat (in India at the time) set off and began exploring in the Himalayas and in Antarctica. “In the book The Serpent of Paradise, I describe my search for the ashram of the Siddha in the Himalayas, which is likewise to be found beneath the earth in the Kailash mountains, in a very remote area where my master’s residence also is” (Serrano, 1987, p. 40). He was convince that he would find an entrance to Shambhala or Agarthi in the Kailash. He also tried to reach Lake Yamdrok, because he suspected there was an entrance gateway to the underground Shambhala there as well. But the Chinese turned him back at the border.

EL/ELLA:

But the time was not ripe, Serrano was unable to discover the entrance to Shambhala. In Kalimpong, “before the gates of Tibet” he encountered a “man” who assured the Chilean that a mysterious “order” exerts an influence over both the affairs of the distant past and the most recent events of world history. Obviously this man was the guru who — as he recounts in his key book EL/ELLA — initiated Serrano into the rites of sexual magic, and the order was a tantric secret society. Its members, the “man” said, “live in two cities in the Himalayas, Agarthi and Shambhala. To get there one has to trace this (tantric) way back to the origin of time” (Serrano, 1982, p. 10).

The pupil (Serrano) — we read in EL/ELLA — is prepared to go this way and is initiated into the tantras and the “laws of androgyny” by the master: “This knowledge has been passed on to us by the serpent [kundalini] that survived on the ocean floor as the world of the god-men was destroyed, in which the woman was not outside but rather inside and where man and woman were one. .... Until you are one with the woman ... you will be no priest king ... The stallion must become a mare, the man a woman ...” the guru continued his teaching (Serrano, 1982, pp. 11-12).

This is never, the pupil learns, possible through chastity and asceticism. Rather, the man must encounter the woman in the “magic love” in order to divert her feminine energies. As we know, this requires absolute control over the sexual act and above all the retention of the seed: “If the stallion expels the seed, he becomes impoverished by this. ... For as long as the seed flows outwards like a river, the play of the deceptive appearances will continue” (Serrano, 1982, p. 13). In another text it says: “the magic love that is taught in ... Shambhala. ... In it the seed may not be issued outwardly and be lost in the woman, rather it must flow inwardly into the body of its owner in order to impregnate him with the androgyne, ... as one in the likewise symbolic language of alchemy” (Serrano, 1987, p. 289). If the man does not expel his sperm he can absorb the woman’s gynergies completely. “If the woman does not receive”, Serrano says, “she gives! Through her skin she exudes substances, a concentrated energy, which satiates you and penetrates into your blood and heart” (Serrano, 1982, p. 14).

But it can happen that the tantric experiment fails. If the sadhaka (the pupil) loses his seed during the magic sexual act then he is destroyed by the aggressive femininity: “The spider devours the male who fertilizes her, the bees murder the drones, the fearsome mother wears the organ of generation tied around her neck. Everything female devours, every mare, mother, goddess, or woman. In one way or another the man is consumed” (Serrano, 1982, p. 13).

It is thus a matter of life and death. Ultimately, according to Serrano the “killing” of the external woman (the karma mudra) is therefore necessary, so that the inner woman (the maha mudra) can be formed. The author does not shrink from discussing the “tantric female sacrifice” directly: “Only those who are able to love the woman so much [!] that they externally kill her [!] in order to make possible her inner rebirth will find the immortal city of Agarthi (or Shambhala)” (Serrano, 1982, p. 13). For an uninformed reader hidden, but obvious to one who knows the logic of Tantrism, a tantric female murder is described in both of his initiatory writings, EL/ELLA [HE/SHE] and NOS [WE].

In a love scene from EL/ELL,A a young woman expires in Serrano’s arms in order to then re-emerge within him as an inner maha mudra. He bends over her, strokes her hair and kisses her bloody lips: “They tasted like bitter honey, and he swallowed a little of her blood” Then he suddenly sees the stigmata: “Strangely, it [the blood] was only on her feet and the palms of her hands as if she had been crucified. 'Here!', she said. She indicated her side, at breast level. A white line seemed to run through it, like a spear wound” (Serrano, 1982, pp. 72-73). The references to the sacrifice of Christ are obvious, indeed they seem quite blatant. “When I die,” the woman then says, “you will bear me within you; I will be you, live in you ... You have drunk my blood, and we are now two siblings. My character is already being transferred into your blood ... If god will, I shall love you even more when I am dead. ... I have to die that you may live” (Serrano, 1982, pp. 73-74). With this she fulfills the wise saying of Serrano’s master: “The decay of the one [the woman] is the purification of the other [the man]" (Serrano, 1982, p. 93). “The absolute woman”, he says at another point, “can sleep or she can die, which is the same thing” (Serrano, 1987, p. 289).

Written in a fantasy manner, the book NOS — Book of the Resurrection also depicts a tantric female sacrifice. The heroine of this “hermetic biography” is called Allouine, the main hero is admittedly Serrano. Additionally, various “tantric” masters crop up. Among them are, unmistakably, C.G. Jung, Hermann Hesse, and the American poet Ezra Pound. The contents of the book depict the voluntary self-sacrifice of Allouine, her interiorization as a maha mudra by the author (Serrano), and the latter’ achievement of immortality through the absorption of gynergy. “The woman dies. She is dead. She must die. ... She is the warrior’s [the yogi’s] companion, existing only in his mind, in his spirit” (Serrano, 1984, p. 11), Serrano instructs us once more. “She [the woman] becomes interiorized in you through her death, she inspires you”, one of his masters explains to him and in another passage continues: “The secret path of yoga along which you are traveling is only for the warrior, for the initiated hero. It is not the path for the woman; because a woman has no chakras, no kundalini to awaken. ... A woman is the Kundalini. A woman has no soul. She is the soul. A woman has no eternity. She is eternity” (Serrano, 1984, pp. 102, 147).

Serrano stages a tantric séance with Allouine, in which they both consume the five forbidden foods. Then he drinks “the liquor of orgasm ... the heavenly Soma, an spirit of secret wine ... which is now only to be found in the river of your blood” (Serrano, 1984, p. 112). We know that he is talking about the sukra, the mixture of male and female seed, of menstrual blood and sperm. This magic potion grants the Tantric immortality. In NOS too the author longs for the blood of his lover like a vampire and goes into raptures if he detects it on his lips. After he has washed the dying Allouine, he kisses her and drinks of her blood.

Yet Allouine patiently and will-lessly accepts her sacrifice: “My desire for you (i.e., for Serrano) is reaching its peak. The fire of sacrifice has already been lit in my vulva and beats there like a heart. ... My will no longer exists” (Serrano, 1984, p. 111). “The authentic, absolute woman sacrifices herself voluntarily,” we read in NOS, “immolating herself in order to give her eternity to her lover. ... The beloved is now the hidden beloved, she who has died and buried herself in your bones and your veins. The female Sophia, guru of the soul, she who courses through the blood, the female philosopher, Sophia, wisdom, the dove, gnosis” (Serrano, 1984, pp. 147-148). Dying, his “wisdom consort” says to him, “I shall but love thee better after death. I give you my eternity. … My beloved, you will be my coffin of perfumed, precious wood!” (Serrano, 1984, p. 140).

After he has internalized Allouine within himself, the Tantric Serrano can now overcome his EGO, he can now talk of NOS (WE), since his lover (maha mudra) will dwell in him for ever. Through this love, deadly for the woman, the man gains eternal life. In this context, Serrano plays upon the word AMOR, which does not just mean love, but also A-MOR, i.e., beyond death.

Eternally united with Allouine’s gynergy following her physical death, Serrano buries her corpse and places a stone at her grave into which he has chiseled a leftward hooked cross, the supreme symbol of “esoteric Hitlerism”.

Hitler as a tantric and as king of the world (Chakravartin):

From Serrano’s tantric world view it is only all too easy to assume that Hitler (as a tulku) also conducted sexual magic practices with a wisdom consort (mudra). Eva Braun, the lover of the dictator appears to have only partially performed this duty. Behind her, Serrano says, stood a greater one: “We must thus consider the relationship with Eva Braun to have been like that between Jesus and Mary Magdalene in the Christian legend, like that of an alchemist to his mystic sister. ... The presence of the woman, her telepathic, self-communicating energy, the tensions this generates are indispensable for a tantric magician, for this kind of bearer of power. The mystic consort of Hitler was, however, not Eva Braun, but rather another” (Serrano, 1987, p. 25). He refers to her as the “Valkyrie” or as Lilith too. With the name Lilith he draws a connection to Adam. Like Hitler, the biblical first father of humanity (Adam) also possessed two women, an outer Eve and an inner Lilith. Did Hitler perhaps make an decisive tantric mistake, asks the author, in marrying Eva Braun (shortly before his suicide)? “... Since the secret Eve [Braun] of transient flesh and blood was accepted, she now [took] the place of the mystic consort” (Serrano, 1987, p. 25), and Hitler lost part of his magic powers (siddhis).

A according to Serrano the “Führer” of the Third Reich was a tantra master from Shambhala, the “high priest of the occident” (Serrano, 1987, p. 269) He came to earth to fulfill a mission — the control of the world by the Nordic ("hyperborean”) race. But in him Serrano does not just see the incarnation of a warlike archetype who lowered himself into a human frame in the nineteen-thirties and forties. In the dictator he directly recognized a tulku and god sent from Shambhala. Hitler “was a highly developed being, a Bodhisattva, a tulku ... the incarnation of a deity” (Serrano, n.d., p. 119).

Just as a tulku need not only appear in the form of a single person, but can rather produce many emanations of his self, so too the various fascist national “Führers” of the first half of our century were the emanations of the mightiest central tulku and Shambhala prince, Adolf Hitler: Benito Mussolini in Italy; Oliveira Salazar in Portugal; Leon Degrelle in Belgium; José Antonio Primo de Rivera in Spain; Plinio Salgado in Brazil; Doriot in France; Jorge González von Marée in Chile; and Subhash Chandra Bose in India. All the fascist energy of the world was concentrated in the German “Führer” (Hitler): “The tulku”, says Serrano, “ — in this case it is Hitler — radiates out from a center of higher power, which like an enormous sun absorbs everything and draws it into his fire and his fate. If HE falls, then all the others fall too, then HE is of course ALL [of them]" (Serrano, 1987, p. 270).

According to Serrano Hitler must also be seen as the earthly appearance of the Chakravartin: “For the initiates of the SS Hitler was that mysterious prophet or magician who … would restore the sense of royal dignity, where the king of the world is the emperor, the priest of priests and king of kings; it is the leader, who will establish a new golden age for a thousand years and more” (Serrano, 1987, p. 354). This is clearly intended for the future, since– according to Serrano — Hitler will soon return once more to fulfill his cosmic mission. One may think what one will of such prognoses, but it is in any case amazing what a large upturn fascist movements have achieved worldwide since the end of the eighties.

The SS as a tantric warrior order from Shambhala:

For Serrano the tantric initiation is the central rite of a “hyperborean” (Nordic) warrior caste. Shambhala counts as the supreme mystery site for the initiation of the “priest-warriors”. “In Shambhala”, the author says, “ the use of the force through which the mutation of the earth and the people can be carried out is taught, and the latter [the people] are introduced into the martial initiation, which makes this possible. ... Those who follow this initiatory stream have struggled to found a new/old order here on the present-day earth which has its roots in the transcendent origins, with the goal of reawakening the golden age, and they will fight on to the end...” (Serrano, 1987, p. 258).

This order is the secret brotherhood of the Shambhala officers, who have for centuries been incarnated in our world — for instance as knights of the holy grail or as Rosicrucians or finally as the occult elite of the SS, Hitler’s notorious Schutz-Staffel. “Once a year”, we learn, “the inner circle of the SS people met with their supreme leaders for a few days of retreat, the solitude, and meditation. A kind of western yoga was practiced here, but nothing is known about it” (Serrano, 1987, pp. 171-172).

According to Serrano the SS were divided into two sections, an inner esoteric one and an outer one. The “exoteric SS” were selected to “be able to deal with the most difficult tasks and adventures in the external world”. “Nothing of the esoteric of the black order, its practices and teachings, its invisible connections and its occult doctrines was known” to them (Serrano, 1987, p. 264). The “inner circle” of the SS consisted of “sun people, supermen, god-men, the total human, the human magician” (Serrano, n.d., p. 96). The esoteric SS were siddhas (magicians) from the underground kingdom of Shambhala, or at least their messengers In German, SS are the initials of the “black sun” (“schwarze Sonne”), and Serrano did also call the members of the order “the men of the black sun”. We are reminded that the planet of darkness, Rahu, which darkens the sun and moon, is also referred to in the Kalachakra Tantra as the black sun.

The author is convinced, of course, that sexual magic rites were practiced in the SS (the “new aristocracy of the Aryan race”). Like Julius Evola before him, the Chilean makes constant references in his writings to how sexuality may be converted into high-quality aggressive military energy and political power through tantric practices: “Come and take me like a warrior!”, a lover (his karma mudra) says to him at one stage in his key novels, “I give you my heart for you to devour. Let us drink our blood”(Serrano, 1982, p. 54). In EL/ELLA the author recommends to heroes initiated into the tantras that “the warrior should give death the face of his lover; the fiery femininity of death will be thus evoked” (Serrano, 1982, p. 87). For Serrano, tantric practices and the cult life of a fascist/esoteric warrior caste are one.

Additionally, the sexual magic of the SS was connected with racial experiments. These aimed at a mutation of the human race, or better, a regaining of the formerly high-standing Aryan god-men who had in the dim and distant past tarnished themselves through “ordinary” sexual intercourse with human women and produced a lesser race. According to Serrano, such experiments were conducted in the Wewelsburg, the occult center of the SS. “Laboratories of leftward magic” for the re-creation of the original, pure Aryan race were to be found there (Serrano, n.d. pp. 488, 589).
But these were nothing more than the above-ground branches of corresponding establishments in subterranean Shambhala. “In Shambhala they attempted to produce a mutation of their kind which would allow them to return to that which they were before their interbreeding with the sons of man...” — when they still had a white, almost transparent body and blonde hair (Serrano, 1982, p. 54).

As Tantrics, the SS were “beyond good and evil” and for this reason their “terrible deeds” were justified by Serrano, plus that they took place at higher cosmic command (Serrano, 1987, p. 331). The “final solution to the question of the gypsies” (many gypsies perished in the concentration camps), for example, is said to have come directly “from Tibet to Hitler, certainly from Shambhala”. The gypsies used to live in Shambhala and had then been driven out of there. “The reasons for this”, says Serrano, “were known in the Tibet of the Dalai Lama” (Serrano, 1987, p. 366).

Just like the Knights Templar, the inner occult core of the SS were incarnations of the guardians of the holy grail, and “the grail of the siddhas [the magicians], of the solar and martial initiations” is to be found in Shambhala (Serrano, 1987, p. 264). The miracles which radiated from the grail were evident in the achievements of the black order in the course of the Second World War: “If one examines the achievements of the followers of Hitler in all areas of creation within a period of just six years, one cannot avoid admiring this miracle and making a comparison with the Templar order. And one comes to believe that the SS have likewise found the grail and even deciphered it” (Serrano, 1987, p. 278). Even the monumental architecture of the Third Reich is supposed to have been prepared on the building sites of Shambhala. The Hyperboreans (the gods of the north), we may read, “emigrated to two secret cities in the Himalayas, Agarthi and Shambhala. ... In Shambhala they practiced the magic of the giants which made the monumental buildings possible” (Serrano, 1982, p. 54).

In the Second World War the forces of light and the “sun race” (Hitler and the SS) stood opposed to the forces of darkness and the “moon race” (the Allies and the Jews). It was no ordinary war, but rather a global battle between the gods (the Nazis, the light Aryan race) and demons (the Jews, the dark Semitic race), between Odin, the highest god of the Germanic peoples, and Jehovah, the highest god of the Jews. The Nordic (hyperborean) heroes fought the “lord of darkness”, the “satanic demiurge”. At heart, Serrano says, the patriarchal and matriarchal powers were at war.

Admittedly Hitler outwardly lost the war, but through his sacrifice and his example he saved the ideals of the warrior caste from Shambhala. He shall return at the head of his “wild army” to finally liberate the white race from the lord of darkness (Jehovah). It will then come to a terrible final battle. “These are the dimensions of Hitler, the envoy of the hyperborean [Nordic] siddhas, the tulku, the Bodhisattva, the Chakravartin, the Führer of the Aryans, so that the demiurge Jehovah has to mobilize all his earthly and extraterrestrial legions” (Serrano, n.d., p. 50).

One may well dismiss Serrano’s visions as the product of an overactive imagination, but it cannot be denied that modern fascism has found a home and a predecessor in the Shambhala myth and in Tantrism. Its mythological conceptions and visions of power can without difficulty be brought into harmony with the practice and political ideology of the Kalachakra Tantra for all fundamental issues. The occult right wing’s move toward Tibetan Buddhism is thus in no way to be understood as the exploitation of the dharma for ignoble purposes, since there is a profound inner relatedness between these two ways of looking at the world.

The Fourteenth Dalai Lama and Serrano:

Naturally, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama would simply dismiss any link between the Shambhala myth and Kalachakra Tantra and the “esoteric Hitlerism” of Serrano, regardless of how closely matched even the conceptual principles of the two systems may be. Nonetheless, it is of great interest to our culturally critical study that the Kundun met with the racist Chilean several times (in at least 1959, 1984, and 1992). When His Holiness visited Chile in the year 1992, he was greeted at the airport by, among others, the leader of the National Socialist Party of Chile — Miguel Serrano by name. The principal ideologue of Esoteric Hitlerism told the reporters present that he and the hierarch from Tibet had been good “friends” since his time in India (Grunfeld, 1996, p. 302). Serrano was also a friend of the German living in India whom we have so often cited, Lama Govinda, in whose meditation tower with a view of the Himalayan mountains he was able to immerse himself.

The first encounter with the Kundun took place in 1959. In his own account, the founder of “esoteric Hitlerism” was the sole foreigner to greet the Dalai Lama as he crossed the Indian border after his flight from Tibet. “Shortly before the taking of Tibet by Mao’s troops”, he reports in his own words, “the Dalai Lama succeeded in fleeing to India. I journeyed into the Himalayas to wait for him there. I donned Tibetan clothes which the Maharaja of Sikkim had given me so as to attempt to get to Tibet from there. I made it to the Tibetan border, where — incidentally — I made the acquaintance of one of Roerich’s sons who also gave me a report of the hidden city lying in the mountains (Shambhala). The at that time still very young Dalai Lama later, when everything was over, gave me a small Tibetan dog, as a sign of his gratitude” (Palacio, 1990, p. 4).

It is at any rate interesting that the Kundun, who was introduced to western culture by a member of the SS (Heinrich Harrer), meets as the first (!) Westerner after his crossing of the Indian border the fascist Miguel Serrano, who sees a mythic command from the kingdom Shambhala at the esoteric core of the SS. Serrano says of himself: “I was employed as a tool and continue to be used” (Cedade, 1986). We may recall that upon crossing the border, the Dalai Lama gave vent to the cry of “Victory to the gods!”. The gods that Serrano represented and as whose tool he served were Wotan, Odin, and, in his own words, Adolf Hitler.

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Miguel Serrano and the XIV. Dalai Lama in Santiago de Chile (1992)

As far as the “enchanting” Tibetan temple bitch of “honey yellow color” which was given him by the Kundun is concerned, this creature had a most special significance for the Chilean. The lamas, the author says, referred to the petite race as the “lion of the back door of the Temple”. Serrano’s “back door lion” was called Dolma, “the name of a Tibetan goddess; in truth the shakti” (Serrano, n.d., p. 189). Dolma is the Tibetan name for the goddess Tara. As abstruse as it may sound, after some time the Chilean recognized in the Dolma given him by the Kundun the reincarnation of a woman whom he once loved as a “mystic partner” and who (in accordance with the laws of the “tantric female sacrifice”) had had to die (Serrano, n.d., p. 189). As Dolma the bitch one day passed away in his arms — Serrano had flown from Spain to Vienna just to accompany her into eternity — he recalled an event of mythological dimensions from the 16th century. As if he were in a trance he suddenly felt that it was not the Tibetan Dolma but rather the dying sister of the last Aztec emperor Montezuma, Papán by name, whom he held in his arms. Papán — Serrano claimed — originally a high priestess from the north ("Hyperborea”), had in Mexico prophesied- according to legend — the return of the white gods to America. In her final hour, Dolma (the bitch) radiated out the energy of the Aztec princess who had to suffer a ritual sacrificial death.

Thanks to this vision Serrano could once more experience the fascination which habitually flooded through him at the embrace of dying women, even if one of them had this time been incarnated in a bitch. In NOS, a dying dog (the fate of Dolma probably lies behind this) spoke to him like a tantric lover with a human voice: “You don't need me outside anymore. I will howl inside you, like my brother the wolf” (Serrano, 1984, p. 21).

Such central “hermetic” experiences naturally tied the Chilean to the Kundun and his tantric world view profoundly and so it is also not surprising that Serrano linked “esoteric Hitlerism” and the fate of Germany to the Dalai Lama directly: His “skill”, the author says of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, is “closely linked to that of Hitler’s Germany ... on account of yet undiscovered connections. A few years after Germany, Tibet also fell” (Serrano, 1987, p. 366).

The Chilean did not yet know about the SS past of Heinrich Harrer, the Kundun’s “best friend” and teacher, since this first became known in 1997 in connection with the film Seven Years in Tibet. But we can be certain that this fact would have been cited by him as further evidence to justify an occult connection between Shambhala and the SS, between the Dalai Lama and Adolf Hitler, particularly as the Chilean indicates at many points in his writings that the SS sent “secret missions” to Tibet in order to search for traces of the Aryan race there.

Serrano allows himself to be celebrated as the “Führer” of the National Socialist Party of Chile. His calendar commences with the year of Adolf Hitler’s birth in 1889. He describes “esoteric Hitlerism” as the “new religion of the young heroes and future warriors and priests, the true myth of the coming century” (Cedade, 1986). In 1989, on the 100th anniversary of Hitler’s birth (the year 100 for Serrano) a commemorative celebration was staged at which the Chilean and representatives of “esoteric Hitlerism” from various countries (Chile, Spain, Italy, Germany) spoke: “On the peak of a mountain in the Andes ranges which dominates Santiago,” the Chilean newspaper, La Epoca, writes, “and to the sounds of the Ride of the Valkyrie from Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), some 100 Chilean followers and foreigners commemorated Adolf Hitler in yesterday’s evening twilight and promised that in the new Hitlerist age the continuing triumph of his ideas would proceed from Chile. ... Hitler, Serrano opined, would be resurrected from in the Andes ('Andes' means 'perfected, total human) and he would do like the Caleuche [a mystic hero of Chile, whose name means 'the man who returns’) and introduce the age of Hitler” (Epoca, April 21, 1989). This event should not be underestimated on the basis of the small number of participants. For Serrano it had a ritual/symbolic significance and was reported in detail in the German neo-Nazi scene, for example.

In fascist circles worldwide, Serrano is a “hot tip” and his bizarre visions do in fact exercise a fascinating attraction on many young people. His nazi books are openly offered for sale in all South American countries. The German translation of Cordón Dorado Hitlerismo Esoterico is available as a hardback (Das goldene Band — esoterischer Hitlerismus). Highly sought after copies of the other works (about Hitlerism) in German translation and individual propaganda essays are in circulation and passed from hand to hand. “Serrano’s mystical neo-Nazism … [has] a distinct appeal to the younger generation”, writes the historian Goodrick Clark, “Here Nazism becomes a pop mythology, severed from the historic context of the Third Reich. The Gnostic Cathars, Rosicrucian mysteries, Hindu Avatars, and extraterrestrial gods add a sensational and occult appeal to powerful myths of elitism, planetary destiny, and the cosmic conspiracy of the Jews that culminate in a global racist ideology of white supremacism. … Books by Serrano … are now circulating among neo-pagans, Satanists, skinheads, and Nazi metal music fans in the United States, Scandinavia, and Western Europe” (Goodrick Clark, 1998, pp. 221-222). The Dalai Lama has never distanced himself from Serrano. Instead of decisively opposing fascism in any country, he recently called for the former Chilean State President and fascist, Augusto Pinochet, to be spared a trial.

-- The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism, by Victor and Victoria Trimondi


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Miguel Serrano Fernández
As ambassador to India, 1957
Born: Miguel Joaquín Diego del Carmen Serrano Fernández, 10 September 1917, Santiago, Chile
Died: 28 February 2009 (aged 91), Santiago, Chile
Resting place: Santiago, Chile
Nationality: Chilean
Alma mater: Internado Nacional Barros Arana
Occupation: Writer, novelist, essayist, journalist, explorer and diplomat
Years active: 1936–2009[1]
Notable work: The Serpent of Paradise"; "The Ultimate Flower"; "El/Ella"; "The Visits of the Queen of Sheba"; "C.G. Jung and Hermann Hesse: A Record of Two Friendships"; "Nos: Book of the Resurrection"

Miguel Joaquín Diego del Carmen Serrano Fernández, better known as Miguel Serrano (10 September 1917 – 28 February 2009), was a Chilean diplomat, writer, occultist, and fascist activist. A Nazi sympathiser in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he later became a prominent figure in the neo-Nazi movement as an exponent of Esoteric Hitlerism.

Born to a wealthy Chilean family of European descent, Serrano was orphaned as a child and raised by his grandmother. After an education at the Internado Nacional Barros Arana, he developed an interest in writing and far-right politics, allying himself with the Chilean Nazi movement. During the Second World War, in which Chile remained neutral, Serrano campaigned in support of Nazi Germany and promoted anti-semitic conspiracy theories through his own fortnightly publication, La Nueva Edad. In 1942 he joined an occult order founded by a German migrant which combined pro-Nazi sentiment with ceremonial magic and kundalini yoga. It presented the Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler as a spiritual adept who had incarnated to Earth as a savior of the Aryan race and who would lead humanity out of a dark age known as the Kali Yuga. Serrano became convinced that Hitler had not died in 1945 but had secretly survived and was living in Antarctica. After visiting Antarctica, Serrano travelled to Germany and then Switzerland, where he met the novelist Hermann Hesse and psychoanalyst Carl Jung; in 1965 he published a reminiscence of his time with the pair.

In 1953 Serrano joined the Chilean diplomatic corps and was stationed in India until 1963, where he took a keen interest in Hinduism and wrote several books. He was later made ambassador to Yugoslavia and then Austria, and while in Europe made contacts with various former Nazis and other far-rightists living on the continent. Following Chile's election of a Marxist President, Salvador Allende, Serrano was dismissed from the diplomatic service in 1970. After Allende was ousted in a coup and Augusto Pinochet took power, Serrano returned to Chile in 1973. He became a prominent organiser in the Chilean neo-Nazi movement, holding annual celebrations of Hitler's birthday, organising a neo-Nazi rally in Santiago, and producing a neo-Nazi political manifesto. He wrote a trilogy of books on Hitler in which he outlined his view of the Nazi leader as an avatar. He remained in contact with neo-Nazis elsewhere in the world and gave interviews to various foreign far-right publications.

In 2008 Serrano was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award (Premio a la Trayectoria) from the Universidad Mayor of Santiago.[2][3][4] After Savitri Devi, he has been considered the most prominent exponent of Esoteric Hitlerism within the neo-Nazi movement. In that movement, he gained respect for his devotion to the cause even among neo-Nazis who regarded his ideas as far-fetched.

Biography

Childhood: 1917–1938


Miguel Joaquín Diego del Carmen Serrano Fernández was born on 10 September 1917.[5] On his maternal line, he was descended from the countesses of Sierra Bella.[5] His mother, Berta Fernández Fernández, died when Serrano was five years old, while his father, Diego Serrano Manterola, died three years later.[5] He had two younger brothers and a sister, who were then all raised by his paternal grandmother, Fresia Manterola de Serrano, moving between a Santiago townhouse and a 17th-century country mansion in the Claro Valley.[5]

Between 1929 and 1934, he studied at the Internado Nacional Barros Arana.[5] The school had been heavily influenced by Prussian staff members who had arrived in the late 19th century, with Serrano attributing his later Germanophilia to this early exposure to German culture.[5] At the school he moved in literary circles.[5] A close friend of his was Hector Barreto, a poet and socialist. Aged 18, Barreto was killed in a brawl with uniformed Nacistas, members of the National Socialist Movement of Chile, a fascist group inspired by the example of the Nazi Party in Germany.[5] This event encouraged Serrano's involvement in left-wing politics as he began to take an interest in Marxism and the Chilean Marxist movement.[5] He wrote articles for leftist journals like Sobre la marcha, La Hora, and Frente Popular.[5] His uncle, the poet Vicente Huidobro, encouraged him to join the left-wing Republicans in the ongoing Spanish Civil War, but he did not do so.[5]

Nazism and occultism: 1939–1952

Serrano grew critical of Marxism and left-wing politics, instead being drawn to the Nacistas after their failed coup in September 1938.[5] By July 1939, Serrano was publicly associating himself with the Nacista movement, now organised as the Popular Socialist Vanguard.[6] He began writing for their journal, Trabajo, and accompanied their leader, Jorge González von Marées, on his speaking tours across Chile.[6] At the outbreak of the Second World War, in which Chile remained neutral, Serrano expressed support for Nazi Germany; from July 1941 he launched a fortnightly pro-Nazi publication, La Nueva Edad.[6] Among the magazine's regular contributors were the journalist René Arriagada, General Francisco Javier Díaz, and Hugo Gallo, who was the cultural attaché at the Italian Embassy.[6] Through this work, Serrano developed close links with the German Embassy in Chile and its personnel.[6]

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Serrano admired Adolf Hitler, and later became convinced that he had not died in 1945 but instead escaped to Antarctica.

Although Serrano had initially shown little interest in Nazi attitudes towards Jewish people, he became increasingly interested in anti-semitic conspiracy theories about Jews manipulating world events.[6] Two Chilean artists gave him a Spanish language translation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a text purporting to expose this alleged international Jewish conspiracy.[6] According to the historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, it was this discovery of the Protocols which "marked a crucial point in the development of Serrano's Nazism".[6] From November 1941, he began printing excerpts from the Protocols in La Nueva Edad.[6]

Serrano also developed an interest in forms of religious or spiritual practice, including both Western esotericism and Hinduism.[7] In late 1941, Gallo suggested that Serrano could support the German and Italian war effort not just through his publications, but also on the etheric Inner Planes, introducing him to an esoteric order sympathetic to Nazism.[7] Serrano later claimed that this order had been founded near the start of the 20th century by a German migrant known as "F. K."[7] Serrano was initiated into the group in February 1942.[7]

F. K. claimed that the group owed its allegiance to a secretive Brahmin elite who resided in the Himalayas.[7] It practices combined kundalini yoga with ceremonial magic and expressed a pro-Nazi position.[7] It espoused a belief in an astral body which could be awakened through various rituals and meditative practices.[7] The group revered the Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler as the savior of an Aryan race and presented him as a shudibudishvabhaba, an initiate of immense willpower who had voluntarily incarnated onto Earth to assist in the overthrow of the Kali Yuga, a present dark age for humanity.[7] F. K. claimed that through the astral realm, he was able to establish a connection with Hitler, during which they had various conversations.[7]

As the Second World War ended in defeat for Nazi Germany in 1945, Serrano was convinced that Hitler had not committed suicide in Berlin as was claimed by the victorious Allies. Instead, Serrano believed that Hitler had escaped and was living in Antarctica, either in a secluded warm environment on the continent or under the ice cap itself.[7] This idea had been suggested to him by F. K.—who claimed that he remained in astral contact with Hitler—but was also widely rumoured in the Latin American press.[8] In 1947, Ladislao Szabó's book Hitler est vivo had been published, exerting an influence on Serrano. Szabó's book alleged that a U-boat convoy had taken Hitler to safety in Queen Maud Land.[9] In 1947–48, Serrano travelled to Antarctica as a journalist with the Chilean Army.[9] In 1948, he wrote his own short book, La Antártica y otros Mitos, which repeated Szabó's claims about Hitler's survival.[9]

In 1951, Serrano travelled to Europe, and in Germany visited various sites associated with the Nazi Party, including Hitler's Berlin bunker, Hitler's Berghof home, and Spandau Prison, where Rudolf Hess and other prominent Nazis were then imprisoned.[9] During this trip he also visited Switzerland, where he met and befriended the writer Hermann Hesse and the psychoanalyst Carl Jung.[9]

Diplomatic career: 1953–1970

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Serrano meeting Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (right) in May 1957

In 1953, Serrano—following a number of other family members—joined the Chilean diplomatic corps.[9] He hoped to gain a posting to India, a land which he considered to be a source of great spiritual truths. He was successful in this, and remained in India until 1962. In this period, he visited many Hindu temples and searched for evidence of the secretive Brahmanical order into which F. K. had alleged initiation.[9] In his role as a diplomat, he met various prominent figures, including Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, and the 14th Dalai Lama.[9] It was while in India that he wrote and published two books: The Visits of the Queen of Sheba (1960), which had a preface by Jung, and The Serpent of Paradise (1963), which discussed his experiences in the country.[9] Serrano had engaged in further correspondence with Jung between 1957 and 1961.[10] In 1965 his book, C. J. Jung and Hermann Hesse: A Record of Two Friendships, was published.[10]

Leaving India, from 1962 to 1964 he was posted as the Chilean ambassador to Yugoslavia.[9] From 1964 to 1970 he then served as his country's ambassador to Austria, for which he lived in Vienna.[9] During the latter posting, he also represented Chile at the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, both of which were based in Vienna.[9] While in Europe, he had sought out a number of individuals linked to Nazism and to the far-right more broadly; these included visits to the Ahnenerbe co-founder Herman Wirth,...

Herman Wirth (alternatively referred to as Herman Wirth Roeper Bosch, or Herman Felix Wirth or Hermann) (6 May 1885 in Utrecht – 16 February 1981 in Kusel) was a Dutch-German historian and scholar of ancient religions and symbols. He co-founded the SS-organization Ahnenerbe but was later pushed out by Heinrich Himmler....

In 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, Wirth volunteered for military service in the German army, where he was assigned to monitor the Flemish separatists in German-occupied Belgium. In 1916 he was decorated, dismissed from the service, and subsequently appointed by Wilhelm II as a professor (Titularprofessor). In 1918 he became professor at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. After the war ended, he and his wive moved to the Netherlands, where they founded a nationalist Wandervogel-organization, dedicated to traditional folk-music. By then, Wirth accepted a temporary job as teacher at the gymnasium of Baarn.

August 1922 he became honorary professor in Marburg, Germany, but he took another job as a teacher in Sneek (Netherlands) until February 1924. This gave him the opportunity do dive into Frisian folk culture and the history of the apparently age-old Oera Linda Book [a manuscript written in a form of Old Frisian, purporting to cover historical, mythological, and religious themes of remote antiquity, from 2194 BCE to 803 CE. Among academics in Germanic philology, the document is widely considered to be a hoax or forgery.] In 1925 he joined the NSDAP. However, his membership was discontinued in 1926, apparently because he did not want to scare off Jewish sponsors.

Wirth then published a book about the "Prehistory of the Atlantic Nordic race" (German: Urgeschichte der atlantisch-nordischen Rasse), which found appeal in völkisch circles....

After the rise to power of the NSDAP, he rejoined the party in 1934 and shortly thereafter became a member of the Schutzstaffel (SS, membership number 258.776). He was re-awarded his former NSDAP number (20.151) personally by Adolf Hitler.

In early summer 1933, friends within the NSDAP helped Wirth to be appointed to an extraordinary professorship without teaching responsibilities at the theological faculty of Berlin University.... Wirth also re-founded his organization as Gesellschaft für germanische Ur- und Vorgeschichte, with assistance from the journalist and Nazi functionary Johann von Leers and the industrialist Ludwig Roselius. The latter had supported Wirth since the 1920s and paid for the publication of Der Aufgang der Menschheit.

Between 1933 and 1935, there was a large philosophical clash encouraged by the Nazi party between the churches, and neo-paganism supported by völkisch theories. Wirth was among those who tried to reinterpret Christianity in terms of ethnic Nordic origin of original monotheism. The free-thinking neo-pagans founded a supporting group in 1933, and included Wirth, Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, and until 1934 Ernst Bergmann and numerous ex-Communists....

From 1935, sponsored by Himmler and Darré, Wirth co-founded and then headed the Ahnenerbe, which was to "research German ancestral heritage", of the SS. [The Ahnenerbe operated as a think tank in Nazi Germany between 1935 and 1945. Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel (SS) established it as an SS appendage devoted to the task of promoting the racial doctrines espoused by Adolf Hitler and his governing Nazi Party, specifically by supporting the idea that the modern Germans descended from an ancient Aryan race seen as biologically superior to other racial groups. The group comprised scholars and scientists from a broad range of academic disciplines.] In 1937, Himmler restructured the Ahnenerbe, made Wirth the "Honorary President" with no real powers and replaced him as president with Walter Wüst. In 1938, Wirth also lost his department within the Ahnenerbe and in 1939 he lost his position as Ehrenpräsident.

Wirth continued his research, repeatedly financed by Himmler; both men remained in touch. Wirth remained an SS-officer...

Captured in 1945 by the U.S. Army, Wirth was detained and interviewed for two years. Feeling unwelcome in the Netherlands, he then moved to Sweden, before returning to Marburg in 1954, where he lived as a private scholar.

Although he continued to defend National Socialist principles, Wirth's teachings about "Urkulturen" found resonance in the evolving alternative scene, and in the 1970s gained support from North American native groups....

The influential Chilean neonazi Miguel Serrano interviewed Wirth in September 1979. According to Serrano, Wirth complained to him that his magnum opus Palestinabuch had recently been stolen. There are, indeed, indications that Wirth has worked between 1933 and 1969 on an antisemitic text, which could serve as a counterpart to the Ura Linda Chronicle. Since then, due to the publications of Serrano and the Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, the idea of a lost major manuscript has gained some kind of cult status in extreme rightwing circles....

Wirth claimed that civilization is a curse that only a simpler way of life, as documented in archaeological findings and historical records, could lift....

Wirth placed the origins of European civilization on the mythological island of Atlantis, which he thought had been located in the North Atlantic, connecting North America and Europe. Its inhabitants supposedly were pure Aryans, influencing the cultures not just of Europeans but also of the natives of North America and the wider "Old World" beyond Europe. According to Wirth, these Atlanteans worshipped a single deity whose aspect changed with the seasons and its son, the Heilsbringer. In their religion, priestesses played a key role. Wirth thought that both the Jewish and the Christian faith were perversions of this original religion. He considered himself a symbologist and thought the Germanic people to be direct descendants of these inhabitants of Atlantis.

-- Herman Wirth, by Wikipedia
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

Postby admin » Sat Jun 13, 2020 11:14 am

Part 2 of 2

... the designer and occultist Wilhelm Landig,...

The Landig Group was an occultist and neo-völkisch group formed in 1950, that first gathered for discussions at the studio of the designer Wilhelm Landig in Vienna's 5th district of Margareten, in Austria. The circle's most prominent and influential members were Wilhelm Landig (1909–1997), Erich Halik (Claude Schweighardt) and Rudolf J. Mund (1920–1985). The circle has also been referred to as the Landig Circle, Vienna Group and Vienna Lodge.

Landig was the founder of the group, which has since inspired decades of völkisch mysticism. He and his group revived the ariosophical, Ario [Aryo]-Germanic mythology of Thule, the supposed polar homeland of the ancient Aryans.

Landig "coined the term Black Sun [a Nazi symbol, a type of sun wheel employed in a post-Nazi Germany context by neo-Nazis and some occult subcultures, such as Satanism], a substitute Swastika [and/or Fylfot ] and mystical source of energy capable of regenerating the Aryan race." Landig, through his circle, popularized esoteric ideas current among the pre-Nazi völkisch movement and the SS relating to Atlantis, the World Ice Theory, pre-historic floods and secret racial doctrines from Tibet.

Landig and other occult-fascist propagandists have circulated wild stories about German Nazi colonies that live and work in secret installations beneath the polar ice caps, where they developed flying saucers [see Nazi UFOs] and miracle weapons (Die Glocke) after the demise of the Third Reich. Including the theory that flying saucers were Nazi secret weapons launched from an underground base in Antarctica, from which the Nazis hoped to conquer the world.

The focus of the group’s discussions was a secret center in the Arctic known as the Blue Island, which could serve as a source point for a renaissance of traditional life. This idea was taken from Julius Evola, whose Revolt Against the Modern World became the bible of the Landig group.

More so, or at least equally as important to the group as Evola's book, the Vienna Group hungrily devoured the ideas and books of Herman Wirth.

Landig was a former SS member who revived the ariosophical mythology of Thule. He was born on 20 December 1909. He wrote the Thule trilogy Götzen gegen Thule (1971), Wolfszeit um Thule (1980) and Rebellen für Thule – Das Erbe von Atlantis (1991). He inspired the idea of the Black Sun, a substitute swastika and mythical source of energy, which was launched in the 1991 novel Die Schwarze Sonne von Tashi Lhunpo by ghostwriter Russell McCloud.

It has been shown that a younger generation continued the development of the circle's ideas from the 1980s on. This younger generation consisted of members of the German/Austrian Tempelhofgesellschaft.

-- Landig Group, by Wikipedia


... the poet Ezra Pound, and the Traditionalist thinker Julius Evola.[11] He established friendships with a number of individuals involved in the old Nazi movement, including Léon Degrelle,...

Léon Joseph Marie Ignace Degrelle (French: [dəgʁɛl]; 15 June 1906 – 31 March 1994)[1] was a Belgian politician and one of the most important Nazi collaborators and Holocaust denialists from Belgium. Degrelle rose to prominence in the 1930s as the leader of the Catholic authoritarian Rexist Party in Belgium. During the German occupation in World War II, he enlisted in the German army and fought in the Walloon Legion on the Eastern Front. After the collapse of the Nazi regime, Degrelle went into exile in Francoist Spain where he remained a prominent figure in neo-Nazi politics. He died 50 years after being sentenced to death and losing his Belgian nationality for collaboration in 1944.

After studying at a Jesuit college and attempting to get a degree in law and political sciences from the Catholic University of Leuven, but never graduating, Degrelle worked as a journalist for the conservative Roman Catholic periodical Christus Rex.... He led a radical group inside the Catholic Party, based on the Éditions de Rex publishing house....

Degrelle's actions inside the Catholic Party saw him come into opposition with the mainstream of the same party, many of whom were monarchist conservatives or centrists. The Rexist group, including the likes of Jean Denis, separated itself from the Catholic Party in 1935, after a meeting in Kortrijk. The newly formed party was heavily influenced by Fascism and Corporatism (but also included several elements interested solely in Nationalism or Ultramontanism); it had a vision of social equality that drew comparisons with Marxism but was staunchly anti-communist (anti-bolshevik)....

In 1936, Degrelle met Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, both of them providing Rexism with funds (2 million lire and 100,000 marks) and ideological support.... The party progressively added Nazi-inspired Antisemitism to its agenda, and soon established contacts with fascist movements around Europe. Degrelle notably met with Falange leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera and the Iron Guard's Corneliu Zelea Codreanu....

When the war began, Degrelle approved of King Leopold III's policy of neutrality. After the Germans invaded Belgium on 10 May 1940, the Rexist Party split over the matter of resistance. He was arrested as a suspected collaborator and evacuated to France. Unlike other Belgian deportees, Degrelle was spared in the Massacre of Abbeville and instead sent into a French concentration camp. He was later released when the occupation began.

Degrelle returned to Belgium and proclaimed reconstructed Rexism to be in close union with Nazism—in marked contrast with the small group of former Rexists (such as Théo Simon and Lucien Mayer) who had begun fighting against the Nazi occupiers from the underground. In August, Degrelle started contributing to a Nazi news source, Le Pays Réel (a reference to Charles Maurras). Degrelle joined the Walloon legion of the Wehrmacht, which was raised in August 1941, to fight against the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front.... Lacking any previous military service, Degrelle joined as a private and was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class in March 1942. He quickly rose through the ranks, becoming a lieutenant in May 1942, and received the Iron Cross First Class the same month. ... The Walloons were transferred from the Wehrmacht to the Waffen-SS in June 1943, becoming the Sturmbrigade Wallonien and served on the Eastern Front....

After being wounded at Cherkasy in 1943, Degrelle continued to climb the SS hierarchy after the inclusion of Walloons in the Waffen-SS....

For his actions at Korsun, Degrelle was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer (major). He was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross (Ritterkreuz) by Hitler in February 1944. Degrelle later claimed Hitler told him, "You are truly unique in history. You are a political leader who fights like a soldier. If I had a son, I would want him to be like you."

Six months later Degrelle was awarded the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, as were seven other non-Germans....

On 8 July 1944 Degrelle's brother Édouard, a pharmacist, was killed in Degrelle's hometown of Bouillon by Belgian resistance fighters. Shortly afterwards, a Rexist hit squad executed pharmacist Henri Charles. A few days later, three civilian hostages were executed, apparently on Degrelle's orders, as all three were known to be his political enemies.

He commanded Sturmbrigade Wallonien from 18 September 1944 to 8 May 1945. He led the unit in the defense of Estonia against the Soviets. He was promoted to SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) in the early months of 1945.

Degrelle was promoted to SS-Standartenführer (colonel) on 20 April 1945. On 1 May 1945, Degrelle was promoted by SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler to Brigadeführer (brigadier general). This promotion, however, was extralegal due to Himmler having been removed from office on Hitler's orders on 28 April....

With the final surrender of Berlin on 2 May 1945, Degrelle was desperate to avoid Russian captivity and ordered as many of his worn-out veterans as possible to make for the Baltic port of Lübeck to surrender to the British.Degrelle himself fled first to Denmark and then Norway, where he commandeered a Heinkel He 111 aircraft, allegedly provided by Albert Speer [Albert Speer served as the Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of World War II. A close ally of Adolf Hitler, he was convicted at the Nuremberg trials and sentenced to 20 years in prison.] After a 1,500-mile (2,400 km) flight over portions of Allied-occupied Europe, he crash-landed on the beach at San Sebastian in northern Spain, but was gravely injured and hospitalized for over a year. Several attempts were made to bring Degrelle to justice, including an attempt to kidnap him, but they all failed.

In 1954, in order to prevent extradition to Belgium, Spain granted him Spanish citizenship under the name José León Ramírez Reina after being adopted by an older Spanish woman, and the Falange [the sole legal party of the Francoist regime in Spain] assigned him the leadership of a construction firm that benefited from state contracts, including with the U.S. government to build military airfields in Spain. Meanwhile, friends scoured Europe for his children. In time, all were found and spirited to Spain.

While in Francoist Spain, Degrelle maintained a high standard of living and frequently appeared in public and private meetings in a white uniform featuring his German decorations, while expressing his pride over his close contacts and "thinking bond" with Adolf Hitler. He continued to live undisturbed when Spain transitioned to democracy after the death of Franco, and continued publishing polemics, voicing his support for the political far right. He became active in the Neo-Nazi Círculo Español de Amigos de Europa (Cedade) and ran its printing press in Barcelona, where he published a large portion of his writings, including an Open Letter to Pope John Paul II on the topic of the Auschwitz concentration camp, asking the Pope not to go.

His repeated statements on the topic of Nazi genocide brought Degrelle to trial with Violeta Friedman, a Romanian-born survivor of the camps. Although lower courts were initially favourable to Degrelle, the Supreme Court of Spain decided he had offended the memory of the victims, both Jews and non-Jews, and sentenced him to pay a substantial fine. Asked if he had any regrets about the war, his reply was "Only that we lost!"

-- Léon Degrelle, by Wikipedia


...Otto Skorzeny,...

Otto Skorzeny (12 June 1908 – 5 July 1975) was an Austrian-born SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) in the Waffen-SS during World War II. During the war, he was involved in several operations, including the removal from power of Hungarian Regent Miklós Horthy and the Gran Sasso raid which rescued Benito Mussolini from captivity. Skorzeny led Operation Greif in which German soldiers infiltrated Allied lines by using their opponents' uniforms, equipment, language and customs. He was charged for that at the Dachau Military Tribunal with breaching the 1907 Hague Convention, but was acquitted after a former British SOE agent F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas testified that he and his operatives had worn German uniforms behind enemy lines.

Skorzeny escaped from an internment camp in 1948, hiding out on a Bavarian farm for 18 months and spent time in Paris and Salzburg before eventually settling in Francoist Spain. In 1953 he became a military advisor to Egyptian President Mohammed Naguib and recruited a staff of former SS and Wehrmacht officers to train the Egyptian Army, staying on to advise President Gamal Abdel Nasser. He spent time in Argentina, where he acted as an advisor to President Juan Perón and as a bodyguard for Eva Perón. In 1962, Skorzeny was allegedly recruited by the Mossad and conducted operations for the agency.

-- Otto Skorzeny, by Wikipedia


... Hans-Ulrich Rudel,...

Hans-Ulrich Rudel (2 July 1916 – 18 December 1982) was a German ground-attack pilot during World War II. Rudel was the most decorated German serviceman of World War II, being the sole recipient of the Knight's Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds in January 1945. Post-war, he was a prominent neo-Nazi activist in Latin America and West Germany....

Rudel surrendered to US forces on 8 May 1945 and emigrated to Argentina in 1948. A committed and unrepentant National Socialist, he founded the "Kameradenwerk", a relief organization for Nazi refugees that helped fugitives escape to Latin America and the Middle East. Together with Willem Sassen, Rudel helped shelter Josef Mengele, the notorious former SS doctor at Auschwitz. He worked as an arms dealer and a military advisor to the regimes of Juan Perón in Argentina, of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and of Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay. Due to these activities, he was placed under observation by the US Central Intelligence Agency.

In the West German federal election of 1953, Rudel, who had returned to West Germany, was the top candidate for the far-right German Reich Party but was not elected to the Bundestag. Following the Revolución Libertadora in 1955, the uprising that ended the second presidential term of Perón, Rudel moved to Paraguay, where he acted as a foreign representative for several German companies. In 1977, he became a spokesman for the German People's Union, a neo-Nazi political party founded by the extremist politician Gerhard Frey.

-- Hans-Ulrich Rudel, by Wikipedia


... Marc "Saint-Loup" Augier ...

Marc Augier (nom de plume: Saint-Loup) (19 March 1908 in Bordeaux – 16 December 1990 in Paris) was a French anti-capitalist, later turned into fascist, politician, writer and mountaineer....

Augier ... enlisted in the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism and served on the Eastern Front whilst also launching and editing the group's paper Le Combattant Européen. He served in both the LVF and the French Waffen SS as a war correspondent. He was also responsible for the French Waffen SS' official organ, Devenir ("To become" or "Becoming"). However Augier, who still supported economic socialism and hoped that Nazism would take seriously the 'socialism' part of its name, grew disillusioned by the distinct lack of anti-capitalism amongst the SS men with whom he served....

In 1945 he went underground and published Face Nord ("North Face") under the pseudonym M-A de Saint-Loup to pay for his passage to Argentina. The book had some success in France. In Argentina he acted as a technical adviser to Juan Perón and also enlisted in the Argentine Army, attaining the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He also acted as Eva Peron's ski instructor.

He was pardoned and returned to France in 1953....

Saint-Loup continued to work as an author and journalist, writing several books about the LVF (Les Volontaires; "The Volunteers") and both the French (Les Hérétiques; "The Heretics", Les Nostalgiques; "The Nostalgics") and Belgian Waffen SS (Les SS de la Toison d'or; "The SS of the Golden Fleece"). His writing was marked by a pursuit of adventure, the desire to surpass the self and an antipathy to Christian philosophy. He was an apologist for the foreign SS volunteers with whom he had served. He published several works about regionalist movements and about man's struggle to survive in wild and savage environments. He was also fascinated by cars and motorised transport and wrote biographies of Louis Renault and Marius Berliet. His last novel, La République du Mont-Blanc ("The Republic of Mont-Blanc"), was about the survival of a small Savoyard community that took refuge on the mountain to escape intermixing and decadence.

Saint-Loup influenced certain pagan and far-right authors such as Pierre Vial and Jean Mabire...

He was featured heavily in France's far right journals until his death.

-- Marc Augier [Saint Loup], by Wikipedia


... and Hanna Reitsch.[11]

Hanna Reitsch (29 March 1912 – 24 August 1979) was a German aviator and test pilot. During the Nazi era, she and Melitta von Stauffenberg flight tested many of the regime's new aircraft.

She set more than 40 flight altitude records and women's endurance records in gliding and unpowered flight, before and after World War II. In the 1960s, she was sponsored by the West German foreign office as a technical adviser in Ghana and elsewhere, and founded a gliding school in Ghana, where she worked for Kwame Nkrumah....

On 28 February 1944, she presented the idea of Operation Suicide to Hitler at Berchtesgaden, which "would require men who were ready to sacrifice themselves in the conviction that only by this means could their country be saved." Although Hitler "did not consider the war situation sufficiently serious to warrant them...and...this was not the right psychological moment", he gave his approval. The project was assigned to Gen. Günther Korten. There were about seventy volunteers who enrolled in the Suicide Group as pilots for the human glider-bomb. By April 1944, Reitsch and Heinz Kensche finished tests of the Me 328, carried aloft by a Dornier Do 217. By then, she was approached by SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny, a founding member of the SS-Selbstopferkommando Leonidas (Leonidas Squadron). They adapted the V-1 flying bomb into the Fieseler Fi 103R Reichenberg including a two-seater and a single-seater with and without the mechanisms to land. The plan was never implemented operationally, "the decisive moment had been missed."...

In October 1944, she was shown a booklet Peter Riedel had obtained while in the German Embassy in Stockholm, concerning the gas chambers. She claims she believed it to be enemy propaganda, but agreed to inform Heinrich Himmler about it. Himmler asked her if she believed it, and she replied, "No, of course not. But you must do something to counter it. You can't let them shoulder this onto Germany." "You are right," Himmler replied.

During the last days of the war, Hitler dismissed Hermann Göring as head of the Luftwaffe and appointed Reitsch's lover, von Greim, to replace him. Von Greim and Reitsch flew from Gatow Airport into embattled Berlin to meet Hitler in the Führerbunker, arriving on 26 April as the Red Army troops were already in the central area of Berlin. Reitsch landed on an improvised airstrip in the Tiergarten near the Brandenburg Gate. Hitler gave Reitsch two capsules of poison for herself and von Greim. She accepted the capsule.

During the evening of 28 April, Reitsch flew von Greim out of Berlin in an Arado Ar 96 from the same improvised airstrip. This was the last plane out of Berlin. Von Greim was ordered to get the Luftwaffe to attack the Soviet forces that had just reached Potsdamer Platz and to make sure Heinrich Himmler was punished for his treachery in making unauthorised contact with the Western Allies so as to surrender. Troops of the Soviet 3rd Shock Army, which was fighting its way through the Tiergarten from the north, tried to shoot the plane down fearing that Hitler was escaping in it, but it took off successfully.

Reitsch was soon captured along with von Greim and the two were interviewed together by U.S. military intelligence officers. When asked about being ordered to leave the Führerbunker on 28 April 1945, Reitsch and von Greim reportedly repeated the same answer: "It was the blackest day when we could not die at our Führer's side." Reitsch also said: "We should all kneel down in reverence and prayer before the altar of the Fatherland." When the interviewers asked what she meant by "Altar of the Fatherland" she answered, "Why, the Führer's bunker in Berlin ..." She was held for eighteen months. Von Greim killed himself on 24 May 1945.

Evacuated from Silesia ahead of the Soviet troops, Reitsch's family took refuge in Salzburg. During the night of 3 May 1945, after hearing a rumour that all refugees were to be taken back to their original homes in the Soviet occupation zone, Reitsch's father shot and killed her mother and sister and her sister's three children before killing himself.

After her release Reitsch settled in Frankfurt am Main. After the war, German citizens were barred from flying powered aircraft, but within a few years gliding was allowed, which she took up again. In 1952, Reitsch won a bronze medal in the World Gliding Championships in Spain; she was the first woman to compete, and in 1955 she became German champion. She continued to break records, including the women's altitude record (6,848 m (22,467 ft)) in 1957 and her first diamond of the Gold-C badge....

In 1959, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru invited Reitsch, who spoke fluent English, to start a gliding centre, and she flew with him over New Delhi.

In 1961, United States President John F. Kennedy invited her to the White House.

From 1962 to 1966, she lived in Ghana. The then Ghanaian President, Kwame Nkrumah invited Reitsch to Ghana after reading of her work in India. At Afienya she founded the first black African national gliding school, working closely with the government and the armed forces. The West German government supported her as technical adviser.... The project was evidently of great importance to Nkrumah and has been interpreted as part of a "modernist" development ideology.

Reitsch's attitudes to race underwent a change. "Earlier in my life, it would never have occurred to me to treat a black person as a friend or partner ..." She now experienced guilt at her earlier "presumptuousness and arrogance". She became close to Nkrumah. The details of their relationship are now unclear due to the destruction of documents, but some surviving letters are intimate in tone....

Reitsch was interviewed and photographed several times in the 1970s, towards the end of her life, by Jewish-American photo-journalist Ron Laytner. In her closing remarks she is quoted as saying:

And what have we now in Germany? A country of bankers and car-makers. Even our great army has gone soft. Soldiers wear beards and question orders. I am not ashamed to say I believed in National Socialism. I still wear the Iron Cross with diamonds Hitler gave me. But today in all of Germany you can't find a single person who voted Adolf Hitler into power ... Many Germans feel guilty about the war. But they don't explain the real guilt we share – that we lost.

-- Hanna Reitsch, by Wikipedia


He also discussed issues with the ancient astronaut proponent Robert Charroux.[11]

Robert Charroux was the best-known pen-name of Robert Joseph Grugeau (April 7, 1909 – June 24, 1978). He was a French author known for his writings on the ancient astronaut theme....

Charroux was a pioneer of the theory of ancient astronauts, publishing at least six non-fiction works in this genre in the last decade of his life, including One Hundred Thousand Years of Man's Unknown History (1963, 1970), Forgotten Worlds (1973), Masters of the World (1974), The Gods Unknown (1964, 1974) and Legacy of the Gods (1965, 1974)....

Some see his works as examples of Celticism. Celticism, similar to Nordicism, was a popular Nationalistic movement in France and Celtic countries in the early 20th century. He suggested in his book Lost Worlds: Scientific Secrets of the Ancients, that the Mayans and ancient Peruvians were ancient Celtic migrants. According to Charroux, the candle stick of the Andes and the Nasca Lines were created by a pre-Celtic civilization, perhaps the same as those who created the Long Man of Wilmington of Sussex in England. He also related the white skinned Gods mentioned in the Popul Vuh [a text recounting the mythology and history of the Kʼicheʼ people, one of the Maya peoples, who inhabit the Guatemalan Highlands, Mexican Chiapas, Campeche and Quintana Roo states, as well as in Belize] to ancient Celts from Hyperborea.

Writing in his book Lost Worlds Charroux rejected evolution, instead he argued for human devolution. Charroux claimed that man is regressing and was superior in the past; he claimed that "Atlantis and Mu are not dreams of spiritualists, but realities of a mysterious era". He further explained that the Atlantans and Hyperboreans were the ancestors of modern humans, and the first humans on earth were originally extraterrestrial.

Unlike most ancient astronaut writers, Charroux took a large interest in racialism. According to Charroux, Hyperborea was situated between Iceland and Greenland and was the home of a Nordic White race with blonde hair and blue eyes. Charroux claimed that this race was extraterrestrial in origin and had originally come from a cold planet situated far from the sun. Charroux also claimed that the White race of the Hyperboreans and their ancestors the Celts had dominated the whole world in the ancient past. Some of these beliefs have influenced Esoteric Nazism such as the work of Miguel Serrano.

-- Robert Charroux, by Wikipedia


"Ancient astronauts" (or "ancient aliens") refers to the pseudoscientific idea that intelligent extraterrestrial beings visited Earth and made contact with humans in antiquity and prehistoric times. Proponents suggest that this contact influenced the development of modern cultures, technologies, religions, and human biology. A common position is that deities from most, if not all, religions are extraterrestrial in origin, and that advanced technologies brought to Earth by ancient astronauts were interpreted as evidence of divine status by early humans....

Proponents of the ancient astronaut hypothesis often maintain that humans are either descendants or creations of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) who landed on Earth thousands of years ago. An associated idea is that humans evolved independently, but that much of human knowledge, religion, and culture came from extraterrestrial visitors in ancient times, in that ancient astronauts acted as a "mother culture". Some ancient astronaut proponents also believe that travelers from outer space, referred to as "astronauts" (or "spacemen") built many of the structures on Earth (such as Egyptian pyramids and the Moai stone heads of Easter Island) or aided humans in building them.

Various terms are used to reference claims about ancient astronauts, such as ancient aliens, ancient ufonauts, ancient space pilots, paleocontact, astronaut- or alien gods, or paleo- or Bible-SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence)....

Proponents argue that the evidence for ancient astronauts comes from documentary gaps in historical and archaeological records, and they also maintain that absent or incomplete explanations of historical or archaeological data point to the existence of ancient astronauts. The evidence is argued to include archaeological artifacts that they deem anachronistic, or beyond the accepted technical capabilities of the historical cultures with which they are associated. These are sometimes referred to as "out-of-place artifacts"; and include artwork and legends which are interpreted in a modern sense as depicting extraterrestrial contact or technologies.

-- Ancient astronauts, by Wikipedia


In the 1970 Chilean presidential election, the Marxist Salvador Allende was elected president. Later that year, Serrano was dropped from the country's diplomatic service.[12] Rather than returning to Chile, he moved to Switzerland, renting an apartment in the Casa Camuzzi—where Hesse had lived from 1912 to 1931—at Montagnola in the Swiss Ticino.[10]

Later life: 1973–2009

The loss of his diplomatic position, coupled with the establishment of a Marxist government in Chile, led Serrano to take a revived interest in Nazism.[10] He began reading a number of recently published books that purported to identify links between Nazism and occultism.[10] In 1973, his book El/Ella: Book of Magic Love was published.[10] After Allende was ousted in a September 1973 coup and a right-wing military regime under Augusto Pinochet took power, Serrano returned to Chile. He nevertheless found that the Pinochet administration was not interested in his neo-Nazi and Esoteric Hitlerist ideas.[11] In 1980, his book Nos: A Book of the Resurrection was published, a form of autobiography influenced by Jungian psychology.[10] He also produced a trio of books that came to be known as his "Hitler Trilogy": El Cordón Dorado: Hitlerismo Esotérico (1978), Adolf Hitler, el Ultimo Avatãra (1984), and Manú: "Por el hombre que vendra" (1991).[13]

He increasingly associated with old Nazis living in Chile as well as with their neo-Nazi sympathisers.[11] In May 1984 he attended the funeral of Walter Rauff—a member of the Waffen SS who had played a role in organising the early stages of the Holocaust and who had fled to Chile after the Second World War—and there gave the Nazi salute.[11] In 1986 he published a political manifesto for Nazism in the Southern Cone of South America.[14] He began organising annual celebrations of Hitler's birthday at a rural retreat in Chile.[15] In September 1993, he led a neo-Nazi rally in Santiago—dressed in what had become his trademark black leather coat—in honor of the Nazi Rudolf Hess and the Nacistas killed following their 1938 coup attempt.[14] As well as playing a role in organising the Chilean neo-Nazi movement, Serrano maintained correspondences with neo-Nazis elsewhere in the world, such as the American Matt Koehl.[14]

Serrano was the subject of an extensive interview in the Greek far-right magazine TO ANTIΔOTO. Here, he sought to engage a younger audience by contrasting his millennial vision of Nazism with his perception of the corruption of modern liberalism.[14] He was also the subject of a feature in The Flaming Sword, a magazine issued by the Black Order, a neo-Nazi Satanist group established by the New Zealander Kerry Bolton.[16] Bolton had also written his own study of Serrano's Esoteric Hitlerism,[17] and the Black Order's occult framework was influenced by Serrano's ideas.[18] Despite the interest that Nazi Satanists took in Serrano's work, he was critical of attempts to combine Satanism with Nazism, in 2001 stating that individuals who did so "will only damage our sacred fight with all the kookiness from California, like Satanism". He added that "Many Satanists do not know that they are manipulated, psychotronically, in fact hypnotized, when not infiltrated by the CIA, Mossad and other such secret organisations."[19]

By the early 1990s, Serrano's Esoteric Hitlerist ideas were spreading among modern Pagans,[20] gaining particular popularity among far-right members of the Pagan religion of Heathenry in the United States.[21] The American Heathen Katja Lane of the Wotansvolk group secured the rights to publish English translations of Serrano's work,[22] with Wotansvolk becoming the main promoter of Serrano's writings in the Anglophone world through their 14 Word Press.[23] One of the prominent far-right Heathens to be influenced by Serrano's ideas was Jost Turner.[24] Another American occultist to cite an influence from Serrano's ideas was Michael Moynihan, who also cited having been influenced by Evola, Muammar Gaddafi, Michael Bakunin, and James Mason.[25]

In 1994 Serrano, a close friend of Degrelle, wrote a book dedicated to him, Nuestro Honor Se Llama Lealtad.[26]

Serrano had three children with this first wife.[27]

Serrano died on 28 February 2009[28][29][30][31][27][32][2] after suffering a stroke in his apartment in the Santa Lucía Hill sector of the capital, Santiago.[33] During his funeral at the General Cemetery, it was Irene Klatt Getta's crypt at which his coffin and the crowd of more than 100 stopped before carrying on.[27]

Personal life

At the age of 25 Serrano married Carmen Rosselot Bordeau on 11 September 1942 in Santiago.[34][35]

In 1943 his first son, José Miguel Diego, was born.[36][37][38] He is also known as José Miguel Serrano Rosselot[35] and writes as a journalist for La Tercera newspaper.[39][40][41][42]

In 1944 his daughter Carmen was born.[36] She is also known as Carmen Serrano Rosselot.[43]

In 1948 his third child, a son, Cristián Alvaro, is born.[44] He is also known as Cristián Serrano Rosselot.[45]

In 1951 he met Irene Klatt Getta in Santiago, who played a fundamental role in his life and to whom he dedicates a large part of his work. In 1952 she died. Of her he said, "Desde ese día yo destruí todo, cualquier posibilidad de otro amor igual, hasta mi propio matrimonio. Nunca más he podido amar a nadie así. Solo he amado a Irene." ("From that day I destroyed everything, any possibility of another equal love, even my own marriage. I have never been able to love anyone like that again. I only loved Irene.") [46][44] Andrea Sierra wrote in El Mercurio that he called her "Allouine" and was the "only one – he said – who he really loved". During his funeral at the General Cemetery it was her crypt that his coffin stopped at before carrying on.[27]

In 1985 Carmen Rosselot Bordeau died.[47]

According to Andrea Sierra of the Chilean newspaper, El Mercurio, Rosario Duarte was his first wife.[27] Sierra makes no mention of Carmen Rosselot Bordeau, while the official Serrano website makes no mention of Rosario Duarte, only a marriage to Carmen Rosselot Bordeau and then a second to María Isabel Pérez Quintela.

In 2000, Serrano married his second wife, María Isabel Pérez Quintela (also known as Sabela P. Quintela, now his literary executor) in Valparaíso.[48][27][49][33][38][50][51] After his death, Quintela inherited two apartments from her late husband, Don Miguel in Santa Lucía Street in Santiago, in front of the Cerro: Santa Lucia 282, apartment 71, and Santa Lucia 382, 6 "C".[49] Sebela first met Serrano in Spain in 1989. Sabela came to live in Chile in 1994 and in those years they shared in the house of Valparaiso located at Avenida Alemania 5558.[33]

Reception and legacy

The historian of religion Mattias Gardell described Serrano as "one of the most important occult fascist ideologues in the Spanish-speaking world".[21] The historian of religion Arthur Versluis noted that Serrano was "the most important figure" in esoteric Hitlerism after Savitri Devi.[52]

According to Goodrick-Clarke, Serrano's "mystical Nazism" was "a major example of the Thulean mythology's successful migration to South America in the post-war period".[53] Goodrick-Clarke thought it "likely that old Nazis welcome[d] Serrano's enthusiasm and unswerving loyalty to their hero, Adolf Hitler", even if they found the Esoteric Hitlerist mythology that he promoted to be farfetched. Conversely, Goodrick-Clarke thought, for younger neo-Nazis, "a coloring of pop mythology, Hinduism, and extraterrestrial Aryan gods adds sensational appeal to the powerful myths of elitism, planetary destiny and the cosmic conspiracy of the Jews."[14]

The historian Rafael Videla Eissman proposed that a plaque commemorating Serrano be erected on the western side of the Cerro Santa Lucía, although in June 2014 the municipality of Santiago rejected the idea.[54] In February 2016, the newspaper La Segunda published an interview with Serrano's grandson, Sebastián Araya, in which he discussed his relationship with his grandfather.[55] In December 2017, the author and journalist Gonzalo León published a fictionalized novelisation of Serrano's life.[56]

Ideas

See also: Nazism in Chile

Serrano termed his philosophy Esoteric Hitlerism, which he has described as a new religious faith "able to change the materialistic man of today into a new idealistic hero", and also as "much more than a religion: It is a way to transmute a hero into God."[57]

In 1984 he published his 643-page tome, Adolf Hitler, el Último Avatãra (Adolf Hitler: The Last Avatar), which is dedicated "To the glory of the Führer, Adolf Hitler". In this arcane work Serrano unfolds his ultimate philosophical testament through elaborate esoteric and mythological symbolism.[10] He insists that there has been a vast historical conspiracy to conceal the origins of evolved humankind. Serrano's epic vista opens with extragalactic beings who founded the First Hyperborea, a terrestrial but nonphysical realm which was neither geographically limited nor bound by the circles of reincarnation. The Hyperboreans were asexual and reproduced through "plasmic emanations" from their ethereal bodies; the Vril power was theirs to command, the light of the Black Sun coursed through their veins and they saw with the Third eye. Serrano contends that the last documents relating to them were destroyed along with the Alexandrian Library, and that latterly these beings have been misunderstood as extraterrestrials arriving in spaceships or UFOs. However, the First Hyperborea was immaterial and altogether outside our mechanistic universe.[58]

The latter is under the jurisdiction of the Demiurge, an inferior godlet whose realm is the physical planet earth. The Demiurge had created a bestial imitation of humanity in the form of proto-human "robots" like Neanderthal Man, and intentionally consigned his creatures to an endless cycle of involuntary reincarnation on the earthly plane to no higher purpose. The Hyperboreans recoiled in horror from this entrapment within the Demiurge's cycles. They themselves take the devayana, the Way of the Gods, at death and return to the earth (as Bodhisattvas) only if they are willing.[58]

Determined upon a heroic war to reclaim the Demiurge's deteriorating world, the Hyperboreans clothed themselves in material bodies and descended on to the Second Hyperborea, a ring-shaped continent around the North Pole. During this Golden Age or Satya Yuga, they magnanimously instructed the Demiurge's creations (the Black, Yellow and Red races native to the planet) and began to raise them above their animal condition.[59] Then disaster struck; some of the Hyperboreans rebelled and intermingled their blood with the creatures of the Demiurge, and through this transgression Paradise was lost. Serrano refers to Genesis 6.4: "the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them". By diluting the divine blood, the primordial miscegenation accelerated the process of material decay. This was reflected in outward catastrophes and the North and South Poles reversed positions as a result of the fall of a comet or moon. The polar continent disappeared beneath the deluge and Hyperborea became invisible again.[59] The Hyperboreans themselves survived, some taking refuge at the South Pole. Serrano regards the mysterious appearance of the fine and artistic Cro-Magnon Man in Europe as evidence of Hyperboreans driven southward by the Ice Age.[59] In the then-fertile Gobi Desert, another group of exiled Hyperboreans established a fantastic civilization.[citation needed]

The world thus becomes the combat zone between the dwindling Hyperboreans and the Demiurge and his forces of entropy.[citation needed] But Serrano claims that the Golden Age can be reattained if the Hyperboreans' descendants, the Aryans, consciously repurify their blood to restore the divine blood-memory:[60]

"There is nothing more mysterious than blood. Paracelsus considered it a condensation of light. I believe that the Aryan, Hyperborean blood is that – but not the light of the Golden Sun, not of a galactic sun, but of the light of the Black Sun, of the Green Ray."[61]


Written works

Year / Book / Publisher, ISBN / Notes

1938 / Antología del Verdadero Cuento en Chile / Santiago de Chile, Talleres "Gutenberg". / Selections, prologue, and notes by Serrano. Short stories by: Pedro Carrillo, Braulio Arenas, Adrián Jiménez, Juan Tejeda, Eduardo Anguita, Teófilo Cid, Juan Emar, Carlos Droguett, Anuar Atías, Miguel Serrano, and Héctor Barreto.

1948 / La Antártica y otros Mitos [The Antarctic and other myths] / First edition (Spanish):
1948 (Santiago de Chile). 52 pages. Other editions: Excalibur, XIV (winter 1988). The New Age Santiago, 2004. ISBN 956-299-394-9. . Speech that was delivered by Miguel Serrano in 1948 after his participation in the Second Chilean Antarctic Expedition (1947–48). The myth: Antarctica is inhabited by unknown beings.[62]

1950 / Ni por mar ni por tierra… (historia de una generación) [Neither by land nor by sea... (story of a generation)] / First edition (Spanish): 1950 (Nascimento, Santiago de Chile). 400 pages. Other editions: EB Books. Santiago, 2017. ISBN 978-956-9436-09-3. Kier. Buenos Aires, 1979 (abbreviated). Trilogy of the search in the outside world. Nascimento Santiago, 1974 (abbreviated). / First great work of the author in which he covers the history of his generation, his own biography and the interpretation of Chile according to its landscape, unique on the planet. This book had an enormous influence on his own generation (that of the 38th) and in the following, being considered extraordinary by the critics and polemicizing about him for several years.[63]

1957 / Quién llama en los Hielos [Invitation to the icefields] / Santiago, Chile, Editorial Nascimento; Barcelona: Planeta, [1974] ISBN 84-320-5292-2 / --

1960 / Los misterios [The Mysteries] / First edition (Spanish): 1960 (New Delhi). 20 pages. Other editions: Be-uve-drais. Santiago, 2006 (Spanish). ISBN 956-7878-40-4. EB Books. Santiago, 2016 (Spanish). ISBN 978-956-9436-07-9. Excalibur, vol. XVII (autumn 1989) (Spanish). New Delhi, 1960 (English). / In truth it is a mystery; the most secret and unknown work of the author, despite having been translated into English and published in India in a very exclusive edition: with handmade paper in Nepal, kept in a box lined with raw silk from Gandhi's workshops. illustrated by the Chilean painter Julio Escámez. It is a poetic account of the initiation of magical love in its most dramatic stage: the death of the beloved.[64]

1960 / Las visitas de la Reina de Saba. Translated as The Visits of the Queen of Sheba, foreword by C. G. Jung / [Santiago de Chile] Nascimento; Bombay, New York: Asia Pub. House; New York: Harper & Row [1973, c1972], ISBN 0-06-090315-5; London, Boston: Routledge and K. Paul [1972], 2nd ed., ISBN 0-7100-7341-0 & ISBN 0-7100-7399-2 (pbk.) / One of the main works of Miguel Serrano. Translated and published in many languages, it also has a prologue written by CG Jung, this being the only time that the famous professor presented a purely literary work. A magical story, "a dream within other dreams", as he described it, where mythical and archetypal figures such as King Solomon, Melchizedek and the Queen of Sheba appear in an environment of millennia old.

1963 / La Serpiente del Paraíso. Translated as The Serpent of Paradise: The Story of an Indian Pilgrimage / Santiago, Chile, Editorial Nascimento; London: Rider [1963]; New York: Harper & Row [1st American ed., 1972] ISBN 0-06-090284-1; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul [Revised ed., 1974], ISBN 0-7100-7784-X & ISBN 0-7100-7785-8 / Book in which the author recounts his experience in India, his contacts with swamis and gurus and his pilgrimage in the Himalayas. It covers the period (between the 50s and 60s of the 20th century) during which Miguel Serrano was Chile's ambassador to that country. It is a search and amazing stories in an India full of symbolism with passages of extraordinary beauty as the child "lost in the temple", the deep analysis of the sculptures of Khajuraho or his encounters with Krishnamurti.[65]

1965 / El círculo hermético, de Hesse a Jung. Translated as C. G. Jung and Hermann Hesse: A Record of Two Friendships, and alternatively as Jung and Hesse: A Record of Two Friendships / Santiago: Zig-Zag [1965]; New York: Schocken Books [1966]; London: Routledge & K. Paul [1966]; ISBN 0-8052-0858-5 / Story of the meetings, conversations and experiences with the writer Hermann Hesse and the professor CG Jung. This book has a unique value for the revelations that both great men and scholars made to the author. There are many editions in different languages and countries. It includes analyses and explanations (based on the deep and extensive knowledge of Hinduism by Miguel Serrano) about the characters Demian and Siddharta of Hesse, as well as about Jung's Self. There are transcripts of letters from both authors.[66][67]

1969 / The Ultimate Flower / New York: Schocken Books [1970, c1969]; London: Routledge & K. Paul [1969], ISBN 0-7100-6620-1 & ISBN 0-06-090285-X / --

1972 / El/Ella: Book of Magic Love / New York: Harper & Row, ISBN 0-06-013829-7; ISBN 0-7100-7762-9 / --

1974 / Trilogía de la Busqueda del Mundo Exterior / Santiago, Chile: Editorial Nascimento / Anthology of Ni por mar, ni por tierra, Quién llama en los hielos, and La serpiente del paraíso.

1978 / El Cordón Dorado: Hitlerismo Esotérico [The Golden Thread: Esoteric Hitlerism] / -- / Part one of his Hitler Trilogy

1980 / Nos, libro de la Resurección. Translated to Nos, Book of the Resurrection / Buenos Aires: Editorial Kier; London, Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul [1984], ISBN 0-7100-9828-6 / --

1984 / Adolf Hitler, el Último Avatãra [Adolf Hitler: The Last Avatar] / -- / Part two of his Hitler Trilogy

1986 / Nacionalsocialismo, Unica Solución para los Países de América del Sur / Santiago: Alfabeta; Bogotá: Editorial Solar, 2nd ed. [1987] / --

1986 / La Resurrección del Héroe: Año 97 de la era Hitleriana / Santiago: Alfabeta Impresores / --

1987 / Contra la Usura by Gottfried Feder; Serrano [contribuidor]. / Santiago, Chile: Alfabeta Impr. / Spanish translation of Manifest zur Brechung der Zinsknechtschaft des Geldes

1991 / MANÚ: "Por El Hombre Que Vendra" [Manu: For the Coming Man] / -- / Part three of his Hitler Trilogy

1992 / No Celebraremos la Muerte de los Dioses Blancos / -- / --

1994 / Nuestro Honor se Llama Lealtad / -- / --

1995 / Imitacion de la Verdad: La ciberpoliítica. Internet, realidad virtual, telepresencia / Santiago: Author / --

1996 / Memorias de Él y Yo vol. I, Aparición del "Yo" – Alejamiento de "Él" [Memories of Him and Me. Volume 1. Appearance of the "I", distancing from "him"] / Santiago: La Nueva Edad. First edition (Spanish): 1996 (The New Age, Santiago de Chile). 216 pages. ISBN 956-272-246-5. Other editions: Solar. Bogotá, 2001. ISBN 958-8136-15-6. / Autobiography – This first volume describes the childhood and youth of the author, who in his story seeks the roots of the childhood drama in the lineages and the land of a magical Chile, with its sacred mountains, to finally focus attention on his generation and finish with the tragic death of his friend the writer Héctor Barreto. The event that has given title to this work appears here related: the discovery of the "I", detached and independent of its "he", to be that it seems to know everything and that it would be thinking about the life of the author.[68]

1997 / Memorias de Él y Yo vol. II, Adolf Hitler y la Gran Guerra [Memories of Him and Me. Volume II. Adolf Hitler and the Great War] Santiago: La Nueva Edad. First edition (Spanish): 1997 (The New Age, Santiago de Chile). 312 pages ISBN 956-272-623-1. Other editions: Solar. Bogotá, 2001. ISBN 958-8136-16-4. / Autobiography – Coming from the socialist left, the author recounts his conversion to National Socialism (after the massacre of the Chilean Nazis that took place on 5 September 1938) and his performance during the Second World War supporting Adolf Hitler and Germany. He also talks about his expedition to Antarctica (1947–48) and his first trip to Europe (1951), when he met Hermann Hesse. This volume ends in dramatic form, being perhaps the most impressive of the four books of his Memoirs of him and me.[69]

1998 / Memorias de Él y Yo vol. III, Misión en los Transhimalaya [Memories of Him and Me. Volume 3. Mission in the Transhimalaya] Santiago: La Nueva Edad. Spanish, first edition. 312 pages. Editions The New Age (1998) ISBN 956-288-008-7 . Autobiography – Here is his mission in India and his search in the Himalayas of the original headquarters of the esoteric order to which he belonged, which supported Hitler and his revolution. Especially important is the story of the friendship with Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi (with the dramatic description of their funerals) and the Dalai Lama. There are also pages that refer especially to his friendship with Professor CG Jung, as well as countless other international personalities of those years.[70]

1999 / Memorias de Él y Yo vol. IV, El Regreso [Memories of Him and Me. Volume 4. The Return] Santiago: La Nueva Edad. First edition (Spanish): 1999 (The New Age, Santiago de Chile). 312 pages ISBN 956-288-290-X.
Other editions: Solar. Bogotá, 2001. ISBN 958-8136-8-0 Parameter error in {{ISBN}}: Invalid ISBN. / Autobiography – In this last volume of his Memoirs of him and me the author arrives until our days. It narrates his personal experience with Salvador Allende, with the junta of the Military Government and with Marshal Tito (whom he brought on an official visit to Chile during his diplomatic mission in Yugoslavia), in addition to his search in Austria for the roots of esoteric Hitlerism, together with his residence for ten years in Switzerland (in the house of Hermann Hesse) until his return to Chile, to make known the worldview that was re-updated in the heights of the Engadine, in the Alps. He also tells us of his unsuccessful attempt to colonize Melimoyu volcano, in the Chilean Patagonia (Mount antipode of the Kailas, in the Transhimalaya) and how he continued to fight until the end for the old ideals and to give the youth of Chile and the world a possibility of salvation on the eve of the final judgment of the Kaliyuga.[71]

2000 / Foreword to Temple of Wotan: Holy Book of the Aryan Tribes by Ron McVan / 14 Word Press, ISBN 0-9678123-3-X / Prólogos – "Wotan, el Señor de los Ejércitos" para Ron McVan, Temple of Wotan. Holy Book of the Aryan Tribes. Wotansvolk. St. Maries, 2000.[72]

2001 / Se Acabó Chile / -- / --

2003 / El hijo del viudo [The Son of the Widower] / Spanish, 2003: La Nueva Edad. Santiago de Chile. 72 páginas. ISBN 956-291-645-6. English, 2003: The New Age Santiago. ISBN 956-291-931-5. / In this work the author makes a synthesis of all his work through a detailed and profound analysis of esoteric Christianity, the esotericism of Islam and that of the Hitlerite SS.[73]

2003 / La entrega de la Patagonia mágica / -- / --

2005 / Hipocresía. La tortura en Chile / -- / --

2005 / MAYA, La Realidad Es Una Ilusión [MAYA, Reality is an Illusion] Spanish, 2005: La Nueva Edad. Santiago de Chile. 44 páginas. ISBN 956-299-554-2. English 2006: The New Age. Santiago. ISBN 956-310-264-9 / Maya is a Sanskrit word that means "illusion" and refers to the events of life, which would be illusory. Thus, in this work it is affirmed that the Germans of Nazi Germany achieved absolute perfection in duplication and that it is known that the Rudolf Hess murdered in Spandau prison was a double.[74]


See also

• Jacques de Mahieu

References

Footnotes


1. Quintela, EB Libros Sabela P. "MIGUEL SERRANO – EB Libros – Obra – Bibliografía".
2. Vida, Cronología, 2007–2009: Despedida, Official website
3. xvi feria del libro usado ya está abierta al público amante de la lectura, El Marino, 2 February 2008
4. Escritores María Cristina Menares, Rosa Cruchaga y Miguel Serrano fueron galardonados este año con el premio a la trayectoria., El Mostrador, 14 February 2008
5. Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 174.
6. Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 175.
7. Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 176.
8. Goodrick-Clarke 2002, pp. 176–177.
9. Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 177.
10. Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 178.
11. Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 190.
12. Goodrick-Clarke 2002, pp. 177–178.
13. Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 178; Gardell 2003, p. 185.
14. Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 191.
15. Goodrick-Clarke 2002, pp. 190–191.
16. Goodrick-Clarke 2002, pp. 191, 227.
17. Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 229.
18. Gardell 2003, p. 314.
19. Gardell 2003, p. 320.
20. Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 267.
21. Gardell 2003, p. 185.
22. Gardell 2003, p. 186.
23. Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 277.
24. Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 167; Gardell 2003, p. 183.
25. Gardell 2003, p. 303.
26. "Esoteric Hitlerist: An Interview With Miguel Serrano – Blacksun Sole Nero". blacksun-sole-nero.net.
27. Sierra, Andrea; Los tesoros que deja en Chile el último ideólogo del nazismo, El Mercurio, 8 March 2009
28. Familiares y camaradas despiden al Nazi de las letras Chilenas Archived 10 June 2018 at the Wayback Machine, La Nación, 2 March 2009
29. Muere el poeta nazi chileno Miguel Serrano a los 91 años, Soitu.es, 2 March 2009.
30. Fallece escritor y ex embajador Miguel Serrano, El Mercurio, 2 March 2009.
31. Obituarios: Miguel Serrano, Poeta del nazismo en Chile, Ramy Wurgaft, El Mundo, 9 March 2009.
32. Robles, Leonardo; El poeta nazi emprendió el viaje al infinito, El Mercurio de Valparaíso, 3 March 2009
33. García, Javier; Un polémico maestro: el legado de Miguel Serrano, La Tercera, 19 August 2017
34. Vida, Cronología, 1941–1942: La Nueva Edad, Official website.
35. "Miguel Serrano Fernández – Genealogía Chilena en Red". genealogiachilenaenred.cl.
36. Vida, Cronología, 1943–1946: En Las Listas Negras, Official website.
37. Muere el poeta nazi chileno Miguel Serrano a los 91 años, Soitu, 2 March 2009
38. Miguel Serrano, peregrino por la India, El Mercurio, 16 March 2014
39. Documentos (28 December 2011). "ENCUENTRO ONÍRICO ENTRE JOSÉ MIGUEL SERRANO Y SU PADRE".
40. [1][permanent dead link]
41. "Así habló Miguel Serrano – La Tercera". latercera.com.
42. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 17 August 2014. Retrieved 15 January 2018.
43. "Carmen Serrano Rosselot – Genealogía Chilena en Red". genealogiachilenaenred.cl.
44. Vida, Cronología, 1947–1952: Segunda Expedición Antártica Chilena, Official website.
45. "Cristián Serrano Rosselot – Genealogía Chilena en Red". genealogiachilenaenred.cl.
46. Memorias de él y yo. Volumen II (1997). p. 291 (Memories of him and me. Volume II (1997). p. 291)
47. Vida, Cronología, 1985–1989: Lucha Por El Melimoyu, Official website.
48. Vida, Cronología, 1995–2006: Epistolarios Por Chile, Official website.
49. Eterna, Gnosis (9 June 2011). "Nimrod de Rosario - Miguel Serrano: Miguel Serrano: artículos censurados en dhforo.com".
50. Miguel Serrano: el místico en su laberinto, La Tercera, 28 March 2015
51. https://www.geni.com/people/Miguel-Serrano-Fernández/6000000013081962158
52. Versluis 2013, p. 124.
53. Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 173.
54. "Miguel Serrano se queda sin homenaje". La Segunda. 14 June 2014. Archived from the original on 19 January 2018. Retrieved 11 June 2018.
55. Martin Romero (19 February 2016). "Agradezco que me haha tocada Miguel Serrano comp abuelo". La Segunda. Archived from the original on 15 January 2018. Retrieved 11 June 2018.
56. Javier García (20 December 2017). "Un mago en su laberinto: la biografía novelada sobre Miguel Serrano". Culto. Archived from the original on 24 December 2017. Retrieved 11 June 2018.
57. "An Interview With Miguel Serrano, "Esoteric Hitlerist"". The Flaming Sword. August 1994.
58. Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 180.
59. Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 181.
60. Goodrick-Clarke 2002, pp. 181–82.
61. Serrano 1984: 95.
62. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 18 April 2018. Retrieved 18 April 2018.
63. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 18 April 2018. Retrieved 18 April 2018.
64. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 18 April 2018. Retrieved 18 April 2018.
65. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 18 April 2018. Retrieved 18 April 2018.
66. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 18 April 2018. Retrieved 18 April 2018.
67. Quintela, EB Libros Sabela P. "MIGUEL SERRANO – EB Libros – C. G. JUNG AND HERMANN HESSE. A RECORD OF TWO FRIENDSHIPS".
68. Quintela, EB Libros Sabela P. "MIGUEL SERRANO – EB Libros – MEMORIAS DE ÉL Y YO. VOLUMEN 1. Aparición del "yo", alejamiento de "él"".
69. Quintela, EB Libros Sabela P. "MIGUEL SERRANO – EB Libros – MEMORIAS DE ÉL Y YO. Volumen 2. Adolf Hitler y la gran guerra".
70. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 18 April 2018. Retrieved 18 April 2018.
71. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 18 April 2018. Retrieved 18 April 2018.
72. Quintela, EB Libros Sabela P. "MIGUEL SERRANO – EB Libros – 1990–2000".
73. Quintela, EB Libros Sabela P. "MIGUEL SERRANO – EB Libros – El hijo del viudo".
74. Quintela, EB Libros Sabela P. "MIGUEL SERRANO – EB Libros – Maya, la realidad es una ilusión".

Bibliography

Gardell, Matthias (2003). Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism. Durham and London: Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-3071-4.
Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (2002). Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 978-0814731550.
Versluis, Arthur (2013). "Savitri Devi, Miguel Serrano and the Global Phenomenon of Esoteric Hitlerism". In Henrik Bogdan and Gordan Djurdjevic (eds.) (eds.). Occultism in Global Perspective. Durham: Acumen. pp. 121–133. ISBN 978-1-84465-716-2.

Further reading

• Kevin Coogan. 1998. Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International (Appendix A: Nos, pp. 565–68). Autonomedia. ISBN 1-57027-039-2
• "An Interview With Miguel Serrano: 'Esoteric Hitlerist'" in The Flaming Sword No. 3, August 1994. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 8 May 1999. Retrieved 28 January 2018., "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 8 May 1999. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
• Miguel Serrano Il cerchio ermetico (frammenti) a cura di Sabrina Albertoni disegni di Stefano Cipolat, Prato, Pentalinea, 2005
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Chapter 1: The President's Bigfoot, from "True Stories of Real-Life Monsters" [Excerpt]
by Nick Redfern

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President Theodore Roosevelt: A chronicler of Bigfoot? © George Grantham Baine, 1885 Source: Wikipedia

Given that we have to start somewhere on our search for the truth about monsters and officialdom, we might as well show a fair degree of ambition and aim just about as high as we can. And it doesn't get much higher than the office of the President of the United States of America. Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt served as the Commander in Chief from 1901 to 1909 and is, to date, the youngest person to have ever held the position of presidential office: He was only 42 when he came to power. But, it's not the man's politics or youth that we're focusing on here. Rather, it's something monstrous, something malignant, something -- or some thing -- in the woods. Indeed, an inquiry into the controversial affair in question strongly suggests that the president became the recipient of nothing less than an early and quite graphic account of a violent encounter with a marauding, bloodthirsty Bigfoot.

As Roosevelt noted, frontiersmen are hardly the sort of people to be influenced by tales of paranormal or unexplained events. They are, after all, much too busy focusing on the practicalities and the day-to-day activities that go along with working, living, and hopefully surviving in the wild. But, there are occasional exceptions that was actually made known to a U.S. president. The strange and sinister tale in question came to Roosevelt from a hunter by the name of Bauman. He had spent his entire life living and hunting in the American wilderness, and he was said to possess a profound knowledge of all sorts of tales of spectral entities and beasts of a most evil nature that haunted the forests and that taunted and terrorized those people who dared intrude upon their dark domain.

Not surprisingly, given the impressive amount of time he spent in the forests of the United States, as well as his deep knowledge of supernatural lore, when Bauman spoke, the president listened. And he listened very carefully and closely, too. There was a good reason why Roosevelt's interest was so piqued. He, too, was an avid outdoorsman and a keen hunter. For example, in March of 1909, after his presidency was over, Roosevelt headed off to the expansive wilds of Africa, where he took part in a mammoth-sized hunt that saw at least 11,000 wild animals, including rhinos and elephants, slaughtered or captured by Roosevelt and his colleagues. So perhaps we can understand why Bauman's tale of terror so gripped the mind and imagination of this adventurous American president.

DEEP IN THE WOODS, A NIGHTMARE BEGINS

Back in the mid-1800s, Bauman and a friend spent time camping deep in the heart of the Bitterroot Range, a huge range in the Rocky Mountains that runs for more than 3,000 miles from British Columbia to New Mexico. It was on this particular range that something terrible, savage, and murderous lurked and roamed. At the time the incident took place, Roosevelt explained, Bauman was still very much a young man and was hunting with a friend in a wild, mountainous area of the range. Not having had much success catching anything of significance, however, the duo elected to head to a much more desolate and seldom-traveled pass, through which ran a small stream, the home to a sizeable colony of beavers. Interestingly, the pass in question had developed an unnerving reputation as a place of malignancy and negativity. The reason for this was simple: Barely a year before the event that Bauman was about to describe, a woodsman was ripped to shreds and partially devoured by an unknown predator. The man's remains had been found by a shocked group of prospectors seeking their fortune, but who instead only encountered violent death and stark tragedy.

Bauman and his friend, however -- both experienced men of the forests -- were not at all daunted or dissuaded by this unsettling affair; in fact, far from it. The pair had packed all of the provisions they would need for significant time spent in the woods. Once they reached the pass, they headed still further up into the mountains with a pair of pack ponies as their only traveling companions. When the ground made going too difficult for the animals, Bauman and his buddy were forced to leave them in a stretch of meadow. The pair was now completely alone. For around four hours they trekked ever onward and upward through the dense, dark forest, finally reaching a small glade where they chose to make camp for the night -- primarily due to the fact that there was evidence of plenty of game in the area. The next couple of hours were taken up with building a shelter and heading upstream to catch a few tasty salmon for a much-needed, hearty supper. It was when they returned to the camp that things took a decidedly alarming turn.

The camp was in a state of chaotic disarray. Some form of crazed, wild animal had evidently found the camp and virtually destroyed it. Their lean-to was mangled to pieces, backpacks had been torn open and their contents rifled, food was gone, and large paw prints could be seen all around the area. The aggravated pair assumed they were bear prints -- not an uncommon sight in that part of the world -- so they had no choice but to quickly rebuild and settle down for the evening. As the night progressed, and as they scanned the area intently and with understandable trepidation, it became clear that the bear theory was not quite as sound as it had seemed.

After carefully examining the numerous tracks, Bauman's comrade noted with astonishment that the beast -- whatever it was -- had clearly been walking on two legs. Totally baffled. the two studied the prints for a while longer, but were only able to conclude that they showed distinct paws or feet -- but they were from no bear. The reason they knew is that although the tracks did seem to display evidence of claws -- which certainly could have implied that a bear was the culprit, after all -- bears only ambulate on their hind legs for very short periods of time. This particular creature appeared to be using them exclusively.

There was nothing more that could be done that evening, aside from getting a fitful night's sleep, which they did -- for a while. Right around the witching hour, at 12 midnight, Bauman was abruptly jolted from his slumber and sat bolt upright. Although darkness was everywhere, his nose immediately told him there was an unclean wild beast lurking nearby. The animalistic stench was as strong and gut-wrenching as it was undeniable and immediate. But that was nothing compared to what happened next. Roosevelt listened, utterly transfixed and horrified, as Bauman described how a massive, animal-like form suddenly and briefly loomed into view. When Bauman had the firm presence of mind to quickly discharge his rifle in its direction, the beast made off like a shot. Unfortunately, the impenetrable darkness prevented Bauman from getting a good look at the elusive monstrosity in their midst. Not surprisingly, very little further slumber was had that night, and the pair wisely chose to get the campfire going again, in hopes of deterring the beast from returning and causing even more mayhem.

Fortunately, nothing else of an alarming nature occurred that night, and so the following morning, the two hunters headed off to check on several traps they had set the day before. Pleased with the plentiful bounty they yielded, the two headed back to the camp with several unlucky animals destined to become their tasty evening meal. But once again, all was not as it should have been. To the anger and growing alarm of the duo, their camp had been wrecked yet again. The newly reconstructed shelter was destroyed, their makeshift beds were in violent disarray and had been tossed around the glade, and just about everywhere there were those huge, bipedal footprints.

Unfortunately for Bauman and his friend, whatever had made those prints was quick to return. Although the darkness was by now all-encompassing, the cumbersome yet quick movements of the obviously very heavy animal on the floor of the forest echoed all around the camp, as did an unsettlingly weird, drawn-out howl or moan, which set their hair standing on end. Thankfully, the blazing fire kept the beast at bay. Bauman may have been an experienced man of the forest, but by now, even he had had just about enough, and so had his friend. Admitting to the president that the creature or fiend -- whatever it was -- had gotten the better of them, they decided that the wisest course of action was to get out of there. Doing so in complete darkness would not have been the brightest of ideas, however; so the plan was to keep the fire going steadily through the night, which would hopefully deter the creature from coming any closer, and then make good their escape at daybreak. If only it had been that simple. Sadly, it was anything but.

MURDER AT THE HANDS OF A BEAST

When the sun began to rise the next morning, the two decided it was a case of now or never, and began their journey home. Ominously, however, even as they left the camp, the pair had a growing, nerve-jangling sensation that they were being shadowed by someone or something that, although it could be heard, quite clearly did not wish to be seen. The telltale, constant snapping of branches and rustling among the trees made it clear that the infernal thing was stealthily and expertly following their every move. This continued for the greater part of the day. As much as they wanted to beat a hasty retreat from that malevolent, godforsaken place, there was one last task the men needed to take care of: They needed food. On the previous day they had laid three beaver traps in a small pond situated in a large ravine. If the traps had worked, that meant yet another good supply of food for the return journey. In the heart of the dense forest, far away from home and civilization, food, of course, was a vital necessity. So Bauman volunteered to go and check the traps. It was a decision that may very well have saved his life. But his friend, who was tasked to set up their next camp, was not so lucky. Unfortunately, there was just no way the two could complete the journey back down the mountains before darkness fell.

Sure enough, the traps had done their job, and Bauman was a satisfied and very relieved man as he headed back to the camp. Satisfaction and relief were quickly replaced by fear, however. Very oddly, as the man himself explained to Roosevelt, as he reached the camp it was utterly and deafeningly silent. No birds, no animals, no wind, no noise. Even the soles of his shoes seemed to make no sound at all as they crunched on the fallen twigs and leaves beneath. This was most assuredly not a good sign. Approaching tentatively and with great caution, Bauman called out to his friend. There was no answer. That was even worse. With quickly mounting concern, Bauman could see that the campfire had all but gone out; the only thing that remained was its leftover smoke coiling and swirling upward into the thick forest canopy. By now extremely worried, Bauman called out to his friend with anxiety once more. Again, there was no reply.

Suddenly and most horribly, Bauman knew why his cries had remained unanswered. Stretched out next to the huge trunk of a once-mighty fallen spruce was what remained of the body of Bauman's hunting partner. Throwing all caution to the wind, he raced over to his friend to try to help, but it was obviously far too late. Bauman stared in utter shock as cold fear sank its teeth into him: The man's neck had been broken, and savage bite marks covered his bloodied, pummelled neck. And all around, there were yet more of those strange, huge bipedal tracks. Looking at the scene in a state of shock, Bauman had an all-too-clear picture of what had happened: His friend had evidently been sitting on the fallen spruce, warming his chilled hands over the welcoming fire that he had built right in front of it, when the unknown infernal beast of the forest had silently crept upon him from behind and mercilessly torn into him with pulverizing, almost-demonic force. What was worse, the broken body appeared as though the gigantic animal had rolled over it time and time again, apparently in some nightmarish form of obscene, maniacal glee.

Bauman, by now in a state of sheer panic, knew there was only one option available to him if he was to get out of there alive. He abandoned all his possessions and provisions, aside from his rifle, and ran for his life. It was a long and torturous trek back to civilization, during which, as Bauman told Roosevelt, he had come to believe that the creature was less flesh and blood and more diabolical or demonic, something akin to a terrible devil or goblin. Finally Bauman reached the pass where he and his friend had left the ponies; to Bauman's eternal relief, the animals were still there, happily grazing. It was a warming sight for Bauman, and the darkness and inchoate terror that had plagued him as he fled the woods finally lifted. The terrible events were at their end and the nightmare was over.

What we seem to have here is an undeniably fascinating and controversial tale that, rather incredibly, involves nothing less than a U.S. president being informed of the startling facts pertaining to an early, documented encounter with a violent, homicidal Bigfoot -- an encounter that ended in the inhumane, bloody slaughter of a real person. Moreover, as will become graphically clear later in the pages of this book, this is not the only occasion upon which senior figures in American officialdom and hairy, giant man-beasts of the woods have crossed paths. For those reasons alone, the saga of President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt and his friend Bauman is an illustrative and, for our purposes, appropriate place to begin our turbulent journey into weird waters. And speaking of weird waters ...
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Office of Strategic Services
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/15/20

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Office of Strategic Services
OSS insignia[1]
Agency overview
Formed: June 13, 1942
Preceding agency: Coordinator of Information
Dissolved: September 20, 1945
Superseding agency: Central Intelligence Agency
Employees: 13,000 estimated[2]
Agency executives: MG William Joseph Donovan, Coordinator of Information; BG John Magruder, Director for Intelligence

[x]
CIA film describing OSS recruitment, training, and missions during WWII
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OSS officers came from all walks of life, and brought interesting life experiences
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and unusual skills to their work.
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It was in many ways a dream team that would
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never be seen again. A few used their status to their advantage,
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like Hollywood director John Ford who used his
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easy access to cameras to gather information for the Allied forces.
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Moe Berg, a professional baseball player who played for a number of teams, including the Red Sox, helped the OSS with his fluency in many European languages.
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And movie star Sterling Hayden took his acting to the next level to go behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia. Other OSS operatives had backgrounds ranging from academics to entertainers, to circus performers,
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and even swimmers and safecrackers. Men and women were recruited from all over the country. OSS is remembered for having a good record
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for recruiting and employing women. OSS officers underwent vigorous training in guerrilla warfare and new cloak-and-dagger
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combat methods such as espionage and lethal covert action. They were also required to take
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a variety of subjects in the classroom.
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Trainees were hidden away in camps where they lived under realistic conditions in order to prepare them for the conditions
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that they would have to endure on missions overseas.
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They endured strenuous physical-endurance training on outdoor obstacle courses designed to target
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and exercise the muscles most used in combat.
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They learned the correct way to hold and shoot a pistol and practiced this form in front of mirrors until it was perfected. OSS trainers taught them maneuvers like the chin jab,
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that would cripple an opponent in hand-to-hand combat. Trainees practiced escape techniques to use
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when approached from any direction, and how to disarm an enemy. They were also taught how to aid a comrade in trouble.
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In the classroom, trainees studied enemy propaganda,
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photography,
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demolition,
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and cross-country reconnaissance. The secluded property in Maryland that later
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became Camp David was used to train OSS officers for service in Europe. The Jedburgs were paramilitary units who operated in France, Belgium, and Holland,
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and worked alongside the local resistance. In addition to their physical training and familiarization with the conditions
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they would encounter on the ground in Europe,
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Jedburgs learned French and other languages, as well as how to read maps and compasses, and how to use ciphers.
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They became expert nighttime navigators, parachutists, and radio communicators. These units were also trained to use special weapons -- a favorite being the sten gun.
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This small submachine gun, nicknamed a "pipe and bedspring," had three important advantages: it was inexpensive to produce, simple to dismantle, and easy to conceal.
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The training process to become an OSS officer was not easy or conventional.
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With the outbreak of WWII, President Roosevelt looked to new techniques to take the fight to the enemy.
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OSS training did the trick.


The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a wartime intelligence agency of the United States during World War II, and a predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS)[3] to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branches of the United States Armed Forces. Other OSS functions included the use of propaganda, subversion, and post-war planning. On December 14, 2016, the organization was collectively honored with a Congressional Gold Medal.[4]

Origin

Prior to the formation of the OSS, the various departments of the executive branch, including the State, Treasury, Navy, and War Departments conducted American intelligence activities on an ad hoc basis, with no overall direction, coordination, or control. The US Army and US Navy had separate code-breaking departments: Signal Intelligence Service and OP-20-G. (A previous code-breaking operation of the State Department, the MI-8, run by Herbert Yardley, had been shut down in 1929 by Secretary of State Henry Stimson, deeming it an inappropriate function for the diplomatic arm, because "gentlemen don't read each other's mail."[5]) The FBI was responsible for domestic security and anti-espionage operations.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt was concerned about American intelligence deficiencies. On the suggestion of William Stephenson, the senior British intelligence officer in the western hemisphere, Roosevelt requested that William J. Donovan draft a plan for an intelligence service based on the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and Special Operations Executive (SOE). After submitting his work, "Memorandum of Establishment of Service of Strategic Information", Colonel Donovan was appointed "coordinator of information" on July 11, 1941, heading the new organization known as the office of the Coordinator of Information (COI).

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William J. Donovan

Thereafter the organization was developed with British assistance; Donovan had responsibilities but no actual powers and the existing US agencies were skeptical if not hostile. Until some months after Pearl Harbor, the bulk of OSS intelligence came from the UK. British Security Co-ordination (BSC) trained the first OSS agents in Canada, until training stations were set up in the US with guidance from BSC instructors, who also provided information on how the SOE was arranged and managed. The British immediately made available their short-wave broadcasting capabilities to Europe, Africa, and the Far East and provided equipment for agents until American production was established.[6]

The Office of Strategic Services was established by a Presidential military order issued by President Roosevelt on June 13, 1942, to collect and analyze strategic information required by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to conduct special operations not assigned to other agencies. During the war, the OSS supplied policymakers with facts and estimates, but the OSS never had jurisdiction over all foreign intelligence activities. The FBI was left responsible for intelligence work in Latin America, and the Army and Navy continued to develop and rely on their own sources of intelligence.

Activities

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General William J. Donovan reviews Operational Group members in Bethesda, Maryland prior to their departure for China in 1945.

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OSS missions and bases in East Asia

OSS proved especially useful in providing a worldwide overview of the German war effort, its strengths and weaknesses. In direct operations it was successful in supporting Operation Torch in French North Africa in 1942, where it identified pro-Allied potential supporters and located landing sites. OSS operations in neutral countries, especially Stockholm, Sweden, provided in-depth information on German advanced technology. The Madrid station set up agent networks in France that supported the Allied invasion of southern France in 1944. Most famous were the operations in Switzerland run by Allen Dulles that provided extensive information on German strength, air defenses, submarine production, and the V-1 and V-2 weapons. It revealed some of the secret German efforts in chemical and biological warfare. Switzerland's station also supported resistance fighters in France and Italy, and helped with the surrender of German forces in Italy in 1945.[7]

For the duration of World War II, the Office of Strategic Services was conducting multiple activities and missions, including collecting intelligence by spying, performing acts of sabotage, waging propaganda war, organizing and coordinating anti-Nazi resistance groups in Europe, and providing military training for anti-Japanese guerrilla movements in Asia, among other things.[8] At the height of its influence during World War II, the OSS employed almost 24,000 people.[9]

From 1943–1945, the OSS played a major role in training Kuomintang troops in China and Burma, and recruited Kachin and other indigenous irregular forces for sabotage as well as guides for Allied forces in Burma fighting the Japanese Army. Among other activities, the OSS helped arm, train, and supply resistance movements in areas occupied by the Axis powers during World War II, including Mao Zedong's Red Army in China (known as the Dixie Mission) and the Viet Minh in French Indochina. OSS officer Archimedes Patti played a central role in OSS operations in French Indochina and met frequently with Ho Chi Minh in 1945.[10]

One of the greatest accomplishments of the OSS during World War II was its penetration of Nazi Germany by OSS operatives. The OSS was responsible for training German and Austrian individuals for missions inside Germany. Some of these agents included exiled communists and Socialist party members, labor activists, anti-Nazi prisoners-of-war, and German and Jewish refugees. The OSS also recruited and ran one of the war's most important spies, the German diplomat Fritz Kolbe.

From 1943 the OSS was in contact with the Austrian resistance group around Kaplan Heinrich Maier. As a result, plans and production facilities for V-2 rockets, Tiger tanks and aircraft (Messerschmitt Bf 109, Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet, etc.) were passed on to Allied general staffs in order to enable Allied bombers to get accurate air strikes. The Maier group informed very early about the mass murder of Jews through its contacts with the Semperit factory near Auschwitz. The group was gradually dismantled by the German authorities because of a double agent who worked for both the OSS and the Gestapo. This uncovered a transfer of money from the Americans to Vienna via Istanbul and Budapest, and most of the members were executed after a People's Court hearing.[11][12]

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OSS 1st Lieutenant George Musulin behind enemy lines in German-occupied Serbia, as a Chetnik, during his first mission in November 1943. His second mission was Operation Halyard.

In 1943, the Office of Strategic Services set up operations in Istanbul.[13] Turkey, as a neutral country during the Second World War, was a place where both the Axis and Allied powers had spy networks. The railroads connecting central Asia with Europe, as well as Turkey's close proximity to the Balkan states, placed it at a crossroads of intelligence gathering. The goal of the OSS Istanbul operation called Project Net-1 was to infiltrate and extenuate subversive action in the old Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires.[13]

The head of operations at OSS Istanbul was a banker from Chicago named Lanning "Packy" Macfarland, who maintained a cover story as a banker for the American lend-lease program.[14] Macfarland hired Alfred Schwarz, a Czechoslovakian engineer and businessman who came to be known as "Dogwood" and ended up establishing the Dogwood information chain.[15] Dogwood in turn hired a personal assistant named Walter Arndt and established himself as an employee of the Istanbul Western Electrik Kompani.[15] Through Schwartz and Arndt the OSS was able to infiltrate anti-fascist groups in Austria, Hungary, and Germany. Schwartz was able to convince Romanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, and Swiss diplomatic couriers to smuggle American intelligence information into these territories and establish contact with elements antagonistic to the Nazis and their collaborators.[16] Couriers and agents memorized information and produced analytical reports; when they were not able to memorize effectively they recorded information on microfilm and hid it in their shoes or hollowed pencils.[17] Through this process information about the Nazi regime made its way to Macfarland and the OSS in Istanbul and eventually to Washington.

While the OSS "Dogwood-chain" produced a lot of information, its reliability was increasingly questioned by British intelligence. By May 1944, through collaboration between the OSS, British intelligence, Cairo, and Washington, the entire Dogwood-chain was found to be unreliable and dangerous.[17] Planting phony information into the OSS was intended to misdirect the resources of the Allies. Schwartz's Dogwood-chain, which was the largest American intelligence gathering tool in occupied territory, was shortly thereafter shut down.[18]

The OSS purchased Soviet code and cipher material (or Finnish information on them) from émigré Finnish army officers in late 1944. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, Jr., protested that this violated an agreement President Roosevelt made with the Soviet Union not to interfere with Soviet cipher traffic from the United States. General Donovan might have copied the papers before returning them the following January, but there is no record of Arlington Hall receiving them, and CIA and NSA archives have no surviving copies. This codebook was in fact used as part of the Venona decryption effort, which helped uncover large-scale Soviet espionage in North America.[19]

Weapons and gadgets

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OSS T13 Beano Grenade and compass hidden in a button, CIA Museum

The OSS espionage and sabotage operations produced a steady demand for highly specialized equipment.[8] General Donovan invited experts, organized workshops, and funded labs that later formed the core of the Research & Development Branch. Boston chemist Stanley P. Lovell became its first head, and Donovan humorously called him his "Professor Moriarty".[20]:101 Throughout the war years, the OSS Research & Development successfully adapted Allied weapons and espionage equipment, and produced its own line of novel spy tools and gadgets, including silenced pistols, lightweight sub-machine guns, "Beano" grenades that exploded upon impact, explosives disguised as lumps of coal ("Black Joe") or bags of Chinese flour ("Aunt Jemima"), acetone time delay fuses for limpet mines, compasses hidden in uniform buttons, playing cards that concealed maps, a 16mm Kodak camera in the shape of a matchbox, tasteless poison tablets ("K" and "L" pills), and cigarettes laced with tetrahydrocannabinol acetate (an extract of Indian hemp) to induce uncontrollable chattiness.[20][21][22]

The OSS also developed innovative communication equipment such as wiretap gadgets, electronic beacons for locating agents, and the "Joan-Eleanor" portable radio system that made it possible for operatives on the ground to establish secure contact with a plane that was preparing to land or drop cargo. The OSS Research & Development also printed fake German and Japanese-issued identification cards, and various passes, ration cards, and counterfeit money.[23]

On August 28, 1943, Stanley Lovell was asked to make a presentation in front of a not very friendly audience of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, since the U.S. top brass were largely skeptical of all OSS plans beyond collecting military intelligence and were ready to split the OSS between the Army and the Navy.[24]:5–7 While explaining the purpose and mission of his department and introducing various gadgets and tools, he reportedly casually dropped into a waste basket a Hedy, a panic-inducing explosive device in the shape of a firecracker, which shortly produced a loud shrieking sound followed by a deafening boom. The presentation was interrupted and did not resume since everyone in the room fled. In reality, the Hedy, jokingly named after Hollywood movie star Hedy Lamarr for her ability to distract men, later saved the lives of some trapped OSS operatives.[25]:184–185

Not all projects worked. Some ideas were odd, such as a failed attempt to use insects to spread anthrax in Spain.[26]:150–151 Stanley Lovell was later quoted saying, "It was my policy to consider any method whatever that might aid the war, however unorthodox or untried".[27]

In 1939, a young physician named Christian J. Lambertsen developed an oxygen rebreather set (the Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit) and demonstrated it to the OSS—after already being rejected by the U.S. Navy—in a pool at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington D.C., in 1942.[28][29] The OSS not only bought into the concept, they hired Lambertsen to lead the program and build up the dive element for the organization.[29] His responsibilities included training and developing methods of combining self-contained diving and swimmer delivery including the Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit for the OSS "Operational Swimmer Group".[28][30] Growing involvement of the OSS with coastal infiltration and water-based sabotage eventually led to creation of the OSS Maritime Unit.

Facilities

At Camp X, near Whitby, Ontario, an "assassination and elimination" training program was operated by the British Special Operations Executive, assigning exceptional masters in the art of knife-wielding combat, such as William E. Fairbairn and Eric A. Sykes, to instruct trainees. Many members of the Office of Strategic Services also were trained there. It was dubbed "the school of mayhem and murder" by George Hunter White who trained at the facility in the 1950s.[31]

From these incipient beginnings, the OSS began to take charge of its own destiny, and opened camps in the United States, and finally abroad. Prince William Forest Park (then known as Chopawamsic Recreational Demonstration Area) was the site of an OSS training camp that operated from 1942 to 1945. Area "C", consisting of approximately 6,000 acres (24 km2), was used extensively for communications training, whereas Area "A" was used for training some of the OGs (Operational Groups).[32] Catoctin Mountain Park, now the location of Camp David, was the site of OSS training Area "B" where the first Special Operations, or SO, were trained.[33] Special Operations was modeled after Great Britain's Special Operations Executive, which included parachute, sabotage, self-defense, weapons, and leadership training to support guerrilla or partisan resistance.[34] Considered most mysterious of all was the "cloak and dagger" Secret Intelligence, or SI branch.[35] Secret Intelligence employed "country estates as schools for introducing recruits into the murky world of espionage. Thus, it established Training Areas E and RTU-11 ("the Farm") in spacious manor houses with surrounding horse farms."[36] Morale Operations training included psychological warfare and propaganda.[37] The Congressional Country Club (Area F) in Bethesda, Maryland, was the primary OSS training facility. The Facilities of the Catalina Island Marine Institute at Toyon Bay on Santa Catalina Island, Calif., are composed (in part) of a former OSS survival training camp. The National Park Service commissioned a study of OSS National Park training facilities by Professor John Chambers of Rutgers University.[38]

The main OSS training camps abroad were located initially in Great Britain, French Algeria, and Egypt; later as the Allies advanced, a school was established in southern Italy. In the Far East, OSS training facilities were established in India, Ceylon, and then China. The London branch of the OSS, its first overseas facility, was at 70 Grosvenor Street, W1.In addition to training local agents, the overseas OSS schools also provided advanced training and field exercises for graduates of the training camps in the United States and for Americans who enlisted in the OSS in the war zones. The most famous of the latter was Virginia Hall in France.[38]

The OSS's Mediterranean training center in Cairo, Egypt, known to many as the Spy School, was a lavish palace belonging to King Farouk's brother-in-law, called Ras el Kanayas.[39][40] It was modeled after the SOE's training facility STS 102 in Haifa, Palestine.[41] Americans whose heritage stemmed from Italy, Yugoslavia, and Greece were trained at the "Spy School"[42] and also sent for parachute, weapons and commando training, and Morse code and encryption lessons at STS 102.[43][44][45] After completion of their spy training, these agents were sent back on missions to the Balkans and Italy where their accents would not pose a problem for their assimilation.[46][47]

Personnel

The names of all 13,000 OSS personnel and documents of their OSS service, previously a closely guarded secret, were released by the US National Archives on August 14, 2008. Among the 24,000 names were those of Carl C. Cable, Julia Child, Ralph Bunche, Arthur Goldberg, Saul K. Padover, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Bruce Sundlun, Rene Joyeuse MD and John Ford.[48][9][49] The 750,000 pages in the 35,000 personnel files include applications of people who were not recruited or hired, as well as the service records of those who served.[50]

OSS soldiers were primarily inducted from the United States Armed Forces. Other members included foreign nationals including displaced individuals from the former czarist Russia, an example being Prince Serge Obolensky.

Donovan sought independent thinkers, and in order to bring together those many intelligent, quick-witted individuals who could think out-of-the box, he chose them from all walks of life, backgrounds, without distinction to culture or religion. Donovan was quoted as saying, "I'd rather have a young lieutenant with enough guts to disobey a direct order than a colonel too regimented to think for himself." In a matter of a few short months, he formed an organization which equalled and then rivalled Great Britain's Secret Intelligence Service and its Special Operations Executive.

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Major league baseball player Moe Berg of the Boston Red Sox was an OSS agent

One such agent was Ivy league polyglot and Jewish-American baseball catcher Moe Berg, who played 15 seasons in the major leagues. As a Secret Intelligence agent, he was dispatched to seek information on German physicist Werner Heisenberg and his knowledge on the atomic bomb.[51] One of the most highly decorated and flamboyant OSS soldiers was US Marine Colonel Peter Ortiz. Enlisting early in the war, as a French Foreign Legionnaire, he went on to join the OSS and earn the title of the most highly decorated US Marine in the OSS during World War II.[52]

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Col. Peter Ortiz, USMC

Julia Child, who later authored cookbooks worked directly under Donovan.[53]

"Jumping Joe" Savoldi (code name Sampson) was recruited by the OSS in 1942 because of his hand-to-hand combat and language skills as well as his deep knowledge of the Italian geography and Benito Mussolini's compound. He was assigned to the Special Operations branch and took part in missions in North Africa, Italy, and France during 1943–1945.[54][55][56]

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OSS created this false ID for Joe Savoldi - posing as Giuseppe De Leo while infiltrating the black market in Naples

One of the forefathers of today's commandos was Navy Lieutenant Jack Taylor. He was sequestered by the OSS early in the war and had a long career behind enemy lines.[57]

Taro and Mitsu Yashima, both Japanese political dissidents who were imprisoned in Japan for protesting its militarist regime, worked for the OSS in psychological warfare against the Japanese Empire.[58][59]

Nisei linguists

In late 1943, a representative from OSS visited the 442nd Infantry Regiment looking to recruit volunteers willing to undertake "extremely hazardous assignment."[60] All selected were Nisei. The recruits were assigned to OSS Detachments 101 and 202, in the China-Burma-India Theater. "Once deployed, they were to interrogate prisoners, translate documents, monitor radio communications, and conduct covert operations... Detachment 101 and 102's clandestine operations were extremely successful."[60]

Dissolution into other agencies

On September 20, 1945, President Truman signed Executive Order 9621, terminating the OSS. The State Department took over the Research and Analysis Branch; it became the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, The War Department took over the Secret Intelligence (SI) and Counter-Espionage (X-2) Branches, which were then housed in the new Strategic Services Unit (SSU). Brigadier General John Magruder (formerly Donovan's Deputy Director for Intelligence in OSS) became the new SSU director. He oversaw the liquidation of the OSS and managed the institutional preservation of its clandestine intelligence capability.[61]

In January 1946, President Truman created the Central Intelligence Group (CIG), which was the direct precursor to the CIA. SSU assets, which now constituted a streamlined "nucleus" of clandestine intelligence, were transferred to the CIG in mid-1946 and reconstituted as the Office of Special Operations (OSO). The National Security Act of 1947 established the first permanent peacetime intelligence agency in the United States, the Central Intelligence Agency, which then took up OSS functions. The direct descendant of the paramilitary component of the OSS is the CIA Special Activities Division.[62]

Today, the joint-branch United States Special Operations Command, founded in 1987, uses the same spearhead design on its insignia, as homage to its indirect lineage.

Branches

• Censorship and Documents
• Field Experimental Unit
• Foreign Nationalities
• Maritime Unit
• Morale Operations Branch
• Operational Group Command
• Research & Analysis
• Secret Intelligence[63]
• Security
• Special Operations
• Special Projects
• X-2 (counterespionage)

Detachments

• OSS Deer Team: Vietnam
• OSS Detachment 101: Burma
• OSS Detachment 202: China
OSS Detachment 303: New Delhi, India
• OSS Detachment 404: attached to British South East Asia Command in Kandy, Ceylon
• OSS Detachment 505: Calcutta, India


US Army units attached to the OSS

• 2671st Special Reconnaissance Battalion
• 2677th Office of Strategic Services Regiment

In popular culture

Comics


• The OSS was a featured organization in DC Comics, introduced in G.I. Combat #192 (July 1976). Led by the mysterious Control, they operated as an espionage unit, initially in Nazi-occupied France. The organization would later become Argent.
• The alter ego of the DC Comics superheroine Wonder Woman, Diana Prince, works for Major Steve Trevor at the OSS. In this position, she found herself privy to intelligence on Axis operations in the United States, and many times foiled agents of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy in their attempts to defeat the Allies and achieve world domination.

Films

• The Paramount film O.S.S. (1946), starring Alan Ladd and Geraldine Fitzgerald, showed agents training and on a dangerous mission. Commander John Shaheen acted as technical advisor.
• The film 13 Rue Madeleine (1946) stars James Cagney as an OSS agent who must find a mole in French partisan operations. Peter Ortiz acted as technical advisor.
• The film Cloak and Dagger (1946) stars Gary Cooper as a scientist recruited to OSS to exfiltrate a German scientist defecting to the allies with the help of a woman guerrilla and her partisans. E. Michael Burke acted as technical advisor.
• In the film Charade (1963 film) Carson Dyle Walter Mathau explains the CIA and OSS to Reggie Lampert Audrey Hepburn.
• In The Good Shepherd (2006), Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson, a Skull and Bones recruit who joins the OSS to help with a mission in London. He quickly gains rank as the head of the newly formed CIA's counterintelligence service.
• The biographical film Flash of Genius (2008) is about famed American inventor and OSS veteran, Robert Kearns.
• In the film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 2008, it is indicated that Indiana Jones worked for the OSS and attained the rank of Colonel.
• In the film Inglourious Basterds (2009), directed by Quentin Tarantino, the titular "basterds" are members of an OSS commando squad in occupied-France, although no such OSS unit ever actually existed.
• The film Julie & Julia (2009) includes flashback scenes depicting Julia Child's wartime service with the OSS.
• The Real Inglorious Bastards (2012), a short film documentary, directed by Min Sook Lee, is about the OSS officers such as Frederick Mayer (spy), Hans Wijnberg, and Franz Weber, who volunteered to operate behind enemy lines, e.g., during "Operation Greenup", to defeat the German armed forces
• Camp X: Secret Agent School (2014), a YAP Films documentary for History Channel (Canada), portrays the first spy school in North America, OSS agents, their training at Camp X, and their missions behind enemy lines[64][65]
• World War II Spy School (2014), a YAP Films documentary for the Smithsonian Channel, portraying Camp X and the other training sites overseas, as well as OSS agents and their missions.[66]

Games

Tabletop Roleplaying Games


• The OSS appears in the backstory of Delta Green. The eponymous organization started as the fictional P4 Division of the Office of Naval Intelligence and in 1942 the ONI transfers the P4 division to the OSS so they can act in the entire Allied theater under the cover of a psychological warfare research division. It is under the OSS that the P4 Division acquires the codename Delta Green.
o The OSS also is mentioned in Pelgrane Press The Fall of DELTA GREEN. Player Characters can be ex-OSS agents in other agencies such as the CIA, which can be beneficial due the claim and carry authenticity, experience and authority due their past career in the OSS.

Video games

• In Call of Duty: World at War (2008), Dr. Peter McCain is an OSS spy.
• In Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine (1999), the main female character, Sophia Hapgood, is an OSS (later CIA) agent.
• Most games in the Medal of Honor video game franchise feature a fictional OSS agent as the main character.
• In the 2012 game Sniper Elite V2 and its prequels Sniper Elite III and Sniper Elite 4, the protagonist is an SOE turned OSS agent sniper.
• In the Wolfenstein series video game series, the main character is a member of a fictional organisation called the OSA (Office of Secret Actions), which is inspired by the OSS.
• In Tom Clancy's The Division 2, one of the games several hidden side missions, known as The Navy Hill Transmission, has the Agent searching the western part of Washington D.C. for the source of a mysterious encoded transmission which ends up leading him/her to an old underground OSS Bunker. During the side mission, Manny Ortega mentions a few interesting facts about the OSS and how President Truman disbanded it 1945 and how several former OSS agents went on to become part of the CIA. You also find a map that leads the Agent to a point of interest known as the "G. Phillips Protocol," which could possibly be in honor of George Phillips (USMC) (1926–1945), a US Marine and Medal of Honor recipient.
• It is featured in Hearts of Iron IV in the 2020 expansion, La Resistance, as the United States' Secret Agency.

Literature

• Jean Bruce's French pulp fiction series, OSS 117, follows the adventure of Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, alias OSS 117, a French operative working for the OSS. The original series (four or five books a year) lasted from 1949 to 1963, until the death of Jean Bruce, and was continued by his wife and children until 1992. Numerous films were made from it in the 1960s, and in 2006 a nostalgic comedy was made, celebrating the spy movie genre, OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, with Jean Dujardin playing OSS 117. A sequel followed in 2009 called OSS 117: Lost in Rio (original title in French: OSS 117: Rio Ne Répond Plus).
• Corey Ford and Alastair MacBain's book, Cloak and Dagger: The Secret Story of The Office of Strategic Services (1946), covers a broad overview of O.S.S. information and includes a chapter about Joe Savoldi titled, "The Saga of Jumping Joe" featuring a basic recounting of a portion of the McGregor Mission.
• W.E.B. Griffin's Honor Bound and Men At War series revolve around fictional OSS operations. Some of his characters in The Corps Series also are recruited by the OSS, notably Ken McCoy, Edward Banning, and Fleming Pickering.
• Roger Wolcott Hall's book, You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger (1957), is a witty look at Hall's experiences with the OSS.
• In Of Spies and Stratagems (1963), former OSS Deputy Director for Special Projects Stanley P. Lovell's book about the activities of his department, he recalls how he was recruited by Donovan, who was looking for his own Professor Moriarty; some of the devices Special Projects developed, from the High Standard silent, flashless pistol, to the anti-vehicle bomb codenamed Firefly, to a psychological warfare compound codenamed "Who? Me?"; the OSS's involvement in document forgery and counterfeiting; and hinted at the valor of its agents, which was only then starting to be revealed by the government.
• Clive Cussler deemed Patrick K. O'Donnell's book, Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs: The Unknown Story of the Men and Women of World War II's OSS (2004), "A revealing look into the intrigue and extraordinary courage of our intelligence gatherers of World War II. A rare combination of suspense thriller and true heroism by a great American writer."* David Stafford's book, Camp X (1986), is the most accurate account of the activities and personnel of Camp X, the secret agent training camp for sabotage and guerrilla warfare at Ajax near Oshawa Ontario, Canada, that was administered by the British Special Operations Executive.
• William Stevenson's book, A Man Called Intrepid: The Secret War (1976), describes the operations of the OSS, particularly the role of Sir William Samuel Stephenson, head of British Security Coordination in New York, in its formation.
• The OSS also appears in William Stevenson's book Intrepid's Last Case (1986).

Television

• In the American animated comedy series Archer, the character Malory Archer (mother of the main character Sterling Archer) is a former O.S.S agent.
• One of the characters in the Ellery Queen episode, "The Adventure of Colonel Niven's Memoirs" (1975), identifies himself as "Major George Pearson, O.S.S."; he offers some Soviet diplomats political asylum.
• In theNCIS: Los Angeles Season 3, episode, "Lange, H.", the O.S.S. is mentioned as the predecessor of the C.I.A.
• In 1957–1958 Ron Randell starred in the series O.S.S.[67]
• In Knight Rider, Devon Miles mentions that he served in OSS during World War II.
• In the X-Files Season 6 episode, "Triangle", the woman from the 1939 scenes portrayed by Gillian Anderson as Scully is a member of OSS.

See also

• United States portal
• World War II portal
• Charles Douglas Jackson
• Operation Halyard
• Operation Jedburgh
• Operation Paperclip
• OSS Detachment 101 operated in the China Burma India Theater of World War II.
• Paramarines
• Special Forces (United States Army)
• Special Operations Executive
• X-2 Counter Espionage Branch
• Central Intelligence Agency
• History of espionage

Notes

• Paulson, Alan (1995). "Required reading: OSS Weapons". Fighting Firearms. 3 (2): 20–21, 80–81.
• Brunner, John (1991). OSS Crossbows. Phillips Publications. ISBN 0932572154.
• Brunner, John (2005). OSS Weapons II. Phillips Publications. ISBN 978-0932572431.

References

1. Emerson, William K. (1996). "51". Encyclopedia of United States Army Insignia and Uniforms. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 9780806126227.
2. Dawidoff, p. 240
3. Clancey, Patrick. "Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Organization and Functions". HyperWar. Retrieved November 10,2016.
4. "US Public Law 114–269 (2016)" (PDF). Retrieved February 21, 2018.
5. Stimson, Henry L. On Active Service in Peace and War (1948). per Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 16th ed.
6. The Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas, 1940-1945, p27-28
7. G.J.A. O'Toole, Honorable Treachery: A History of U. S. Intelligence, Espionage, and Covert Action from the American Revolution to the CIA pp 418-19.
8. Smith, R. Harris. OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.
9. "Chef Julia Child, others part of WWII spy network" Archived August 21, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, CNN, 2008-08-14
10. "Interview with Archimedes L. A. Patti". 1981.
11. Peter Broucek "Die österreichische Identität im Widerstand 1938–1945" (2008), p 163.
12. Hansjakob Stehle "Die Spione aus dem Pfarrhaus (German: The spy from the rectory)" In: Die Zeit, 5 January 1996.
13. Hassell and McCrae, p.158
14. Hassell and MacRae, p.159
15. Hassell and MacRae, p.166
16. Hassell and MacRae, p.167
17. Rubin, B: Istanbul Intrigues, page 168. Pharos Books, 1992.
18. Hassell and MacRae, p.184
19. Andrew, Christopher and Mitrokhin, Vasili, The Mitrokhin Archive, Volume 1: The KGB in Europe and the West, 1999.
20. Waller, Douglas C. Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage. New York: Free Press, 2011.
21. CIA Library: Weapons & Spy Gear Archived February 21, 2014, at the Wayback Machine, Historical Document, March 15, 2007.
22. Brunner, John (1994). OSS Weapons. 58: Phillips Publications. ISBN 0-932572-21-9.
23. The Office of Strategic Services America's First Intelligence Agency. Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs, Central Intelligence Agency, 2000, p. 33.
24. Hogan, David W. U.S. Army Special Operations in World War II. Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, Dept. of the Army, 1992.
25. Breuer, William B. Deceptions of World War II. New York: Wiley, 2002.
26. Lockwood, Jeffrey Alan. Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects As Weapons of War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
27. Lovell, Stanley P. (1963). Of Spies and Stratagems. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. p. 79. ASIN B000LBAQYS.
28. Vann RD (2004). "Lambertsen and O2: beginnings of operational physiology". Undersea Hyperb Med. 31 (1): 21–31. PMID 15233157. Retrieved April 20, 2013.
29. Shapiro, T. Rees. "Christian J. Lambertsen, OSS officer who created early scuba device, dies at 93". Washington Post(February 18, 2011)
30. Butler FK (2004). "Closed-circuit oxygen diving in the U.S. Navy". Undersea Hyperb Med. 31 (1): 3–20. PMID 15233156. Retrieved April 20, 2013.
31. Albarelli, H.A. A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments 2009. p.67 ISBN 0-9777953-7-3
32. Chambers II, John Whiteclay (2008). "2" (PDF). OSS Training in the National Parks and Service Abroad in World War II. Washington, DC: U.S. National Park Service. p. 40. ISBN 978-1511654760.
33. Chambers II, John Whiteclay (2008). "Chapter 6: Instructing for Dangerous Missions" (PDF). OSS Training in the National Parks and Service Abroad in World War II. U.S. National Park Service. pp. 195–199.
34. Chambers II, John Whiteclay (2008). "2" (PDF). OSS Training in the National Parks and Service Abroad in World War II. Washington, DC: U.S. National Park Service. p. 40. ISBN 978-1511654760.
35. Chambers II, John Whiteclay (2008). "2" (PDF). OSS Training in the National Parks and Service Abroad in World War II. Washington, DC: U.S. National Park Service. p. 35. ISBN 978-1511654760.
36. Chambers II, John Whiteclay (2008). "11" (PDF). OSS Training in the National Parks and Service Abroad in World War II. Washington, DC: U.S. National Park Service. p. 558. ISBN 978-1511654760.
37. Chambers II, John Whiteclay (2008). "2" (PDF). OSS Training in the National Parks and Service Abroad in World War II. Washington, DC: U.S. National Park Service. p. 43. ISBN 978-1511654760.
38. "(U) Chambers-OSS Training in WWII-with Notes.fm" (PDF). Retrieved September 26, 2018.
39. Hueck Allen, Susan (2013), "7", Classical Spies: American Archaeologists with the OSS in World War II Greece, Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan, p. 134, ISBN 978-0472117697
40. Doundoulakis, Helias; Gafni, Gabriella (2014), "11", Trained to be an OSS Spy, Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, p. 99, ISBN 978-1499059830
41. Doundoulakis, Helias (2012), "1", I was Trained to be a Spy-Book II, Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, p. 2, ISBN 978-1479716494
42. Secret Intelligence (SI), Special Operations (SO), Morale Operations (MO) Archived May 25, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
43. Wilkinson, Peter; Foot, M. R. D (2002). Foreign Fields: The Story of an SOE Operative. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-1860647796.
44. Horn, Bernd (2016). A Most Ungentlemanly Way of War. Toronto: Dundurn. ISBN 9781459732797.
45. "History" (PDF). http://www.nps.gov.
46. William J. Donovan, William Fairbairn, William Stephenson, Frank Gleason, Guy D'Artois, Helias Doundoulakis (2014). World War II Spy School (Film). USA, Canada: YAP Films.
47. [1] Archived March 15, 2017, at the Wayback Machine
48. Patrick, Jeanette (2017). "The Recipe for Adventure: Chef Julia Child's World War II Service". http://www.womenshistory.org. National Women's History Museum.
49. Blackledge, Brett J. and Herschaft, Randy "Documents: Julia Child part of WW II-era spy ring", Associated Press
50. Office of Strategic Services Personnel Files from World War II – overview page, search links, digital excerpts; National Archives Identifier 1593270: Personnel Files, compiled 1942 - 1945, documenting the period 1941 - 1945, from Record Group 226: Records of the Office of Strategic Services, 1919 - 2002; Personnel database – complete list
51. Lewin, Ben (Director) (2018). The Catcher Was a Spy (Movie). United States, Japan, Yugoslavia.
52. Lieutenant Colonel Harry W. Edwards. "A Different War: Marines in Europe and North Africa" (PDF). USMC Training and Education Command. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 15, 2011. Retrieved October 3, 2010.
53. "Julia Child Dished Out ... Spy Secrets?". ABC. August 14, 2008. Retrieved February 16, 2010.
54. Baminvestor (January 20, 2004). "English: OSS created this false ID for Joe Savoldi - posing as Giuseppe De Leo while infiltrating the black market in Naples". Retrieved February 19, 2017 – via Wikimedia Commons.
55. Cloak and Dagger: The Secret Story of the Office of Strategic Services Chapter IX "The Saga of Jumping Joe" page 150
56. Wild Bill Donovan: The Last Hero by Anthony Cave Brown page 352 and Savoldi's personal notes from July 8–16, 1943 (now in the possession of family members.)
57. "SEAL History: First Airborne Frogmen - National Navy UDT-SEAL Museum". NavySealMuseum.com. Retrieved February 19, 2017.
58. "Taro Yashima: an unsung beacon for all against 'evil on this Earth' - The Japan Times". The Japan Times. September 11, 2011.
59. "An unlikely heroine of World War II". SFGate. March 18, 2007.
60. "Japanese Americans in World War II Intelligence — Central Intelligence Agency". http://www.cia.gov. Retrieved February 22,2017.
61. George C. Chalou, ed. The Secret War (1992), pp 95-97.
62. Waller, Douglas "CIA's Secret Army", Time (2003)
63. For all branch information: Clancey, Patrick. "Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Organization and Functions". HyperWar. Retrieved July 12, 2011.
64. YAP Films (2014). Camp X: Secret Agent School. History Channel (Canada).
65. Camp X: Secret Agent School. IMDb. 2014.
66. YAP Films (2014). World War II Spy School. Smithsonian Channel.
67. O.S.S on IMDb

Further reading

• Albarelli, H.P. A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments (2009) ISBN 0-9777953-7-3
• Aldrich, Richard J. Intelligence and the War Against Japan: Britain, America and the Politics of Secret Service (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) ISBN 0521641861
• Alsop, Stewart and Braden, Thomas. Sub Rosa: The OSS and American Espionage (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1946) OCLC 1226266
• Bank, Aaron. From OSS to Green Berets: The Birth of Special Forces (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1986) ISBN 0891412719
• Bartholomew-Feis, Dixee R. The OSS and Ho Chi Minh: Unexpected Allies in the War against Japan (Lawrence : University Press of Kansas, 2006) ISBN 0700614311
• Bernstein, Barton J. "Birth of the U.S. biological warfare program" Scientific American 256: 116 – 121, 1987.
• Brown, Anthony Cave. The Last Hero: Wild Bill Donovan (New York: Times Books, 1982) ISBN 0812910214
• Brunner, John W. OSS Weapons. Phillips Publications, Williamstown, N.J., 1994. ISBN 0-932572-21-9.
• Brunner, John W. OSS Weapons II. Phillips Publications, Williamstown, N.J., 2005. ISBN 978-0932572431.
• Brunner, John W. OSS Crossbows. Phillips Publications, Williamstown, N.J., 1991. ISBN 0-932572-15-4.
• Burke, Michael. "Outrageous Good Fortune: A Memoir" (Boston-Toronto: Little, Brown and Company)
• Casey, William J. The Secret War Against Hitler (Washington: Regnery Gateway, 1988) ISBN 089526563X
• Chalou, George C. (ed.) The Secrets War: The Office of Strategic Services in World War II (Washington: National Archives and Records Administration, 1991) ISBN 0911333916
• Chambers II, John Whiteclay. OSS Training in the National Parks and Service Abroad in World War II (NPS, 2008) online; chapters 1-2 and 8-11 provide a useful summary history of OSS by a scholar.
• Dawidoff, Nicholas. The Catcher was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg ( New York: Vintage Books, 1994) ISBN 0679415661
• Doundoulakis, Helias. Trained to be an OSS Spy (Xlibris, 2014) OCLC 907008535. ISBN 9781499059830[self-published source]
• Dulles, Allen. The Secret Surrender (New York: Harper & Row, 1966) OCLC 711869
• Dunlop, Richard. Donovan: America's Master Spy (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1982) ISBN 0528811177
• Ford, Corey. Donovan of OSS (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970) OCLC 836436423
• Ford, Corey, MacBain A. "Cloak and Dagger: The Secret Story of O.S.S." (New York: Random House 1945,1946) OCLC 1504392
• Grose, Peter. Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994) ISBN 0395516072
• Hassell, A, and MacRae, S: Alliance of Enemies: The Untold Story of the Secret American and German Collaboration to End World War II, Thomas Dunne Books, 2006. ISBN 0312323697
• Hunt, E. Howard. American Spy, 2007
• Jakub, Jay. Spies and Saboteurs: Anglo-American Collaboration and Rivalry in Human Intelligence Collection and Special Operations, 1940–45 (New York: St. Martin's, 1999)
• Jones, Ishmael. The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture (New York: Encounter Books, 2008, rev 2010) ISBN 9781594032745
• Katz, Barry M. Foreign Intelligence: Research and Analysis in the Office of Strategic Services, 1942–1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989)
• Kent, Sherman. Strategic Intelligence for American Foreign Policy (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1965 [1949])
• Lovell, Stanley P. (1963). Of Spies and Stratagems. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. p. 79. ASIN B000LBAQYS.
• McIntosh, Elizabeth P. Sisterhood of Spies: The Women of the OSS (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998) ISBN 1557505985
• Mauch, Christof. The Shadow War Against Hitler: The Covert Operations of America's Wartime Secret Intelligence Service (2005), scholarly history of OSS.
• Melton, H. Keith. OSS Special Weapons and Equipment: Spy Devices of World War II (New York: Sterling Publishing, 1991) ISBN 0806982381
• Moulin, Pierre. U.S. Samurais in Bruyeres (CPL Editions: Luxembourg, 1993) ISBN 2959998405
• Paulson, A.C. 1989. OSS Silenced Pistol. Machine Gun News. 3(6):28-30.
• Paulson, A.C. 1995. OSS Weapons. Fighting Firearms. 3(2):20-21,80-81.
• Paulson, A.C. 2002. HDMS silenced .22 pistols in Vietnam. The Small Arms Review. 5(7):119-120.
• Paulson, A.C. 2003. WWII vintage silent .22LR [High Standard OSS HDMS pistol]. Guns & Weapons for Law Enforcement. 15(2):24-29,72.
• Persico, Joseph E. Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage (2001).
• Persico, Joseph E. Piercing the Reich: The Penetration of Nazi Germany by American Secret Agents During World War II (New York: Viking, 1979) Reprinted in 1997 by Barnes & Noble Books. ISBN 076070242X
• Peterson, Neal H. (ed.) From Hitler's Doorstep: The Wartime Intelligence Reports of Allen Dulles, 1942–1945 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996)
• Pinck, Daniel C. Journey to Peking: A Secret Agent in Wartime China (Naval Institute Press, 2003) ISBN 1591146771
• Pinck, Daniel C., Jones, Geoffrey M.T. and Pinck, Charles T. (eds.) Stalking the History of the Office of Strategic Services: An OSS Bibliography (Boston: OSS/Donovan Press, 2000) ISBN 0967573602
• Roosevelt, Kermit (ed.) War Report of the OSS, two volumes (New York: Walker, 1976) ISBN 0802705294
• Rudgers, David F. Creating the Secret State: The Origins of the Central Intelligence Agency, 1943–1947 (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2000) ISBN 0700610243
• Smith, Bradley F. and Agarossi, Elena. Operation Sunrise: The Secret Surrender (New York: Basic Books, 1979) ISBN 0465052908
• Smith, Bradley F. The Shadow Warriors: OSS and the Origins of the CIA (New York: Basic, 1983) ISBN 0465077560
• Smith, Richard Harris. OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972; Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2005) ISBN 0520020235
• Steury, Donald P. The Intelligence War (New York: Metrobooks, 2000)
• Troy, Thomas F. Donovan and the CIA: A History of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1981) OCLC 7739122
• Troy, Thomas F. Wild Bill & Intrepid (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996) ISBN 0300065639
• Waller, John H. The Unseen War in Europe: Espionage and Conspiracy in the Second World War (New York: Random House, 1996) ISBN 0679448268
• Warner, Michael. The Office of Strategic Services: America's First Intelligence Agency (Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, 2001) OCLC 52058428
• Yu, Maochun. OSS in China: Prelude to Cold War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996) ISBN 159114986X

External links

• "The Office of Strategic Services: America's First Intelligence Agency"
• National Park Service Report on OSS Training Facilities
• Collection of Documents at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Museum and Library, Part 1 and Part 2
• The OSS Society
• OSS Reborn
• Works by Office of Strategic Services at Project Gutenberg
• Office of Strategic Services collection at Internet Archive
• Works by or about Office of Strategic Services at Internet Archive
• Works by Office of Strategic Services at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

Postby admin » Tue Jun 16, 2020 11:30 am

Chapter 6: How the Pentagon Made a Monster, from "True Stories of Real-Life Monsters" [Excerpt]
by Nick Redfern

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


It was the evening of September 12, 1952, when all hell broke loose in and around the small West Virginia town of Flatwoods. Something foul and malignant paid the townsfolk a visit of the truly terrible kind. As of this writing, more than 60 years after chaos and calamity briefly ruled, the memory of that long-gone eve still provokes massive amounts of gossip, debate, wonder, and even terror for the approximately 350 people that current call Flatwoods their home. That the controversial encounter occurred at the same time as a veritable armada of flying saucers was seen in the skies of the nation's capital only raised the controversy level even higher. Was some form of terrible, alien monster roaming around Flatwoods on that long-gone night? Or, incredibly, do we need to look to none other than the U.S. government for the answers? We're on a hunt for what the townsfolk officially refer to today as -- no surprises here -- the Flatwoods Monster.

While the U.S. Air Force was busying itself with numerous UFO sightings on the night in question, startled Flatwoods townsfolk were dealing with something very different, indeed: the apparent crash-landing of, well, something atop a hill on land that belonged to a local farmer named G. Bailey Fisher. Chief among the witnesses were a Mrs. Kathleen May, a National Guardsman named Eugene Lemon, and a group of nearly hyperventilating teenagers. The group tentatively headed out together to the darkness-cloaked scene of the action, where they suddenly encountered a fiery ball of light that loomed ominously on the hill and emitted an unknown noxious substance that severely irritated the eyes and noses of all those present.

But all of that was suddenly forgotten when something terrifying loomed into view from the shadows of the surrounding trees.
It was not one of those archetypal small, skinny, black-eyed, large-headed aliens, called "Greys," that have become so deeply ingrained in the fervid collective imagination of popular culture. No, this creature was 12ft (3.7m) tall, seemingly brightly illuminated from within, and had a head that appeared to be shrouded in some kind of cowl. One of the terrified witnesses said it resembled the spade symbol in a deck of playing cards.



As a showering array of flashing, arcing lights surrounded the beast, its glowing, penetrating, fiery eyes seemed to be fixed in the direction of the group. Not surprisingly, as the monstrosity began to glide above the ground toward them, they fled for their lives down the hill.

Returning tentatively to the scene a few hours later, the group were mightily relieved to find the monster now gone, but to where, exactly, no one ever knew. As a result, an enduring legend was born: More than six decades ago, a behemoth from another world paid the small, otherwise sleepy and innocuous town of Flatwoods a bone-chilling visit. Or did it? From within the once-secret files of the U.S. government we find a fantastically controversial story that suggests that the monster of Flatwoods may have been nothing less than a strange, perhaps even robotic creation of the American military. Sound bizarre? Well, that's exactly what it was.

THE U.S. MILITARY SECRETLY INVENTS A MONSTER

In 2010, the U.S. Air Force quietly declassified (via the terms of the Freedom of Information Act) an April 14, 1950, publication of the RAND Corporation bearing the title The Exploitation of Superstitions for Purposes of Psychological Warfare. Researched and prepared by a RAND employee named Jean M. Hungerford, who was under secret contract to the Air Force at the time, the document detailed the many and varied ways and means -- some truly ingenious -- that beliefs and superstitions relative to supernatural phenomena could be leveraged on the battlefield to frighten and, hence, weaken the enemy. One such curious caper of that era, carefully cited within the pages of the RAND report, involved the U.S. military spreading utterly false stories throughout the former Soviet Union that American troops regularly saw the Virgin Mary at the height of warfare, thus promulgating the idea that God was on the side of the land of the free.

With the Kennedy brothers, it was no longer purely a matter of national security. It was personal. Castro had not only survived the Bay of Pigs but been emboldened by it, openly mocking the United States' effete and quixotic attempts to bring him down. A smoldering President Kennedy demanded action. Sam Halpern, a veteran Agency officer, recalls Richard Bissell summoning him into his office. "He told us he had been chewed out in the cabinet room of the White House by the president and attorney general for sitting on his ass and not doing anything about Castro and the Castro regime." Bissell related the president's order: "Get rid of Castro."

Halpern wanted clarification. "What do the words 'get rid of' mean?" he asked Bissell.

"Use your imagination," Bissell responded. "No holds barred."

In the year ahead the Agency did indeed use its imagination. There was even a short-lived plan to convince the Cuban people of Christ's Second Coming, complete with aerial starbursts. "Elimination by illumination," the scheme was dubbed by one senior officer. But such silliness gave way to more deadly plans, including a contract on Castro's life offered to the Mafia. The Agency was determined to create chaos in Cuba, with a mix of sabotage, propaganda, and, if need be, outright assassination. The project was part of a broad-based action against Castro code-named Operation Mongoose.

-- The Book of Honor: The Secret Lives and Deaths of CIA Operatives, by Ted Gup


But what, you may well ask, does any of this have to do with the glowing-eyed beast that briefly haunted Flatwoods in September 1952? It is here that we finally get to the crux of that particularly fraught matter.

One particular item that Hungerford focused a great deal of her attention on was a book titled Magic: Top Secret. It was penned back in 1949 by a mysterious and controversial character named Jasper Maskelyne. Maskelyne was both a highly skilled magician and an employee of the British Army. His job during WWII was to come up with alternative ways and weapons with which to deceive and defeat the Nazis. That Maskelyne -- who came across in the pages of his book very much like the character "Q" from the James Bond novels and movies -- may have significantly exaggerated his wartime role for the readers of Magic: Top Secret suggests that his operations were not quite as exciting, or even as real, as he claimed them to be. But not for RAND, and certainly not for the U.S. Air Force, which practically hung upon Maskelyne's every word, particularly as it pertained to one very weird cloak-and-dagger operation.

According to Maskelyne, while fighting the Nazis in the mountains of Italy at the height of the War, the British Army came up with a brilliant but undeniably strange idea. They built what was essentially, in Maskelyne's very own words, "a gigantic scarecrow, about 12 feet [3.6m] high" that would "stagger forward under its own power and emit frightful flashes and bangs." The idea was to have those Italians who were not sympathetic to the Allies believe the strange contraption -- complete with "great electric blue sparks jumping from it" -- was none other than the devil himself, working hand in glove with the Brits in some terrible, Faustian pact to defeat the Axis powers (Maskelyne, 1949). The result: terror, chaos, and calamity broke out wherever and whenever the flashing creature made its unearthly appearance. Villagers that were hostile to the British locked themselves in their homes, thus giving Maskelyne and his colleagues a very good idea about how monstrous superstitions and devilish beliefs could significantly influence the tide of war. Fearful of going to hell for aiding Hitler's minions, those very same hostile Italian villagers closed ranks and thought twice about ever rendering aid to the Nazis again. The British government gained an advantage, the Nazis had suffered significant blows, and not a single shot from a rifle had to be fired -- all thanks to a fabricated, mechanized Satan.


Image
The Pentagon creates a monster, © U.S. Air Force, 1950. Source: U.S. Air Force, under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act
U.S. Air Force
PROJECT RAND
RESEARCH MEMORANDUM
THE EXPLOITATION OF SUPERSTITIONS FOR PURPOSES OF PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE
Jean M. Hungerford
14 April 1950
The RAND Corporation


IT'S ALIVE!

Believe it or not, there are deep and undeniable parallels between the British Army's demonic caper and the events at Flatwoods that occurred less than a decade later. Both the UK military's scarecrow and the monster of the little West Virginia town were around 12 feet (3.6m) tall, both emitted bright, flashing lights and strange sparks that arced wildly into the air; and, perhaps most important of all, both were classic examples of how psychological warfare can help defeat an enemy. On this latter point, let's not forget that Jean M. Hungerford's RAND report was specifically prepared for psychological warfare planners in the U.S. Air Force, who took a great deal of interest in what the witnesses and the media were saying about the Flatwoods Monster and what they thought the creature was. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Air Force took a great deal of secret interest in the words of Jasper Maskelyne, too.

You'll recall that Maskelyne's escapades occurred in small, isolated areas that could have been easily and secretly monitored to see how effectively the ruses were working. Flatwoods, a town of fewer than 400 people even today, would have made just such an ideal location for the U.S. Air Force to test a similar device to Maskelyne's devil, and see how a monster could be "animated" and used to deceive and terrify. Doing this in a safe and secure environment such as Flatwoods would have provided the U.S. Air Force with plenty of food for thought about how such a weird weapon could be used against a superstitious or credulous enemy at the height of the Cold War
-- if such a monstrosity were ever needed, of course.

THE ISSUE OF THE ACE OF SPADES

Interestingly, the primary witnesses to the Flatwoods Monster described the creature as having a head that resembled the spade design on a playing card. It so happens that this particular motif has played a leading role in more than a few psychological warfare operations orchestrated by the American military. By way of an example, a May 10, 1967, document titled Vietnam: PSYOP Directive: The Use of Superstitions in Psychological Operations in Vietnam describes how U.S. military forces learned that certain factions of North Vietnamese military personnel were "deathly afraid" of the ace of spades card and perceived it as an "omen of death." The author of the document (whose name is excised from the declassified papers) continues that, with this information in hand, American soldiers became "psy-warriors" and, "with the assistance of playing card manufacturers, began leaving the ominous card in battle areas and on patrols into enemy-held territory." Interestingly, files also show that the US. military had clearly done its homework on this matter, and came to realize that the dread of the ace of spades on the part of certain factions of the Vietnamese military dated back to the 19th century, when French Catholic missionaries to Vietnam encountered the Montagnard people of Vietnam's Central Highlands and learned how the imagery provoked terror in the region (Vietnam: PSYOP Directive: The Use of Superstitions in Psychological Operations in Vietnam, 1967).

In his autobiography, In the Midst of Wars, Lansdale gives an example of the counterterror tactics he employed in the Philippines. He tells how one psychological warfare operation "played upon the popular dread of an asuang, or vampire, to solve a difficult problem." The problem was that Lansdale wanted government troops to move out of a village and hunt Communist guerrillas in the hills, but the local politicians were afraid that if they did, the guerrillas would "swoop down on the village and the bigwigs would be victims." So, writes Lansdale:

A combat psywar [psychological warfare] team was brought in. It planted stories among town residents of a vampire living on the hill where the Huks were based. Two nights later, after giving the stories time to circulate among Huk sympathizers in the town and make their way up to the hill camp, the psywar squad set up an ambush along a trail used by the Huks. When a Huk patrol came along the trail, the ambushers silently snatched the last man of the patrol, their move unseen in the dark night. They punctured his neck with two holes, vampire fashion, held the body up by the heels, drained it of blood, and put the corpse back on the trail. When the Huks returned to look for the missing man and found their bloodless comrade, every member of the patrol believed that the vampire had got him and that one of them would be next if they remained on the hill. When daylight came, the whole Huk squadron moved out of the vicinity.


Lansdale defines the incident as "low humor" and "an appropriate response ... to the glum and deadly practices of communists and other authoritarians."

-- The Phoenix Program, by Douglas Valentine


Two operations -- one at Flatwoods, West Virginia, and the other in Vietnam -- that involved psychological warfare strategists in the U.S. military, two operations that involved the deployment of playing card motifs, and two operations that were designed to provoke fear in the individuals targeted. Do we really need further evidence that the Flatwoods monster was the creation of officialdom? Finally, how truly ironic it would be if the U.S. Air Force had taken its inspiration and ideas from Jasper Maskelyne, a man whose claims and assertions are viewed by many today through deeply suspicious eyes. Deceit, duplicity, and deception, it seems, are the common threads that run through virtually the entire tapestry of this particular saga of monstrous secrets.

*************************

Chapter 7: Welcome to the Jungle, from "True Stories of Real-Life Monsters" [Excerpt]
by Nick Redfern

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


The very real possibility that the diabolical "creature" of Flatwoods, West Virginia, was an ingenious, robotic creation of the U.S. military is further bolstered by the revelation that the Department of Defense (DOD) was engaged in yet further bizarre monster-making and myth-spreading during this exact same time frame. Indeed, while a glowing-eyed beast of the night was terrifying the good folk of Flatwoods, West Virginia, Pentagon scientists and psychological warfare planners within the American military were spreading dark tales of blood-sucking, monstrous vampires roaming the wild depths of the Philippines.

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Major Edward Lansdale, the brains behind a monstrous vampire, © U.S. Air Force, 1963. Source: Wikipedia

The truly fascinating saga was one born out of the fertile and fantastical mind of Major General Edward G. Lansdale. During the hostilities of WWII, Lansdale spent a great deal of time working with personnel attached to the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, with whom he carefully developed and nurtured his very own weird ways of defeating the enemy -- in fact, just about any enemy. But it was when Lansdale was given a post-war assignment at HQ Air Forces Western Pacific in the Philippines that things really began to heat up and the strangeness rose to stratospheric levels.

At the specific insistence of the sixth president of the Philippines, Elpidio Rivera Quirino, Lansdale was brought in to work on a project of fantastic proportions with the Joint United States Military Assistance Group. The year, rather notably, was exactly the same as Flatwoods: 1952. As for the reason, it was to offer secret American military aid -- by virtually any means necessary -- and intelligence support in stamping out a growing uprising on the part of what were known as the Hukbalahap. During the Second World War, the Huks, as they came to be known, operated as guerrilla units in the Philippines with just one goal in mind: to wipe out the invading forces of the empire of Japan. And they didn't do a bad job of it, either. But when the war finally came to an end in 1945, the Huks quickly turned their attentions toward ousting the government of the Philippines. From 1946 onward, face-to-face confrontation between the Huks and the forces of the government and the military was commonplace. The time came, however, when enough was seen as being just about enough. Cue the stealthy entrance, stage left, of Major General Lansdale and his mysterious box of terrible tricks.

A BLOODSUCKER OF THE NIGHT

While deep in discussion with President Quirino and his staff about the varied ways and means available to defeat the Huks, Lansdale came to learn just how deeply influenced the latter were by certain local myths and legends. Lansdale had a sudden flash of brilliance: He decided to bring one of those same superstitions -- the shape-shifting Aswang vampire -- to life. The Aswangs were fearsome, bloodsucking monsters of gigantic proportions that were said to lurk deep within the jungles of the Philippines. As Lansdale learned to his profound interest, the Huks carefully and cautiously avoided any location where the predatory Aswangs were said to dwell and feast. Thus, an amazingly off-the-wall plan soon came to fruition. Decades after this previously classified operation was over, when he finally felt comfortable speaking out publicly, Lansdale himself had this to say on the controversial matter:

To the superstitious, the Huk battleground was a haunted place filled with ghosts and eerie creatures. A combat psy-war squad was brought in. It planted stories among town residents of an Aswang living on the hill where the Huks were based. Two nights later. after giving the stories time to make their way up to the hill camp, the psy-war squad set up an ambush along the trail used by the Huks (Lansdale, 1991).


It was then that things were taken to a whole new, and almost unbelievable, level. Lansdale's men were suddenly transformed from elite soldiers of the U.S. military into predatory beasts of the dark forest, simply by means of the power of suggestion and a much-feared myth seemingly brought to life. On the first night of the operation, the elite team carefully and stealthily followed a Huk patrol on its regular evening check of the area. It was then, when the skies and woods were at their absolute darkest, that they were suddenly and silently attacked from behind. The last man on the patrol was quickly plucked from the group and his neck was punctured with a specially crafted lethal weapon that had been designed to mimic the classic calling card of the legendary bloodsuckers: two deep and savage wounds to the neck. But that was only the beginning. The team then tied a rope around the ankles of the victim, threw the other end of the rope over the thick branch of a nearby tree, and hauled the man's body into the air to let it hang there -- upside down -- for hours, as the blood slowly drained out of the vicious, gaping neck wounds. Then, with the dastardly deed finally complete, the body of the Huk was carefully taken down and quietly dumped near the camp of his rebel comrades. The result, as Edward Lansdale noted, was as amazing as it was swift:

When the Huks returned to look for the missing man and found their bloodless comrade, every member of the patrol believed that the Aswang had got him and that one of them would be next if they remained on that hill. When daylight came, the whole Huk squadron moved out of the vicinity (Ibid.).


As a direct result of these actions, vitally important strategic ground was taken out of the hands of the Huk rebels. That a bloodsucking monster was brought to life, and quickly and deeply influenced the outcome of a military engagement, despite the fact that the same monster never really existed in the first place, is without doubt extraordinary. And, in light of the data contained in this chapter, those who dearly wish, or fully believe, the monster of Flatwoods to have been an entity of unknown origins, and that bloodthirsty Aswangs really are among us, might do well to reconsider those particular views. While it may be said that both monsters "lived" in some strange way, the nature of their odd, brief lives was even stranger than it would have been had they actually been fantastic beasts of flesh and blood.

In his autobiography, In the Midst of Wars, Lansdale gives an example of the counterterror tactics he employed in the Philippines. He tells how one psychological warfare operation "played upon the popular dread of an asuang, or vampire, to solve a difficult problem." The problem was that Lansdale wanted government troops to move out of a village and hunt Communist guerrillas in the hills, but the local politicians were afraid that if they did, the guerrillas would "swoop down on the village and the bigwigs would be victims." So, writes Lansdale:

A combat psywar [psychological warfare] team was brought in. It planted stories among town residents of a vampire living on the hill where the Huks were based. Two nights later, after giving the stories time to circulate among Huk sympathizers in the town and make their way up to the hill camp, the psywar squad set up an ambush along a trail used by the Huks. When a Huk patrol came along the trail, the ambushers silently snatched the last man of the patrol, their move unseen in the dark night. They punctured his neck with two holes, vampire fashion, held the body up by the heels, drained it of blood, and put the corpse back on the trail. When the Huks returned to look for the missing man and found their bloodless comrade, every member of the patrol believed that the vampire had got him and that one of them would be next if they remained on the hill. When daylight came, the whole Huk squadron moved out of the vicinity.


Lansdale defines the incident as "low humor" and "an appropriate response ... to the glum and deadly practices of communists and other authoritarians."

-- The Phoenix Program, by Douglas Valentine


*************************

Chapter 8: Animal ESP and the U.S. Army, from "True Stories of Real-Life Monsters" [Excerpt]
by Nick Redfern

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


According to formerly classified U.S. Army documents, in the early 1950s, a Dr. Joseph Banks Rhine, Ph.D. of Duke University, was quietly approached by senior personnel in the American military to participate in a program of truly extraordinary and mind-boggling proportions. The clandestine operation was designed to determine if dogs, cats, and pigeons possessed any significant degree of extrasensory perception (ESP). The reason was as bizarre as it was controversial: to train those very same animals to use their near-magical powers of the mind to locate enemy land mines buried beneath war-torn battlefields. As for why Rhine was chosen for this weird, Lassie-meets-The X-Files project, the answer is very simple: Prior to his secret work with the Army, Rhine was a noted, albeit controversial figure within the field of paranormal research. (Indeed, he later became known as the father of modern parapsychology. A prestigious title, certainly. Not only that; it was Rhine who coined the term extrasensory perception, thus forever establishing for himself legendary status as a leading player within the realm of psychic phenomena.)

To understand what it was that prompted the United States Army to embark upon its grand, strange scheme, we have to go all the way back to the 1920s, when Rhine secured a master's degree and a doctorate in botany at the University of Chicago and began digging into matters relative to alternative science. From there, it was all very much uphill: Soon thereafter Rhine accepted a position at Duke University and began pursuing in earnest his burgeoning passion for ESP and the mysterious powers of the mind -- and not just human minds, but those of animals, too.

Rhine routinely used a pack of 25 Zener cards in his research. Named after their creator, Karl Zener, a psychologist who graduated from Harvard, taught at Princeton, and worked with the U.S. National Research Council, the cards display a variety of designs -- lines, crosses, squares, and circles. In a typical experiment the goal was to sit two people opposite one another, and have one act as the sender and the other as the receiver. The "sender" would focus intently on the image displayed on the card in front of him, while the "receiver" would try to divine that same image via psychic means. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't
, but for Rhine, even if it yielded a low success rate, well, it was still a success. So, he pressed on with his work with even greater intensity and focus. As a testament to this, by the early 1940s, the number of trials that he and his staff embarked on had reached almost one million.

Image
[Paranormal Studies Laboratory]

[Someone has written on door: "Venkman Burn in Hell"]

Image
[Dr. Peter Venkman] All right, I'm gonna turn over the next card.
I want you to concentrate.
Image
I want you to tell me what you think it is.

Image
Image
[Male Student] Square.

Image
[Dr. Peter Venkman] Good guess, but wrong.

Image
[Administers Electric Shock]
Image

Image
[Dr. Peter Venkman] Clear your head.
Image
Image
All right. Tell me what you think it is.

Image
[Female Student] Is it a star?

Image
[Dr. Peter Venkman] It is a star. Very good. That's great.
Image
All right. Think hard.
What is it?

Image
[Male Student] Circle.

Image
[Dr. Peter Venkman] Close.
But definitely wrong.

Image
[Administers electric shock]

Image
[Male Student] [Candy pops out of his mouth]

-- Ghostbusters, directed by Ivan Reitman


As a new decade progressed, and as Rhine's status, reputation, and (eventually) legend as a guru in psychic circles grew ever larger, it was not just his fellow parapsychologists, the general public, and the mainstream media that were looking at Rhine through interested and intrigued eyes. Little did Rhine suspect at the time that senior personnel behind the closed, cloaked doors of the Pentagon were doing exactly that, as well. They were hardly broadcasting that interest, however. Indeed, steps were taken to keep official interest in Rhine's work under secure wraps at all times, even when the man himself was carefully approached by government sources with the hopes of getting him onboard as a Cold War-era warrior of sorts.

DOGGEDLY LOOKING FOR MINES

It was a normal day in January 1952 -- or as normal as any day can ever be for someone whose routine involved the study of psychic phenomena -- when Rhine received in his office a telephone call of a kind that many might expect to see only in a Hollywood movie. A life-changing question was put to Rhine by the "Man in Black" at the other end of the line: Would he be interested in serving his country by heading up a classified project that could help save American lives and significantly strengthen U.S. national security, and all via psychic means, no less? Of course Rhine was interested! Thus began a most odd relationship between the psychic scientist and the top brass of the American military.

Having signed a lengthy and complex nondisclosure contract with the Army, Rhine was invited in February 1952 out to the Engineering Research and Development Laboratories of the Army's Virginia-based Fort Belvoir facility, where he was briefed on the ambitious scheme to turn animals into psychic spies and mine-detectors. Rhine was immediately hooked on the new and novel idea, and work began in earnest. Within days, the Army provided Rhine with half a dozen young German shepherds that were to function as his test subjects for about three months.

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Psychic dogs of the military © U.S. Army, circa 1960s/1970s. Source: Wikipedia

Although the admittedly limited number of publicly available U.S. Army files on this matter do not fully describe how, exactly, Rhine and his cohorts tested the dogs' psychic powers, they do demonstrate that two dogs in particular scored high. Their names were Tessie and Binnie, and apparently they worked wonders locating dummy mines buried on remote stretches of California's sandy coastline in June of 1952. Rhine's own words, which were recorded on the same day of the initial experiment, are notable: "The success was high enough that it was soon evident that the dogs were alerting the mines before they set foot on the surface above them." And the Army's response was positively glowing, too: The result of the first day's total of 14 trials was 86 percent successful (Rhine, Final Report for Contract, 1953).

Tessie and Binnie continued to yield very impressive results, so much so that the military quickly took things to another, far more ambitious level. They moved away from the beach and buried a number of deactivated mines under the water at distances of anywhere from 40 to 60ft (12-18m) from the shore. When the paranormal pooches were brought to the beach shortly thereafter, they barked loudly, leaped out of the back of the vehicle, raced for the sea, and excitedly swam right to where the devices lay concealed below the churning waves. Rhine reported back to the Pentagon and got straight to the point: "There is at least no known way in which the dogs could have located the underwater mines except by extrasensory perception." The excited top brass didn't disagree. With Tessie and Binnie having quickly met with the Pentagon's approval, the military expanded its attention to include not just man's best friend, but also the arch enemy of that same best friend, the cat (Ibid.).

CURIOUS CATS AND PARANORMAL PIGEONS

Interestingly, much of the relevant data concerning how the several cats used in the program were taught to locate the mines remain classified under U.S. national security regulations. Nevertheless, we do have the following brief words from Rhine contained in the files, which make it clear that they predicted a successful outcome in this venture, as well: "Most of the things reported about dogs that suggested the possibility of ESP as a factor were also claimed for cats. Psychologically, the animals are close enough together to make a transfer of findings from one species to the other fairly likely." It's most regretful that the bulk of the cat-related files remain unreleased, since Rhine's statement that "a transfer of findings from one species to the other [was] fairly likely" appears to imply that plans were initiated to have the cats and dogs work together and actually combine their psychic skills to locate the mines -- an undeniably extraordinary idea (Ibid.).

Raising the seriously weird stakes even higher, the Army also wanted to see what Rhine thought about getting a small army of psychically gifted pigeons along for the ride, too. Evidently, this proved to be overly ambitious and not at all successful, as Rhine himself admitted to the Army: "The mystery of pigeon-homing and the possibility that extrasensory perception enters into that performance led us to undertake the solution of the problem of how these pigeons find their way home. At the termination of the contract the problem had not been solved" (Ibid.). As Rhine was careful to stress with respect to the pigeon-based studies, however,

researchers have ruled out all existing sensory hypotheses, thereby making extrasensory perception a more plausible interpretation than it has been hitherto. This research has opened up possibilities of importance not only within but far beyond the scope of the projects specifically dealt with. The problems raised on this project involve basic research that may remain in the category of the inapplicable for many years. Measured against this is the enormous value, not only to intelligence but to application in a wide range of military uses of extrasensory perception (Ibid.).


THE RESEARCH CONTINUES

If the enigmas of the animal brain could be used to locate land mines, then what else might they be capable of? The military clearly recognized the logic and full import of this question. But Pentagon staff had something else on their minds, too: Precisely how reliable were Rhine's tests? Could it not have just been the case, some sources within the Army began to speculate, that Tessie and Binnie were merely using their powerful sense of smell, rather than engaging any sort of paranormal talent, to find the mines? To his credit, Rhine did consider just such a possibility, and, as a direct result, both the tests and the attendant conditions were modified to make sure that Tessie and Binnie were not exposed to strong cross-winds that might have allowed the pair to uncover "chemical stimuli" from the mines. Again, this seemed not to affect their successes -- not for some time, anyway (Ibid.).

Rather oddly, the positive results started to drop off dramatically in 1953, which led Rhine to advise his Army contacts that "the thing that stands out is that the ability that is being measured is a very elusive and delicate one" (Ibid.). Indeed, it was this statement that ultimately led the Army to make the decision to close down the program. Again, not because of the lack of any success: The Tessie and Binnie saga strongly suggested that they had achieved something new and notable here. The problem for the Pentagon was that this success was fleeting and uncontrollable; it could not be predicted, let alone guaranteed. And it was this somewhat-haphazard success rate -- coupled with the fact that the military was still struggling to comprehend the realm of ESP -- that led to the termination of the operation (Ibid.).

Rhine was far from being deterred, however. He continued with his research for decades afterward, and penned a number of books on the subject, including New World of the Mind and Parapsychology Today. Although he died in 1980, his legacy as a prime mover in the arena of ESP lives on. As for Tessie and Binnie, one has to wonder if their presumed, advanced mind-powers led them to realize, in some curiously canine fashion, that they were helping Uncle Sam's efforts to keep the United States safe from overseas enemies. Or perhaps the prospect of racing around Californian beaches under the hot, West Coast sun in the summer of 1952 was just a big lark for them, and they ultimately went to their graves sadly unaware of their brief, yet without a doubt significant role in one of the U.S. government's strangest secret projects of all time.
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British Security Co-ordination
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/16/20

Image
BSC operated from the 35th and 36th floors of the International Building, Rockefeller Center, New York during World War II

British Security Co-ordination (BSC) was a covert organisation set up in New York City by the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) in May 1940 upon the authorisation of the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.

Its purpose was to investigate enemy activities, prevent sabotage against British interests in the Americas, and mobilise pro-British opinion in the Americas. As a 'huge secret agency of nationwide news manipulation and black propaganda', the BSC influenced news coverage in the Herald Tribune, the New York Post, The Baltimore Sun, and Radio New York Worldwide.[1] The stories disseminated from Rockefeller Center would then be legitimately picked up by other radio stations and newspapers, before being relayed to the American public.[1] Through this, anti-German stories were placed in major American media outlets to turn public opinion.[2]

Its cover was the British Passport Control Office. BSC benefitted from support given by the chief of the US Office of Strategic Services, William J. Donovan (whose organisation was modelled on British activities), and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt who was staunchly anti-Nazi.[3]


Beginnings

Image
As head of the British Security Coordination, William Stephenson has been credited with changing American public opinion from an isolationist stance to a supportive tendency regarding America's entry into World War II.[4]

The declaration of war upon Germany by the British in September 1939 forced a break in liaison between SIS [Secret Intelligence Service: MI6] and the FBI because of the Neutrality Acts of 1930s. William Stephenson was sent to the US by the head of SIS to see if it could be rekindled to an extent that SIS could operate effectively in the US. While J. Edgar Hoover was sympathetic, he could not go against the State Department without the President's authorisation; he also believed that if it was authorised, it should be a personal liaison between Stephenson and himself without other departments being informed. However, Roosevelt endorsed co-operation.

The liaison was necessary because Britain's enemies were already present in the US and could expect sympathy and support from German and Italian immigrants, but the authorities there had no remit or interest in activities that were not directly against US security.[5]

Stephenson's report on the American situation advocated a secret organisation acting beyond purely SIS activities and covering all covert operations that could be done to ensure aid to Britain and an eventual entry of the US into the war. Stephenson was given this remit and the traditional cover of appointment as a 'Passport Control Officer' which he took up in June 1940. Although the existing setup in New York was lacking, Stephenson could call upon his personal liaison with Hoover, the support of Canada, the British ambassador, and his acquaintances with US interventionists.

Operation

The office, which was established for intelligence and propaganda services, was headed by Canadian industrialist William Stephenson. Its first tasks were to promote British interests in the United States, counter Nazi propaganda, and protect the Atlantic convoys from enemy sabotage.

The BSC was registered by the State Department as a foreign entity. It operated out of Room 3603 at Rockefeller Center and was officially known as the British Passport Control Office from which it had expanded. BSC acted as administrative headquarters more than operational one for SIS and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and was a channel for communications and liaison between US and British security and intelligence organisations.[6]

BSC used a number of legitimate outlets for its work. In 1940, a German agent, Gerhard Alois Westrick, who was cultivating support and possible sabotage among American oil companies, was effectively exposed through news articles placed in the New York Herald Tribune. A wave of public outrage was followed by Weldrick's expulsion from the US and the forced resignation of the head of Texaco (Torkild Rieber). Through third parties, BSC developed the independent and non-profit WRUL shortwave radio station foreign-language broadcast capability and then fed it stories it wanted disseminated worldwide. The station had a large number of listeners who corresponded with the station, which made it possible for reactions to the broadcasts to be directly monitored. For a period, the station was unwittingly the agent of BSC; after the US entered the war, the WRUL operation was turned over to US control.

Although the British and Americans were co-operating at the Prime Minister-President level at the time, the arrival of "British spies" in the United States infuriated J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and displeased the US Department of State.


Stephenson and Hoover did not see eye to eye but had cooperated in a number of operations against espionage activities by Nazi Germany in the US. The British hired Americans despite promising otherwise. The Americans who were recruited in the BSC were given British identification numbers beginning with the digits 4 and 8, apparently representing the 48 states.

In 1939, Stephenson arranged for the Hamilton Princess Hotel to become a censorship centre. All mail, radio and telegraphic traffic bound for Europe, the U.S. and the Far East were intercepted and analyzed by 1,200 censors, of British Imperial Censorship, part of British Security Coordination (BSC), before being routed to their destination.[7][8][9] With BSC working closely with the FBI, the censors were responsible for the discovery and arrest of a number of Axis spies operating in the US, including the Joe K ring.[10]

It was through the BSC that the British acquired the powerful "Aspidistra" transmitter that was used for propaganda by the Political Warfare Executive (PWE), BBC overseas broadcasts and by the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the war against Germany. BSC also sourced a transmitter for it to communicate with the UK which was operated under the code name "Hydra" at Camp X, BSC's Special Training School No. 103, a Second World War paramilitary installation in Whitby, Ontario for training covert agents in the methods of "secret warfare".[11][12] The Hydra station was established in May 1942 by engineer Benjamin deForest Bayly; he also invented a very fast coding/decoding machine for telegraph transmissions labelled the Rockex.[13][14] Camp X had been established in December 1941 by Stephenson to train Allied agents in methods of clandestine operations; many graduates would be dropped behind enemy lines in Europe by SOE.[15][14]

The British novelist William Boyd, in a 2006 article for The Guardian,[16] stated that although the total number of BSC agents operating in the US in the early 1940s is unknown, he estimated there were at least "many hundreds" and had seen "the figure of up to 3,000 mentioned".

Noël Coward saw Stephenson, colloquially known as "Little Bill", at the end of July 1940 when on a world entertainment and propaganda tour. He wrote that the "suite in the Hampshire House with the outsize chintz flowers crawling over the walls became pleasantly familiar to me..." and that Stephenson "had a considerable influence on the next few years of my life". Stephenson offered him a job but was overruled by London.[17]

Counter-smuggling and "shipping security"

South America was an important neutral source of trade for the Axis forces; its importance would increase after the US entry into the war in 1941. The Italian airline LATI operated a transatlantic service - between Rome and Rio de Janeiro - which was a conduit for high-value goods (platinum, mica, diamonds, etc.), agents and diplomatic bags. London instructed the BSC to do something about that.

The airline had connections with the Brazilian government through the President's son-in-law, and it was supplied, despite the US State Department protests, by Standard Oil in the US, making official channels ineffective. To curtail LATI's activities, the BSC decided that the Brazilians themselves would have to take measures - sabotage would be only a temporary inconvenience. Accordingly, the BSC constructed a forged letter of such accuracy that its authenticity could not be questioned even under forensic examination. The letter purported to come from LATI's head office to an executive of the company stationed in Brazil. The contents included disparaging references to the Brazilian president and to the US, and implied connections with a fascist opposition party in Brazil, the Party of Popular Representation (founded in 1945). Following a "burglary" of the executive's house, a photostat of the letter was placed with an American Associated Press reporter, who immediately took it to the American Embassy, which then showed the letter to the President of Brazil, Getúlio Vargas. LATI's operations in Brazil were confiscated and its personnel interned - the airline ceased transatlantic flights in December 1941. Brazil broke off relations with the Axis and joined the Allies in 1942.[18]

To counter the carrying of high-value contraband goods to and from the Americas, the BSC set up a network of observers on merchant ships. The agents, recruited from the crews (and among pro-British masters) of the vessels, would report their observations, cargo manifests, and passenger lists to agents in port when they arrived. Agents watching docks at both ends also gathered intelligence. Ships or enemy agents could be intercepted and US and British lines could blacklist questionable crew from employment. From autumn 1941, the BSC handed over control of observers on American vessels and ports to the US while retaining control of the remainder and maintaining close liaison with the new US handlers.{cn}}


Notable employees

• Cedric Belfrage

Cedric Henning Belfrage was an English film critic, journalist, writer, and political activist. He is best remembered as a co-founder of the radical US-weekly newspaper the National Guardian. Later Belfrage was referenced as a Soviet agent in the US intelligence Venona project, although it appears that he had been working for British Security Co-ordination as a double-agent.

-- Cedric Belfrage, by Wikipedia


• Roald Dahl[19] – after he was transferred to Washington, D.C. as Assistant Air Attaché.

Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, and wartime fighter pilot. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide...

He served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. He became a fighter pilot and, subsequently, an intelligence officer, rising to the rank of acting wing commander. He rose to prominence as a writer in the 1940s with works for children and for adults, and he became one of the world's best-selling authors. He has been referred to as "one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century"...

Dahl's short stories are known for their unexpected endings, and his children's books for their unsentimental, macabre, often darkly comic mood, featuring villainous adult enemies of the child characters. His books champion the kindhearted and feature an underlying warm sentiment. His works for children include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The Witches, Fantastic Mr Fox, The BFG, The Twits, and George's Marvellous Medicine. His adult works include Tales of the Unexpected.

-- Roald Dahl, by Wikipedia


• Dick Ellis – deputy-head, post-war accused of being spy for the Germans and the Soviets

Charles Howard Ellis CBE CMG (1895–1975), better known as Dick Ellis, was an Australian-born British intelligence officer, who is alleged to have also been a double agent for Germany and the Soviet Union. According to Nigel West the SIS believed that Ellis had been a spy for the Abwehr.[1] Ellis was accused by Chapman Pincher of being a traitor.

-- Dick Ellis, by Wikipedia


Ian Fleming

Ian Lancaster Fleming was an English author, journalist and naval intelligence officer who is best known for his James Bond series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his father was the Member of Parliament for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst and, briefly, the universities of Munich and Geneva, Fleming moved through several jobs before he started writing.

While working for Britain's Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War, Fleming was involved in planning Operation Goldeneye and in the planning and oversight of two intelligence units, 30 Assault Unit and T-Force. His wartime service and his career as a journalist provided much of the background, detail and depth of the James Bond novels.

-- Ian Fleming, by Wikipedia


• Gilbert Highet – historian, professor of Greek and Latin at Columbia University
• Dorothy Maclean

Dorothy Maclean was a Canadian writer and educator on spiritual subjects who was one of the original three adults at what is now the Findhorn Foundation in northeast Scotland...

From 1941 onwards she worked for the British Security Coordination in New York City.
After being posted to Panama, she met and married John Wood, though the couple would divorce in 1951.

On her way to New York City in 1941, Maclean had met Sheena Govan, and it was through her that she would later meet Peter Caddy. Living in England in the 1950s, Maclean became involved in the spiritual practices of Govan and Caddy and eventually Eileen Caddy. When the Caddys were appointed to manage a hotel in Scotland, Maclean joined them as the hotel's secretary.

After the Caddys became unemployed in 1962, they moved into a caravan near the village of Findhorn. In 1963, an annex was built so that Maclean could continue to work with them. A community eventually grew up around the Caddys and Maclean, and this community has since 1972 been known as the Findhorn Foundation.

Maclean was known for her work with devas, said to be intelligences overseeing the natural world. Her book To Hear the Angels Sing gives an overview of this work and also provides autobiographical materials. A full-length biography, Memoirs of an Ordinary Mystic was published in 2010.

Maclean left Findhorn in 1973 and subsequently founded an educational organization in North America with David Spangler [the Lorian Association].


-- Dorothy Maclean, by Wikipedia


• Eric Maschwitz – screenwriter, lyricist and broadcaster, Intelligence Corps officer

He joined the BBC in 1926. His first radio show was In Town Tonight. While at the BBC he wrote a radio operetta Goodnight Vienna, with the popular song of the same title co-written by George Posford. In 1932 it was adapted as a film starring Anna Neagle.

Between 1927 and 1933, Maschwitz was the editor of the weekly broadcast listings magazine Radio Times.

Under contract to MGM in Hollywood from 1937, he co-wrote the adaptation of Goodbye, Mr. Chips, made by MGM-British, for which he shared an Academy Award nomination.

From August 1939, he was a postal censor in Liverpool. From November 1939, he served with the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)/MI-6 D Section (sabotage). In 1940, he briefly worked to establish a resistance organization in Beverley, Yorkshire, and for Army Welfare in London before being assigned to the Special Operations Executive (SOE). In 1940 he was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps. He was then sent to New York City to work for the British Security Coordination (BSC). In 1942, he returned to London, briefly supervising radio programmes for the troops. He then transferred to the Political Warfare Executive (PWE). He ended the war as chief broadcasting officer with the 21st Army Group, leaving the army as a Lieutenant-Colonel. Maschwitz, along with Major John MacMillan (members of "No 1 Field Broadcasting Unit"), was responsible for taking over the "Reichssender Hamburg" on 3 May 1945. This requisition enabled the British occupation troops to start broadcasting programmes for their soldiers in northern Germany, and was the nucleus for the British Forces Network (BFN), inaugurated with Maschwitz's help in July 1945, eventually to become the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS)....

In 1958, near the start of the BBC/ITV ratings wars, he rejoined the BBC as Head of Television Light Entertainment. About the job he said, "I don't think the BBC is a cultural organisation. We've got to please the people. The job of a man putting on a show is to get an audience." By 1962, he was serving as assistant to the BBC's Controller of Programmes, and it was in this capacity that he requested the recently formed BBC Survey Group to examine possible ideas for a science fiction drama series; the results of the study led to the creation of Doctor Who the next year.

-- Eric Maschwitz, by Wikipedia


• H. Montgomery Hyde – counter-espionage Intelligence Corps officer

Although his mother came from a Protestant Home Rule background, all were involved in the 1914 UVF gun running, the seven-year-old Harford being a dummy casualty for first-aid practice....

The Larne gun-running was a major gun smuggling operation organised in April 1914 in Ireland by Major Frederick H. Crawford and Captain Wilfrid Spender for the Ulster Unionist Council to equip the Ulster Volunteer Force. The operation involved the smuggling of almost 25,000 rifles and between 3 and 5 million rounds of ammunition from the German Empire, with the shipments landing in Larne, Donaghadee, and Bangor in the early hours between Friday 24 and Saturday 25 April 1914. The Larne gun-running may have been the first time in history that motor-vehicles were used "on a large scale for a military-purpose, and with striking success".

-- Larne gun-running, by Wikipedia


He joined the British Army Intelligence Corps in 1939, serving as an Assistant Censor in Gibraltar in 1940. He was then commissioned in the intelligence corps (MI6) and engaged in counter-espionage work in the United States under Sir William Stephenson, the Director of British Security Coordination in the Western Hemisphere. Hyde was also Military Liaison and Security Officer, Bermuda, from 1940 to 1941 and Assistant Passport Control Officer in New York from 1941 to 1942. He was with British Army Staff, USA from 1942 to 1944, attached to the Supreme HQ Allied Expeditionary Force in 1944, and then seconded to the Allied Control Commission for Austria until 1945 as a legal officer....

Hyde later in 1972 wrote the first history of homosexuality in Great Britain and Ireland, The Other Love, perhaps his most memorable and long-lasting work. With its rich and detailed narratives, "fusing legal knowledge with illustrative anecdotage," it was the most extensive book on the subject. Antony Grey, secretary of the Homosexual Law Reform Society (HLRS) provided case histories and cuttings from the society's files for its contemporary section.

-- H. Montgomery Hyde, by Wikipedia


• David Ogilvy – applied Gallup audience research techniques

David Mackenzie Ogilvy CBE was a British advertising tycoon, founder of Ogilvy & Mather, and known as the "Father of Advertising". Trained at the Gallup research organisation, he attributed the success of his campaigns to meticulous research into consumer habits....

During World War II, Ogilvy worked for the British Intelligence Service at the British embassy in Washington, DC. There he analyzed and made recommendations on matters of diplomacy and security. According to a biography produced by Ogilvy & Mather, "he extrapolated his knowledge of human behaviour from consumerism to nationalism in a report which suggested 'applying the Gallup technique to fields of secret intelligence.'" Eisenhower’s Psychological Warfare Board picked up the report and successfully put Ogilvy’s suggestions to work in Europe during the last year of the war.

Also during World War II David Ogilvy was a notable alumnus of the secret Camp X, located near the towns of Whitby and Oshawa in Ontario, Canada. According to an article on the CBC Website: "It was there he mastered the power of propaganda before becoming king of Madison Avenue. Although Ogilvy was trained in sabotage and close combat,
he was ultimately tasked with projects that included successfully ruining the reputation of businessmen who were supplying the Nazis with industrial materials."
...

He was appointed Chairman of the United Negro College Fund in 1968, and trustee on the Executive Council of the World Wildlife Fund in 1975.

-- David Ogilvy (businessman), by Wikipeida


• Walter Thomas Wren
• John Arthur Reid Pepper
Ivan T. Sanderson

Ivan Terence Sanderson was a biologist and writer born in Edinburgh, Scotland, who became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Along with Belgian-French biologist Bernard Heuvelmans, Sanderson was a founding figure of cryptozoology, a pseudoscience and subculture. Sanderson authored material on paranormal subjects and wrote fiction under the pen name Terence Roberts....

He became famous claiming to have seen an Olitiau after being attacked by a creature he described as "the Granddaddy of all bats".

The olitiau is a giant bat reported from the Assumbo Mountains of Cameroon in West-Central Africa, known from native folklore and a single sighting made by Ivan T. Sanderson. It has sometimes been equated with the kongamato.

-- Olitiau, by Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology


Sanderson conducted a number of expeditions as a teenager and young man into tropical areas in the 1920s and 1930s, gaining fame for his animal collecting as well as his popular writings on nature and travel.

During World War II, Sanderson worked for British Naval Intelligence, in charge of counter-espionage against the Germans in the Caribbean, then for British Security Coordination, finally finishing out the war as a press agent in New York City. Afterwards, Sanderson made New York his home and became a naturalized U.S. citizen...

Sanderson was an early follower of Charles Fort. Later he became known for writings on topics such as cryptozoology, a word Sanderson coined in the early 1940s, with special attention to the search for lake monsters, sea serpents, Mokèlé-mbèmbé, giant penguins, Yeti, and Sasquatch.

Sanderson's book Abominable Snowmen argued that there are four living types of abominable snowmen scattered over five continents. The book was criticized in the Science journal as unscientific. The reviewer noted that "unfortunately, the author's concept of what constitutes scientific evidence will scarcely be accepted by most scientists. His standards are unbelievably low." Sanderson relied upon anecdotal reports and dubious footprints.

Sanderson has been described as credulous for suggesting that aircraft and boats went missing at Devil's Sea because of a wrinkle in spacetime, gravitational or magnetic aberrations, extra-terrestrials or mysterious underwater people. Larry Kusche who traced the Devil's sea stories to their original sources found that the phenomena of Devil's Sea had been fabricated and was nothing more than an exaggeration based on the loss of several fishing boats over a period of five years.

Sanderson's credibility was damaged with his endorsement of the giant penguin hoax. In 1948 (and the next decade), giant three-toed footprints were found at Clearwater Beach in Florida. Sanderson proclaimed that the footprints were impossible to fake and were made by a fifteen-foot tall penguin. In 1988, Tony Signorini a prankster admitted that with a friend he had made the footprints by a pair of cast iron feet attached to high-top sneakers.

Sanderson founded the Ivan T. Sanderson Foundation in August 1965 on his New Jersey property, which became the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained (SITU) in 1967. SITU was a non-profit organization that investigated claims of strange phenomena ignored by mainstream science.


-- Ivan T. Sanderson, by Wikipedia


• Amy Elizabeth Thorpe

Amy Elizabeth "Betty" Thorpe was, according to William Stephenson of British Security Coordination, an American spy, codenamed "Cynthia", who worked for his agency during World War II....

Her father was George C. Thorpe, a distinguished U.S. Marine Corps officer. Her mother, Cora Wells, was the daughter of a Minnesota state senator.


Thorpe was introduced at a young age by her parents to the Washington social scene and quickly became immersed in the world of diplomatic intrigue. By the time she was in her late teens, she had been romantically linked to foreign diplomats many years her senior. In 1936, Arthur Pack, second secretary at the British embassy in Washington, became Thorpe's choice for a husband; but in the 1930s, in the wake of two quick pregnancies and Pack's work-connected travels, the relationship became distant.

According to William Stevenson's A Man Called Intrepid, Thorpe traveled frequently to Europe, nominally to support Pack's work. In reality, according to Stevenson, she had embarked upon secret intrigues, working for both sides in the Spanish Civil War....

By the time World War II broke out in Europe in 1939, Thorpe was out of Poland and had returned to Washington, D.C., where, according to the late American TV journalist David Brinkley, she resumed her tour through the American capital's diplomatic social scene, often as mistress to married foreign diplomats.According to Stevenson, Thorpe used the access gained by her romantic relationships to obtain strategic secrets about Nazi Germany, Vichy France and Fascist Italy, and to extract practical knowledge needed to place spies in Fortress Europe. In 1942, according to Stevenson, she obtained codes from the Vichy French embassy in Washington which assisted the Allied invasion of North Africa.

According to Stevenson, a love affair that Thorpe conducted with the Italian naval attaché Admiral Alberto Lais was especially productive and gained western Allied leaders early strategic insight into Axis war plans in the Mediterranean.
In 1967, however, the Admiral's heirs sued British author, H. Montgomery Hyde in an Italian court for defamation, insisting that Lais (who had died in 1951) had not betrayed military secrets, and won. In 1988, Lais' two sons protested publication of the seduction account in David Brinkley's best-selling Washington Goes to War and persuaded the Italian defense ministry to publish denial ads in three leading East Coast newspapers.

The Italian Naval Enigma message leading to Italian defeat at the Battle of Cape Matapan was broken at the Government Code and Cypher School, Bletchley Park, using Dilly's rodding method without a codebook. This debunks Hyde's theory that a codebook obtained from Admiral Lais was responsible.

Thorpe is reported to have later said about her sexually-active war years:

Ashamed? Not in the least, my superiors told me that the results of my work saved thousands of British and American lives.... It involved me in situations from which 'respectable' women draw back – but mine was total commitment. Wars are not won by respectable methods.


After her nearly-estranged husband, Arthur Pack, killed himself in 1945, Thorpe married one of her best informants, Charles Brousse, former press attaché at the Vichy French embassy in Washington. The couple lived together quietly in France in the Château de Castelnou, a medieval castle in the commune of Castelnou (Catalan: Castellnou dels Aspres) in the French département of Pyrénées-Orientales, until her death, from throat cancer, on December 1, 1963.

-- Amy Elizabeth Thorpe, by Wikipedia


• Frank Foley

The story of his escape from Germany and his language skills had been noted by someone at the War Office. He was encouraged to apply for the Intelligence Corps. On 25 July 1918 Foley was promoted Lieutenant. In July 1918 he became part of a small unit which was responsible for recruiting and running networks of secret agents in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. After the Armistice he served for a short time in the Inter-Allied Military Commission of Control in Cologne. On 19 April 1920 he relinquished the temporary rank of captain, and in December 1921 retired from the Army with the rank of Captain.

After the running down of the Commission, he was subsequently offered the post of passport control officer in Berlin which was a cover for his main duties as head of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) station. During the 1920s and 30s, Foley was successful in recruiting agents and acquiring key details of German military research and development.

Foley is primarily remembered as a "British Schindler". In his role as passport control officer, he helped thousands of Jews escape from Nazi Germany. At the 1961 trial of former ranking Nazi Adolf Eichmann, he was described as a "Scarlet Pimpernel" for the way he risked his own life to save Jews threatened with death by the Nazis. Despite having no diplomatic immunity and being liable to arrest at any time, Foley would bend the rules when stamping passports and issuing visas, to allow Jews to escape "legally" to Britain or Palestine, which was then controlled by the British. Sometimes he went further, going into internment camps to get Jews out, hiding them in his home, and helping them get forged passports. One Jewish aid worker estimated that he saved "tens of thousands" of people from the Holocaust....

He returned to Berlin very soon after the war under the cover of Assistant Inspector General of the Public Safety Branch of the Control Commission in Germany, where he was involved in hunting for ex-SS war criminals.

-- Frank Foley, by Wikipedia


• Herbert Sichel[20]
Alexander Halpern — Menshevik and ex-Freemason

Aleksandr Yakovelich Galpern. also known as Alexander Halpern, was a Russian Menshevik politician and attorney, who played a significant part in the Russian Revolution. He was a member of the Grand Orient of the Peoples of Russia and sat in Alexander Kerensky's Russian Provisional Government. Following the October Revolution, he fled abroad to the United Kingdom. During the Second World War, Halpern worked in British service as an MI6 agent in the United States, as part of British Security Co-ordination....

He joined an irregular freemasonic lodge; the Grand Orient of the Russian Peoples; upon the recommendation of Alexander Kerensky and Bruno Germanovič Lopatin-Bart. He sat as a member of the Supreme Council of the Grand Orient from 1912 to 1917 and was the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of the Grand Orient from 1916 to 1917. In February 1917 he replaced Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov as manager of the affairs of the Russian Provisional Government and held this post until the overthrow of the Provisional Government in October 1917 during the October Revolution. He was associated with the failed Committee for Salvation of Motherland and Revolution. Until the end of 1918, he lived covertly in Moscow and Petrograd, before fleeing first to Paris and then to London.

In 1928 he gave an interview about Freemasonry to Boris Nikolayevsky, later published in the book "Russian Masons and Revolution." ...

During the Second World War, Halpern lived in New York City in the United States, working for British Intelligence (British Security Co-ordination)....While there he maintained contact with old Mensheviks such as Boris Nicolaevsky, Irakli Tsereteli, Raphael Abramovitch and others, who collaborated in The Socialist Herald.

-- Alexander Halpern, by Wikipedia


See also

• Amy Elizabeth Thorpe ("Cynthia")
• Camp X

Notes

1. William Boyd (19 August 2006), "The Secret Persuaders", The Guardian, retrieved 30 November 2013
2. Macintyre, Ben (8 October 2006). "The Spy Who Raised Me". The New York Times. Retrieved 30 November 2013.
3. David Ignatius (1 October 1989). "'45 papers detail British spying in U.S.'". Toledo Blade. The Washington Post. Retrieved 30 November 2013.
4. Folkart, Burt A. (3 February 1989). "William Stephenson, 93; British Spymaster Dubbed 'Intrepid' Worked in U.S." The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 30 November 2013.
5. The Secret History of British Intelligence p.xxvi
6. Davies |MI6 and the Machinery of Spying |ISBN 0714683639 |December 4, 2004 |pp 128, 131
7. [1]
8. Fairmont Hotels & Resorts Hotel History of the Fairmont Hamilton Princess.
9. [ [2]
10. BERNEWS: |Bermuda’s WWII Espionage Role. |11 November, 2011
11. "Ontario War Memorials". Ontario War Memorials. 14 August 2012. Retrieved 23 March 2013.
12. Davies, p137
13. [3]
14. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 3 August 2015.
15. [4]
16. Boyd, William, |William Boyd |"The Secret Persuaders", 19 August 2006
17. Future Indefinite|Noel Coward |page 159, 194 |(William Heinemann, London, 1954)
18. BSC p288-290
19. "The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington", 2008, Jennet Conan
20. Dorril, Stephen (2002). Mi6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service. Simon & Schuster.

References

• Boyd, William, "The Secret Persuaders," The Guardian, 19 August 2006.
• Conant, Jennet The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington (Simon and Schuster, 2008)
• Hodgson, Lynn Philip, (foreword by Secret Agent Andy Durovecz), Inside Camp X (2003) – ISBN 0-9687062-0-7
• Macdonald, Bill, The True Intrepid: Sir William Stephenson and the Unknown Agents, (Raincoast, 2001) – ISBN 1-55192-418-8 This book contains interviews with several Canadian employees of BSC in New York.
• Mahl, Thomas E., Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939–44, (Brassey's Inc., 1999) ISBN 1-57488-223-6
• Stephenson, William Samuel, Roald Dahl, Tom Hill and Gilbert Highet (introduced by Nigel West), British Security Coordination: The Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas, 1940–1945, Fromm International (June 1999) – ISBN 0-88064-236-X (first published in the UK in 1998) Reviewed by Charles C. Kolb (National Endowment for the Humanities), December 1999.
• Stevenson, William (no relation to Stephenson), A Man Called Intrepid, The Secret War, (Harcourt Brace Javonovich, 1976) – ISBN 0-15-156795-6.
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Findhorn Foundation
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/17/20

Image
Findhorn Foundation and Community
Findhorn community members in front of the Ecovillage
Formation 1962
Purpose Spirituality
Headquarters Findhorn, Moray, Scotland
Region served
Worldwide
Website Findhorn Foundation

The Findhorn Foundation is a Scottish charitable trust registered in 1972, formed by the spiritual community at the Findhorn Ecovillage, one of the largest intentional communities in Britain.[1] It has been home to thousands of residents from more than 40 countries. The Foundation runs educational programmes for the Findhorn community, and houses about 40 community businesses such as the Findhorn Press and an alternative medicine centre.[1][2][3]

Before the Findhorn Foundation in 1972, there was a Findhorn Trust as more people joined Eileen Caddy, Peter Caddy and Dorothy Maclean, who had arrived at the Caravan Park at Findhorn Bay on 17 November 1962. The Findhorn Foundation and surrounding Findhorn Ecovillage community at The Park, Findhorn, a village in Moray, Scotland, and at Cluny Hill in Forres, is now home to more than 400 people.[1]

The Findhorn Foundation and the surrounding community have no formal doctrine or creed. The Foundation offers a range of workshops, programmes and events in the environment of a working ecovillage. The programmes are intended to give participants practical experience of how to apply spiritual values in daily life. Approximately 3000 participants from around the world take part in residential programmes each year.

Findhorn Ecovillage has been awarded UN Habitat Best Practice designation from the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (HABITAT), and regularly holds seminars of CIFAL Findhorn, a United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), affiliated training centre for Northern Europe.[4][5]

The founders; early history

Image
Decorated salads at Findhorn Foundation, Cluny Hill

In the late 1940s Sheena Govan emerged as an informal spiritual teacher to a small circle that included her then-husband, Peter Caddy, and Dorothy Maclean. Eileen Caddy, as she became, who had a background in the Moral Rearmament (MRA) movement, joined them in the early 1950s. The group's principal focus was dedication to the 'Christ Within' and following God's guidance.[6] In 1957 Peter and Eileen Caddy were appointed to manage the Cluny Hill Hotel near Forres, Maclean joining them as the hotel's secretary. Though now separated from Sheena Govan, whose relationship with Eileen Caddy had deteriorated, they continued with the practices she taught.[7] In the early 1960s, Caddy, along with others who called themselves channellers, believed that they were in contact with extraterrestrials through telepathy, and prepared a landing strip for flying saucers at nearby Cluny Hill.[8]

In late 1962, Caddy's employment with the hotel chain that owned Cluny Hill, at the time he was working in the Trossachs, was terminated. He and Eileen settled in a caravan near the village of Findhorn; an annex was built in early 1963, so that Maclean could live close to the Caddy family. Eileen Caddy's direct relationship with God began with an experience in Glastonbury, where she recorded that she heard a voice say "Be Still and Know that I am God". Peter Caddy followed "an intuitive spontaneous inner knowing" and had many other influences from theosophy to MRA, from which he developed methods of positive thinking and other methods he had learned in the Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship.

Maclean initially followed practices from the Sufi group centred on the teachings of Inayat Khan, and from this developed her contact with the divine to focus upon communication with 'nature spirits' which she named as devas. The three of them agreed that Maclean's contacts should be made useful for the growing of food which was supplementing their income (the family at this point being entirely supported by Family Allowance). The Caddys credited the garden's success of producing "exceptionally large vegetables"[9] – on these practices.[10] More conventional explanations have been suggested by locals from outside the community who feel that the garden's successes can be explained by the unique microclimate of Moray[11] or the substantial amounts of horse manure donated by a local farmer.[3][7]

Many other people were involved with varying importance and different influences in the early years, from Lena Lamont, part of Sheena Govan's circle, who lived in her caravan with her family and who shunned publicity, to those whom Peter Caddy met as he travelled in British New Age circles: among them Robert Ogilvie Crombie (ROC), who wrote of nature spirits in The Findhorn Garden;[12] Sir George Trevelyan who formed the Wrekin Trust;[13] Anthony Walter Dayrell Brooke, Liebie Pugh, and Joan Hartnell-Beavis. Through connections such as these and the distribution of Eileen Caddy's writings in the form of a booklet titled God Spoke to Me (1967), people came to live at the Caravan Park, eventually forming the 'Findhorn Trust' and the 'Findhorn Community'.[14]

Image
Findhorn attracts cultural and artistic events, such as Mike Scott and The Waterboys, shown here playing a concert at Universal Hall in 2004.

From 1969, following Eileen's guidance, Peter Caddy slowly devolved his day-to-day command. David Spangler became co-director of Education almost immediately after he arrived in 1970, which resulted in the gradual transformation into a centre of residential spiritual education with a permanent staff of over 100, and the setting up of the Findhorn Foundation in 1972. In the following year David Spangler and Maclean, with several other Findhorn Foundation members, left to found the Lorian Association near Seattle. By 1979 Peter and Eileen's marriage had disintegrated, and he left the Foundation. Eileen Caddy remained, and in 2004 was awarded an OBE.[15][16] Peter Caddy died in a car crash in Germany on 18 February 1994. Eileen Caddy died at home on 13 December 2006. Maclean continued to give talks and workshops worldwide, visiting Findhorn regularly, and in August 2009 returned to Findhorn to live. She retired from public life in 2010.[17]

A centre of education

The Findhorn Foundation offers a wide variety of courses and conferences; education is its core activity. The Findhorn Foundation College was established in 2001. An ethnographic study in the 1990s looked in detail at the 'Experience Week', which it called "the main entry point into Findhorn's ethos and lifestyle", noted that over 5,000 people attended Findhorn courses annually, and called the Foundation an example of contemporary religious individualism.[18]

A theatre and concert hall known as the Universal Hall was built at the former caravan park site, known as The Park, between the years 1974 and 1984. The musical group The Waterboys, who have performed a number of concerts in the hall, named their album Universal Hall after the structure.[19]

Organisation

Community


The community includes an arts centre, shop, pottery, bakery, publishing company, printing company and other charitable organisations. All aim to practice the founding principles of the community and together make up the New Findhorn Association (NFA). The NFA was formed in 1999 to provide a structure for all the people and organisations in the community. It includes people from within a 50-mile radius of The Park, at Findhorn. Each year a council and two listener-conveners are elected by the membership of the NFA, who organise monthly community meetings to decide upon community-wide issues. By 2011, the NFA consisted of "320 members and 30 organisations".[20] These included for example the Findhorn Press, the Phoenix Community Stores, the Trees for Life organisation, and the various educational centres including the Findhorn Foundation itself.[20][a]

Management structure

Each department is responsible for its own decisions.[21] There is an 11-person "Management Team" which makes "decisions which affect the organisation as a whole".[21] The Management team consults with the Council, which consists of approximately 40 "committed members" who "meet regularly to discuss issues and participate in team-building activities".[21] The management team is "responsible to the Trustees of the Foundation". The Trustees meet 4 times per year.[21]

Decisions are made meditatively by "attunement", where "each person does their best to find an inner state of mind in which goodwill is foremost and any outcome will be one which serves as the best for all."[21] "Most decisions are made unanimously or with a loyal minority."[21] Failing this, decisions can be passed with a 90% majority vote; decisions that do not reach this threshold are given time "for more information to be gathered", and the proposals are presented again later.[21]

Ecovillage

Main article: Findhorn Ecovillage

Image
A Barrel House — the first dwelling in the Findhorn Ecovillage

Since the 1980s numerous organisations have started up in the vicinity of Findhorn which have an affiliation of some kind with the Findhorn Foundation. These include Ekopia, Moray Steiner School, the Phoenix Community Store,[22] Trees for Life (Scotland)[23] and The Isle of Erraid. Collectively they now form an ecovillage intended to demonstrate a positive model of a viable, sustainable human and planetary future. By 2005, Findhorn Ecovillage had around 450 resident members, and its residents were claimed to have the lowest recorded ecological footprint of any community in the industrialised world, at half of the UK average.[24]

Physically, Findhorn Ecovillage is based at The Park, where the Foundation's belief in sustainability is expressed in the built environment with 'ecological' houses, innovative use of building materials such as local stone and straw bales, and applied technology in the Living Machine sewage treatment facility and electricity-generating wind turbines. The Ecovillage is intended to be a tangible demonstration of the links between the spiritual, social, ecological and economic aspects of life, for use as a teaching resource. It is a founder member of the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) a non-profit organisation that links together a diverse worldwide movement of autonomous ecovillages and related projects. The Ecovillage project has received Best Practice designation from the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat).[5]

Relationships with other NGOs

Image
The wind turbines make the Ecovillage a net exporter of electricity.

The Findhorn Foundation is a member of the Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations (CONGO), attends the Sustainable Development Committee meetings and is a founding member of the following NGO groups active at the UN Headquarters in New York: The Earth Values Caucus,[25] The Spiritual Caucus,[26] and The NGO Committee on Spirituality, Values and Global Concerns.[27]

A new sustainable development training facility, CIFAL Findhorn was launched in September 2006. This is a joint initiative between The Moray Council, the Global Ecovillage Network, the Findhorn Foundation and UNITAR [United Nations Institute for Training and Research].[28]

[b]See also


• New Age communities
• Global Ecovillage Network

Notes

1. The phrase "the Findhorn community" thus has at least 3 meanings: the Findhorn Foundation; the NFA; and the people of the village of Findhorn.
2. CIFAL stands for "International Training Centre for Authorities and Leaders" (French: 'Centre International de Formation des Autorités et Leaders'".

References

1. The Dictionary of Alternatives: Utopianism and Organization, by Martin Parker, Valerie Fournier, Patrick Reedy. Zed Books, 2007. ISBN 1-84277-333-X. Page 100.
2. Findhorn.org Archived 25 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine Findhorn Official website. "[help] unfold a new human consciousness and [create] a positive and sustainable future"
3. Christensen, p. 499
4. Moray to be base for UN training Archived 22 November 2012 at the Wayback Machine BBC News, 22 September 2006.
5. Findhorn Ecovillage. Awarded UN Habitat Best Practice designation, the Ecovillage has a reputation for being at the cutting edge of the sustainability global movement Archived 3 October 2008 at the Wayback Machine.
6. In Perfect Timing: Memoirs of a Man for the New Millennium Peter Caddy 1994
7. Obituary of Eileen Caddy Archived 4 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine, The Daily Telegraph, 19 December 2006
8. Roberts, A. Saucers over Findhorn Archived 8 August 2008 at the Wayback Machine, Fortean Times, accessed 12-08-08.
9. Obituary of Eileen Caddy Archived 6 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine, The Guardian, 08-01-07
10. Memoirs of an Ordinary Mystic Dorothy Maclean 2010
11. McCarthy, M. Findhorn, the hippie home of huge cabbages, faces cash crisis Archived 8 December 2010 at the Wayback Machine The Independent, 05-06-01
12. "R. Olgivie Crombie (1899 – 1975)". Albion. Retrieved 31 August 2019. His work is recounted in ‘The Gentleman and the Faun’ (Findhorn Press 2009) and ‘The Occult Diaries of R. Ogilvie Crombie’ by Gordon Lindsay (Starseed Publications 2011).
13. Dawkins, Peter. "Sir George Trevelyan: obituary". Sir George Trevelyan 1906 - 1996. Retrieved 31 August 2019.
14. "About the Findhorn Foundation". Findhorn Foundation. Retrieved 31 August 2019.
15. "No. 57155". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 2003. pp. 15–28.
16. MBEs: A-C Archived 2 July 2008 at the Wayback Machine BBC News, 31 December 2003.
17. "Dorothy Maclean Home". lorianpress.com. Retrieved 25 January 2019.
18. Sutcliffe, Steven (2010). "A Colony of Seekers: Findhorn in the 1990s". Journal of Contemporary Religion. 15 (2): 215–231. doi:10.1080/13537900050005985. ISSN 1353-7903.
19. "Facilities". The Universal Hall. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
20. New Findhorn Community Association Archived 20 November 2011 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 18 December 2011
21. FAQ: Decision-making Archived 27 December 2011 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 18 December 2011
22. "The Phoenix". The Phoenix Shop. Retrieved 17 November 2019.
23. "Alan Watson Featherstone confirmed as keynote speaker for green events and innovations". A Greener Festival Limited. 13 December 2013. Archived from the original on 16 April 2014. Retrieved 15 April 2014.
24. "Findhorn eco-footprint is 'world's smallest'". Sunday Herald. 11 August 2008. Archived from the original on 23 January 2009. A new expert study says the multinational community's ecological footprint is half the UK average. This means Findhorn uses 50% fewer resources and creates 50% less waste than normal.
25. The Earth Values Caucus. United Nations Archived 28 October 2006 at the Wayback Machine
26. The Spiritual Caucus. United Nations Archived 2 January 2007 at the Wayback Machine
27. The NGO Committee on Spirituality, Values and Global Concerns Archived 28 February 2007 at the Wayback Machine
28. McLaren, Tanya (11 October 2011). "CIFAL leader wins international recognition". Forres Gazette.

Further reading

Early period, to 1985


• For works by Eileen Caddy, Dorothy Maclean, and David Spangler, see those articles.
• Hawken, Paul (1975) The Magic Of Findhorn. Harper & Row.
• Sherman, Kay Lynne (1982) The Findhorn Family Cook Book. Random House.
• Various (1975) The Findhorn Garden. Harper & Row. (see below for new edition)
• Various (1980) Faces Of Findhorn. Harper & Row.

General books

• Christensen, Karen and Davide Levinson. (2003) Encyclopedia of Community: From the Village to the Virtual World. Sage. ISBN 0-7619-2598-8 Google books
• Burns, B. et al. (2006) CIFAL Findhorn. Findhorn Foundation.
• Caddy, Peter (1994) In Perfect Timing. Findhorn Press.
• Castro, Stephen James (1996) Hypocrisy and Dissent within the Findhorn Foundation: Towards a Sociology of a New Age Community. New Media Books. ISBN 0-9526881-0-7.
• Maclean, Dorothy and Kathleen Thormod Carr (1991) To Honor the Earth. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-062505-99-6
• Miller, Cally and Harley Miller (1995) Sights and Insights: Guide to the Findhorn Foundation Community. Findhorn Press. ISBN 978-1-899171-50-7
• Earl Platts, David (1996) Playful Self-discovery: Findhorn Foundation Approach to Building Trust in Groups. Findhorn Press. ISBN 978-1-899171-06-4
• Earl Platts, David (Ed) (1999) Divinely Human, Divinely Ordinary: Celebrating The Life & Work Of Eileen Caddy. Findhorn Press.
• Earl Platts, David (2003) The Findhorn Book Of Building Trust In Groups. Findhorn Press.
• Greenaway, John P. (2003) In the Shadow of the New Age: Decoding the Findhorn Foundation. Finderne Publishing. ISBN 978-0-953743-30-8
• Riddell, Carol (1990) The Findhorn Community: Creating A Human Identity For The 21st Century. Findhorn Press. 1997. ISBN 0-905249-77-1.
• Sherman, Kay Lynne (2003) The Findhorn Book Of Vegetarian Recipes. Findhorn Press.
• Talbott, John (1993) Simply Build Green. Findhorn Foundation.
• Thomas, Kate (1992) The Destiny Challenge. New Frequency Press.
• Thompson, William Irwin (1974) Passages About Earth. Harper & Row.
• Tolle, Eckhart (2006) Eckhart Tolle's Findhorn Retreat: Finding Stillness Amidst the World. New World Library. (Book with 2 DVDs) ISBN 978-1-57731-509-4
• Walker, Alex (Ed) (1994) The Kingdom Within: A Guide to the Spiritual Work of the Findhorn Community. Findhorn Press. ISBN 0-905249-99-2.
• Various (2008) Findhorn Garden Story: A Brand New Colour Edition of the Black & White Classic. 3rd Edition. Findhorn Press. ISBN 978-1-84409-135-5

Films

• My Dinner With Andre (1981) - Andre Gregory talks about his experience at Findhorn.
• Follow the Rainbow to Findhorn (2010) - A documentary about the Findhorn community
• The Story So Far (2014) - The voices of residents, fellows and visitors to the Foundation over the past 52 years
• A Tour of the Findhorn Foundation Community (2016) - The history, buildings and projects around the community

External links

• The Findhorn Foundation's website
• EcoviIlage Project – overview and background
• New Findhorn Association – website for the community association
• "The Magic Kingdom", article about Findhorn from The Independent, 12 June 2001, online reprint accessed 25.8.2014
• "Follow the Rainbow to Findhorn" IMDB page — IMDB page about the 2010 documentary about the community
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Dorothy Maclean
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/17/20

Image
Findhorn co-founder Dorothy Maclean (open eyes) during a weekend workshop given at Sirius Community

Dorothy Maclean (January 7, 1920 – March 12, 2020) was a Canadian writer and educator on spiritual subjects who was one of the original three adults at what is now the Findhorn Foundation in northeast Scotland.[1]

Maclean was born in Guelph, Ontario. She obtained a 3-year Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Western Ontario. From 1941 onwards she worked for the British Security Coordination in New York City. After being posted to Panama, she met and married John Wood, though the couple would divorce in 1951.

On her way to New York City in 1941, Maclean had met Sheena Govan, and it was through her that she would later meet Peter Caddy. Living in England in the 1950s, Maclean became involved in the spiritual practices of Govan and Caddy and eventually Eileen Caddy. When the Caddys were appointed to manage a hotel in Scotland, Maclean joined them as the hotel's secretary.

After the Caddys became unemployed in 1962, they moved into a caravan near the village of Findhorn. In 1963, an annex was built so that Maclean could continue to work with them. A community eventually grew up around the Caddys and Maclean, and this community has since 1972 been known as the Findhorn Foundation.

Maclean was known for her work with devas, said to be intelligences overseeing the natural world. Her book To Hear the Angels Sing gives an overview of this work and also provides autobiographical materials. A full-length biography, Memoirs of an Ordinary Mystic was published in 2010.

Maclean left Findhorn in 1973 and subsequently founded an educational organization in North America with David Spangler.


Her childhood home, Woodside, at 40 Spring Street, Guelph has since been designated a heritage property under the Ontario Heritage Act.

Maclean retired from public life in 2010 and lived again at Findhorn.[2] She turned 92 years old during Findhorn Foundation's 50 Year Anniversary celebration in 2012.[3] She turned 100 in January 2020[4] and died shortly after on March 12, 2020, in Findhorn.[5]

Bibliography

• Wisdoms (1971)
• The Living Silence (1977)
• The Soul of Canada (1977)
• To Hear the Angels Sing (1980)
• To Honour the Earth (1991) (with Kathleen Thormod Carr)
• Choice of Love (1998)
• Seeds of Inspiration (2004)
• Call of the Trees (2006)
• Come Closer (2007)
• Memoirs of an Ordinary Mystic (2010)

References

1. "Dorothy Maclean – 95 years young". Findhorn Foundation. Archived from the original on 6 March 2016. Retrieved 14 January 2016.
2. "Messages from the God Within – Dorothy Maclean". Lorian Press.
3. Ward, Eva. "Dorothy Maclean – 92 Years Young". Findhorn Foundation. Archived from the original on 2016-04-16. Retrieved 2013-09-03.
4. https://www.northern-scot.co.uk/news/ha ... hy-189104/
5. "Findhorn Foundation's founder dies aged 100". Forres Gazette. 2020-03-13. Retrieved 2020-03-16.
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

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David Spangler
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/17/20

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No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferian initiation...

Lucifer comes to give to us the final gift of wholeness. If we accept it then he is free and we are free. This is the Luciferic initiation. It is one that many people now, and in the days ahead, will be facing, for it is an initiation in the New Age.

-- David Spangler


David Spangler (born January 7, 1945) is an American spiritual philosopher and self-described "practical mystic." He helped transform the Findhorn Foundation in northern Scotland into a center of residential spiritual education and is a friend of William Irwin Thompson. Spangler is considered one of the founding figures of the modern New Age movement, although he is highly critical of what much of the movement has since become, especially its commercial and sensationalist elements.

Childhood and education

Spangler was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1945. At the age of six, he moved to Morocco in North Africa where his father was assigned as a counterintelligence agent for U.S. Army Intelligence. He lived there for six years, returning to the United States when he was twelve in 1957. He attended Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, though his time there was interrupted when his family moved to Phoenix, Arizona, where he graduated from high school. He attended Arizona State University where he was working for a Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry but continued to pursue other subjects of interest.

Clairvoyant development

From his earliest years, Spangler has argued he was clairvoyantly aware of non-physical entities. While in Morocco at age seven, he said he had a classical mystical experience of merging with a timeless presence of oneness within the cosmos and then remembering his existence prior to this life as well as the process by which he chose to become David Spangler and entered into his present incarnation. Following that experience, he claims his awareness of and contact with various inner worlds of spirit was heightened, though he believed throughout his childhood that everyone shared the kind of perception and experience that he had. This changed when he moved to Phoenix where he met other individuals who were clairvoyant or were acting as "channels" for non-physical entities and realized that his own inner experiences were not common. In his late teens he was asked by members of metaphysical study groups to give talks on his own inner contacts, leading up to 1964 when he gave the keynote address at a national spiritual conference on "Youth and the New Age." This led to his receiving a number of invitations from around the United States to come and give lectures to various spiritual and metaphysical organizations. At the time he refused these invitations to concentrate on his scientific studies, but the following year, in 1965, he felt called by his own inner spirit to leave college and begin sharing his own particular insights and inner perceptions.

This led to his going to Los Angeles in the summer of 1965 where a series of lectures led to further invitations and resulted in the career that he has followed since then as a lecturer and teacher of spirituality. Some of this early history can be found in his books Apprenticed to Spirit, Blessing: The Art and the Practice and Pilgrim in Aquarius.

The Findhorn Foundation

Main article: Findhorn Foundation

In 1970, Spangler went to Britain where he visited the spiritual community of Findhorn in northern Scotland. He claimed to have been told by non-physical, spiritual contacts that he would find his "next cycle of work" in Europe; he arrived at Findhorn and was told that one of the founders, Eileen Caddy, had had a vision three years earlier that a David Spangler would be coming there to live and work in the community. Not knowing who David Spangler was, but having read a small booklet written by him which someone sent to them, Eileen and her husband Peter Caddy and their Canadian colleague, Dorothy Maclean, the three founders of the Findhorn Community, had been waiting for someone with that name to arrive. Sometime after Spangler's arrival, he was offered and accepted joint directorship of the community along with Peter Caddy. He remained in the Findhorn Community until 1973. He then returned to the United States with a number of other Americans and Europeans, including Dorothy Maclean, where they founded the Lorian Association as a non-profit vehicle for the spiritual and educational work they wished to do together.[1][2]

Lindisfarne Association

Also in 1974 Spangler helped William Irwin Thompson, the author of At the Edge of History, Time Falling Bodies Take to Light, and various other books on contemporary culture, science and spirit, to found the Lindisfarne Association and became one of the first Lindisfarne Fellows, a group of scientists, artists, religious teachers, political activists, economists, and visionaries whose number included Gregory Bateson, John and Nancy Todd, Elaine Pagels, E. F. Schumacher, Stewart Brand, Paul Hawken, James Lovelock, and Paul Winter, among others.

Going beyond the "New Age"

Over the years since then, Spangler has continued to lecture and teach and has written numerous books on spirituality. He is considered one of the founding figures of the modern New Age phenomenon, but early on he identified its shadow and rejected what he termed "its further outgrowth into a myriad of 'old age' pursuits (including spiritual pursuits) dressed in 'new age' garb".

"Lucifer comes to give to us the final gift of wholeness. If we accept it, then he is free and we are free. This is the Luciferic initiation. It is one that many people now, and in the days ahead, will be facing, for it is an initiation into the New Age . . . No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless they will take a Luciferian initiation." (Quoted from "Reflections on the Christ," 1978 ed., Chapter IV, pgs 44-45)

-- David Spangler


This devolution into commercially-driven fads, identity politics, mystical glamour, atavistic spiritualisms, and uncritical guru reverence was a main theme of his Reimagination of the World, co-authored with fellow-traveler and cultural historian William Irwin Thompson.[3]

Spangler has often been miscast as a new-age channeler due in part to the "transmissions" received while living at the intentional community at Findhorn, Scotland in the 1970s, which became the core of his first book Revelation: The Birth of a New Age.[4] In hindsight it can be seen that Spangler's ideas were at that time transitional between the earlier theosophical esotericism represented by Alice Bailey and an emerging worldview that is more postmodern, less obscure, and less metaphysical than theosophy.[5] Spangler himself reports that it took him some years to develop a language in which to communicate clearly the insights and experiences he had been having since childhood.

Recent Activities

In recent years he has emphasized a practical or incarnational spirituality in which our everyday lives—our physical, embodied, sometimes resplendent and sometimes shabby persons—can be experienced as spiritual or sacred, as opposed to a spirituality concerned solely with the transpersonal and transcendent. Spangler defines Incarnational Spirituality most simply as the exploration and celebration of the individual and his or her unique spiritual and creative capacities. The practice of Incarnational Spirituality is one of honoring the sacredness and sovereignty of each of us and practicing our powers of blessing, manifestation, collaboration, and loving engagement with life. It is not a religious practice, but an understanding of how we connect to this world and how we may grow and develop and shape ourselves and our world by our intention, presence, participation and service.[6]

Enlightened Society Assembly is a group retreat for all who have completed Rigden: Unconditional Confidence. This deep training emphasizes the view of the intrinsic goodness of all beings and society, practices that rouse compassionate openness, and confident activity that engages fully in the world.

In particular, this Assembly focuses on how we can create enlightened society on the spot, at home, in our city and nation, and wherever we go. Participants train in a practice to expand the warmth and strength of our hearts called the Shambhala Sadhana. This program works to integrate study, practice and community with an aim to understanding the basic goodness of oneself, others, society and the phenomenal world.
There is a chance to make a personal commitment to be of benefit by taking the Enlightened Society Vow.

-- Enlightened Society Assembly, by Shastri Janet Solyntjes


In 2010 his memoir Apprenticed to Spirit was published by Riverhead Books, describing his early years, his spiritual training, his association with Findhorn, Lindisfarne, and the New Age Movement, and his subsequent work with the Lorian Association and the development of Incarnational Spirituality.

Spangler is currently the Director of the Lorian Center for Incarnational Spirituality...

The Lorian Center for Incarnational Spirituality offers classes exploring the cosmology and practice of Incarnational Spirituality.

Incarnational Spirituality is about unfolding the sacredness within the individual and the world. It is a spiritual worldview that honors incarnation and the physical realm while recognizing the existence of non-physical dimensions and the possibilities of collaboration and transformation that they represent. It offers a partnership cosmology that supports practical skills to bring blessing into one’s life and environment.
You can explore that cosmology and its toolkit of skills in our classes and programs.

The Lorian Center for Incranational Spirituality, by The Lorian Association


and a Director of the Lorian Association (http://www.lorian.org). Through Lorian, he publishes a free monthly essay, David's Desk, and a subscription-only quarterly esoteric journal, Views from the Borderland, offering "field notes" from his clairvoyant researches and encounters with the subtle worlds.[7]

References

1. Paul Hawken, The Magic of Findhorn Bantam Books, 1975
2. Steven Sutcliffe, Children of the New Age: a history of spiritual practices, Routledge, 2003, ISBN 0-415-24298-3 ISBN 9780415242981 pp.120 ff.
3. Wouter Hanegraaff, New Age Religion and Western Culture, State University of New York Press, 1998, pp.39, 105
4. ibid pp.38-9
5. ibid p.104
6. "What is Incarnational Spirituality?". lorian.org. Issaquah, WA, US: Lorian Foundation. Archived from the original on January 20, 2018.
7. "Lorian". Lorian. Retrieved January 25, 2019.

Partial bibliography

• Revelation: Birth of a New Age, by David Spangler, Findhorn Press, 1971
• The Little Church, by David Spangler, Findhorn Press, 1972
• The Laws of Manifestation, Findhorn Press, 1975
• Towards a Planetary Vision, by David Spangler, Findhorn Press, 1976
• Relationship and Identity, by David Spangler, Findhorn Press, 1977
• Reflections on the Christ, Findhorn Press, 1978
• Emergence: The Rebirth of the Sacred, by David Spangler, Doubleday, 1986
• Reimagination of the World: A Critique of the New Age, Science, and Popular Culture, by David Spangler (with William Irwin Thompson), Bear and Co., 1991
• Everyday Miracles, by David Spangler, Bantam, 1996
• The Call, by David Spangler, Riverhead Books, 1996
• A Pilgrim in Aquarius, by David Spangler, Findhorn Press, 1996
• Parent as Mystic, Mystic as Parent, by David Spangler, Riverhead Books, 1998
• Blessing: The Art and the Practice, by David Spangler, Riverhead Books, 2001
• The Story Tree, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2004
• The Manifestation Kit, Lorian Press, 2005
• The Incarnational Card Deck, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2008
• The Laws of Manifestation (revised),by David Spangler,RedWheel/Weiser Books, 2009
• Incarnational Spirituality, by David Spangler,Lorian Press, 2009
• The Flame of Incarnation, by David Spangler,Lorian Press, 2009
• Subtle Worlds, by David Spangler,Lorian Press, 2010
• Facing the Future, by David Spangler,Lorian Press, 2010
• An Introduction to Incarnational Spirituality, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2011
• A Midsummer’s Journey, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2011
• The Call of the World, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2011
• The Soul’s Oracle Card Deck, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2011
• The Card Deck of the Sidhe, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2011
• Apprenticed to Spirit, by David Spangler, Riverhead Books, 2011
• Numerous articles in various magazines, including New Age Journal, East-West Journal, The Sun, New Times.
• Lorian Textbooks: Slightly edited transcripts of online classes:
o World Work, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2008
o Crafting Home: Generating the Sacred, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2009
o Crafting Relationships:The Holding of Others, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2009
o Partnering With Earth, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2013
o Starheart and Other Stores, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2013
o Conversations with the Sidhe, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2014
o Journey into Fire, by David Spangler, Lorian Press, 2015

External links

• Lorian Association
• A Vision of Holarchy, Seven Pillars Review, 2008
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

Postby admin » Wed Jun 17, 2020 7:49 am

William Irwin Thompson
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/17/20

Image
William Irwin Thompson on Brooklyn Bridge, 1996

William Irwin Thompson (born 16 July 1938) is known primarily as a social philosopher and cultural critic, but he has also been writing and publishing poetry throughout his career and received the Oslo International Poetry Festival Award in 1986. He describes his writing and speaking style as "mind-jazz on ancient texts". He is the founder of the Lindisfarne Association.

Biography

Thompson was born in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in Los Angeles, California. Thompson received his B.A. at Pomona College and his Ph.D. at Cornell University. He was a professor of humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then at York University in Toronto, Ontario. He has held visiting appointments at Syracuse University, the University of Hawaii, the University of Toronto and the California Institute of Integral Studies.

California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) is a private, non-profit university founded in 1968 and based in San Francisco, California. As of 2020, it operates in two locations; the main campus near the confluence of the Civic Center, SoMa, and Mission districts, and another campus for the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in the Potrero Hill neighborhood. CIIS has a total of 1,510 students and 80 core faculty members.

CIIS consists of four schools: the School of Professional Psychology & Health, the School of Consciousness and Transformation (mainly humanities subjects), the School of Undergraduate Studies, and the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine (ACTCM). ACTCM became the fourth school after merging with CIIS on July 1, 2015.

The institute offers interdisciplinary and cross-cultural graduate studies in psychology, counseling, philosophy, religion, cultural anthropology, transformative studies and leadership, integrative health, women's spirituality, and community mental health.[7] Many courses combine mainstream academic curriculum with a spiritual orientation, including influences from a broad spectrum of mystical or esoteric traditions. Although the Institute has no official spiritual path, some of its historical roots lie among followers of the Bengali sage Sri Aurobindo.

-- California Institute of Integral Studies, by Wikipedia


In 1973, he left academia to found the Lindisfarne Association. The Association, which he led from 1972 to 2012, was a group of scientists, poets, and religious scholars who met in order to discuss and to participate in the emerging planetary culture.[1] Thompson lived in Switzerland for 17 years. He describes a recent work, Canticum Turicum in his 2009 book, Still Travels: Three Long Poems, as "a long poem on Western Civilization that begins with folktales and traces of Charlemagne in Zurich and ends with the completion of Western Civilization as expressed in Finnegans Wake and the traces of James Joyce in Zurich."

Thompson is a Founding Mentor to the private K-12 Ross School in East Hampton, New York. In 1995, with mathematician Ralph Abraham, he designed a new type of cultural history curriculum based on their theories about the evolution of consciousness.[2] Thompson currently resides in Portland, Maine.

Work

Thompson did his Master's Essay at Cornell on applying the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead to poetry; he did his doctoral dissertation on the Easter Rising in Dublin 1916. While serving on the faculty at MIT in the 1960s, Thompson met famed media ecologist Marshall McLuhan, who would influence Thompson's writings on cultural history. Thompson engages a diverse set of traditions, including the Swiss cultural historian Jean Gebser, the Vedic philosopher Sri Aurobindo Ghose, the autopoetic epistemology of Francisco Varela, the endosymbiotic theory of evolution of Lynn Margulis, the Gaia Theory of James Lovelock, the complex systems thought of Ralph Abraham, the novels of Thomas Pynchon, and the daimonic transmissions of mystic David Spangler.

Style

Performance is central to Thompson's approach. Performances either open new horizons for the future or close them down, and should be judged on that basis. Thompson thought that with the emergence of the integral era and its electronic media expressions that a new mode of discourse was required. He sought "to turn non-fiction into a work of art on its own terms. Rather than trying to be a scholar or a journalist writing on the political and cultural news of the day, I worked to become a poetic reporter on the evolutionary news of the epoch".[3] He espoused the notion that one must express an integral approach not just in content but in the very means of expressing it. Thompson did this in the way he approached teaching: "The traditional academic lecture also became for me an occasion to transform the genre, to present not an academic reading of a paper, but a form of Bardic performance–not stories of battles but of the new ideas that were emerging around the world...The course was meant to be a performance of the very reality it sought to describe".[4]

"Wissenskunst" (literally, "knowledge-art") is a German term that Thompson coined to describe his own work. Contrasting it with Wissenschaft, the German term for science, Thompson defines Wissenskunst as "the play of knowledge in a world of serious data-processors."

As fiction and music are coming closer to reorganizing knowledge, scholarship is becoming closer to art. Our culture is changing, and so the genres of literature and history are changing as well. In an agricultural-warrior society, the genre is the epic, an Iliad. In an industrial-bourgeois society, the genre is the novel, a Moll Flanders. In our electronic, cybernetic society, the genre is Wissenkunst: the play of knowledge in a world of serious data-processors. The scholarly fictions of Jorge Luis Borges, or the reviews of non-existent books by Stanislaw Lem, are examples of new art forms of a society in which humanity live, not innocently in nature nor confidently in cities, but apocalyptically in a civilization cracking up to the universe. At such a moment as this the novelist becomes a prophet, the composer a magician, and the historian a bard, a voice recalling ancient identities.[5]


Works

The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light


In his acclaimed 1981 work The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, Thompson criticized what he considers the hubristic pretensions of E. O. Wilson's sociobiology, which attempted to subsume the humanities to evolutionary biology.[6] Thompson then reviewed and critiqued the scholarship on the emergence of civilization from the Paleolithic to the historical period. He analyzed the assumptions and prejudices of the various anthropologists and historians who have written on the subject, and attempted to paint a more balanced picture. He described the task of the historian as closer to that of the artist and poet than to that of the scientist.

Because we have separated humanity from nature, subject from object, values from analysis, knowledge from myth, and universities from the universe, it is enormously difficult for anyone but a poet or a mystic to understand what is going on in the holistic and mythopoeic thought of Ice Age humanity. The very language we use to discuss the past speaks of tools, hunters, and men, when every statue and painting we discover cries out to us that this Ice Age humanity was a culture of art, the love of animals, and women.[7]


Thompson sees the Stone Age religion expressed in the Venus figurines, Lascaux cave paintings, Çatal Hüyük, and other artifacts to be an early form of shamanism. He believes that as humanity spread across the globe and was divided into separate cultures, this universal shamanistic Mother Goddess religion became the various esoteric traditions and religions of the world. Using this model, he analyzed Egyptian mythology, Sumerian hymns, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the cult of Quetzalcoatl, and many other stories, myths, and traditions. Thompson often refers to Kriya yoga and Yoga Nidra throughout these analyses, and this seems to be the spiritual tradition with which he is most comfortable.

Coming Into Being

In his 1996 work Coming into Being: Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of Consciousness, Thompson applied an approach that was similar to his 1981 book to many other artifacts, cultures and historical periods. A notable difference, however, is that the 1996 work was influenced by the work of cultural phenomenologist Jean Gebser. Works and authors analyzed include the Enuma Elish, Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, the Book of Judges, the Rig Veda, Ramayana, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, and the Tao Te Ching. Thompson analyzed these works using the vocabulary of contemporary cognitive theory and chaos theory, as well as theories of history. An expanded paperback version was released in 1998.

The phrase "Coming into being" is a translation of the Greek term gignesthai, from which the word genesis is derived.[8]

Self and Society

In his 2004 book Self and Society: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness, and in collaboration with the mathematician Ralph Abraham, Thompson related Gebser's structures to periods in the development of mathematics (arithmetic, geometric, algebraic, dynamical, chaotic) and in the history of music.

Image

Interests

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The Lindisfarne Fellows House in Crestone, Colorado

Thompson considers James Joyce's stylistically experimental novel Finnegans Wake to be "the ultimate novel, indeed, the ultimate book," and also to be the climactic artistic work of the modern period and of the rational mentality. Thompson is fascinated by Los Angeles, where he grew up, and Disneyland, which he considers to be LA's essence. He has also written a book-length treatment of the Easter Rising of 1916.

Thompson has critiqued postmodern literary criticism, artificial intelligence, the technological futurism of Raymond Kurzweil, the contemporary philosophy of mind theories of Daniel Dennett and Paul Churchland, and the astrobiological cosmogony of Zecharia Sitchin.

Reception

Thompson's second book, At the Edge of History was reviewed in The New York Times by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in March 1971.[9]

Thompson's 1974 Passages About Earth was reviewed in Time. The reviewer wrote:

From ample but largely gloomy evidence of rapid social change — future shock, ecological disruption, population explosion, proliferation of information — Thompson draws a startling conclusion: "We are the climactic generation of human cultural evolution." Man, he asserts, will now either slide back into a new Dark Age or evolve into a higher, more spiritual being.

Which way will we go? The author opts for evolution. While such optimism is as welcome as it is rare these days, it is largely based on mysticism and intimations of a "new planetary culture," which Thompson shares with Philosopher Teilhard de Chardin and Science-Fiction Writer Arthur C. Clarke. This is thin epistemological ice even for a skater as fast as Thompson. Indeed, incredulous readers may drop the book after the first reference to "our lost cosmological orientation." That would be a mistake. Agree with it or not, Passages is always fascinating, a magical mystery tour of man's potential.[10]


Thompson's 1981 book The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light: Mythology, Sexuality, and the Origins of Culture was reviewed in the New York Times Book Review by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt. Lehmann-Haupt concluded:

In The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light, William Irwin Thompson has gone part of the way toward rescuing mysticism from its Western friends. But only part of the way.[11]


In his book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, Daniel Pinchbeck referred to Thompson as a cultural critic, a mystic, a practicing yogi,[12] "one of the few modern intellectuals to appreciate Steiner's work",[13] and

one of a small number of original thinkers who not only understands our present impasse but realizes it is not the whole story. Something else is taking place as well— a sidereal movement of consciousness returning us to levels of awareness denied and repressed by the materialist thrust of our current civilization. Essential in this process, according to Thompson, is a change in our understanding of myth. We can change "from a postmodern sensibility in which myth is regarded as an absolute and authoritarian system of discourse to a planetary culture in which myth is regarded as isomorphic, but not identical to scientific narratives."[14]


Selected works

• "The Language of "Finnegans Wake" The Sewanee Review Vol. 72, No. 1 (Winter, 1964), pp. 78–90[15]
• "Collapsed universe and structured poem: An essay in Whiteheadian criticism" (thesis), College English, October 1966
• The Imagination of an Insurrection: Dublin, Easter 1916: A Study of an Ideological Movement, 1967
• At the Edge of History: Speculations on the Transformation of Culture, 1971
• "The Individual as Institution: The Example of Paolo Soleri." Harper's, 1972
• Passages about Earth: An Exploration of the New Planetary Culture, 1974
• Evil and World Order, 1976
• Darkness and Scattered Light, 1978
• The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, 1981, 2001 ISBN 0-312-80512-8
• From Nation to Emanation: Planetary Culture and World Governance, 1982
• Blue Jade from the Morning Star: An Essay and a Cycle of Poems on Quetzalcoatl, 1983
• Pacific Shift, 1986
• Gaia, A Way of Knowing, 1988 (editor)
• Selected Poems, 1959-1980, 1989
• Imaginary Landscape: Making Worlds of Myth and Science, 1989
• Gaia Two: Emergence, The New Science of Becoming, 1991 (editor)
• Islands Out of Time: A Memoir of the Last Days of Atlantis: A Novel, 1990
• Reimagination of the World: A Critique of the New Age, Science, and Popular Culture (with David Spangler), 1991
• The American Replacement of Nature: The Everyday Acts and Outrageous Evolution of Economic Life, 1991 ISBN 0-385-42025-0
• Worlds Interpenetrating and Apart: Collected Poems, 1959-1995, 1997
• Coming into Being: Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of Consciousness, 1996, 1998 ISBN 0-312-17692-9
• Transforming History: A Curriculum for Cultural Evolution, 2001 & 2009. ISBN 978-1-58420-069-7
• Self and Society: Studies in the Evolution of Culture, 2004 & 2009, ISBN 0-907845-82-7; ISBN 978-1-84540-133-7.
• A Diary of Sorts and Streets, Poems, 2007 (Onteros Press: P. O. Box 5720, Santa Fe NM 87502) ISBN 978-1-4243-2271-8
• Still Travels: Three Long Poems, (Wild River Books: Princeton, NJ, 2009).ISBN 978-0-557-07882-0
• Beyond Religion: The Culture Evolution of the Sense of the Sacred from Shamanism to Post-Religious spirituality (Lindisfarne Books: Great Barrington, MA, 2013) ISBN 978-1-58420-151-9
• Nightwatch and Dayshift: Poems 2007-2014 (Wild River Books, Stockton, NJ). ISBN 9780983918899

Notes

1. Philip Herrera, "Waiting For Godlings", Time Monday, April 08, 1974
2. "Founding Mentor William Irwin Thompson Visits"
3. Thompson, "The Cultural Phenomenology of Literature", 89 http://www.nald.ca/fulltext/ltonword/complete.pdf Archived2006-09-06 at the Wayback Machine
4. Thompson, "The Cultural Phenomenology of Literature", 89-90 http://www.nald.ca/fulltext/ltonword/co ... dfArchived 2006-09-06 at the Wayback Machine
5. The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, 4
6. Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher, The Time Falling Bodies take to Light: Mythology, sexuality and the Origins of Culture- review. New York Times. 1981. https://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/22/book ... times.html
7. The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light, 102
8. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=g&p=3
9. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "History as Science-Fiction", March 19, 1971 New York Times
10. Philip Herrera,"Waiting For Godlings", Time Monday, April 08, 1974
11. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt review of The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light. Mythology, Sexuality, and the Origins of Culture. January 22, 1981 [1]
12. Daniel Pinchbeck, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, p8 Penguin Group, 2007 ISBN 1-58542-592-3, ISBN 978-1-58542-592-1
13. Pinchbeck, p140
14. Pinchbeck, p8
15. The Language of "Finnegans Wake"

External links

• The Evolution of William Irwin Thompson Cultural Historian a 2006 essay by Joy E. Stocke
• The Science of Myth, an interview.
• Audio cassette sales of Thompson's lectures
• Thompson's Curriculum Vitae

By Thompson

Essays


• Foreword to Canticum, Turicum, 2005
• [permanent dead link] "This Time, Let's Build a New Venice and Not Another New Orleans" and "The Need for a Tricameral Legislature", 2005[dead link]:wq
• "The Case for Teaching Geometry before Algebra", 2005 (PDF file)[dead link]
• "Al Qaeda, the Neocons, and the Transition from Nation-State to Noetic Polity (RTF file)
• "The Borg or Borges?" (PDF file), 2003
• "The Cultural Phenomenology of Literature", 2002
• "Studies in the Evolution of Culture" (Introduction to Self and Society) (PDF file), 2002
• "The Evolution of the Afterlife" (PDF file), 2002
• "Speculations on the City and the Evolution of Consciousness", 2000 (PDF file)
• The Ross School Supplemental webpages by Ralph Herman Abraham and William Irwin Thompson
• ""The Four Cultural Ecologies of the West"". Archived from the original on August 29, 2000. Retrieved November 21, 2005., 1998
• "Nine Theses For A Gaia Politique", 1986
• "It's Already Begun: The Planetary Age is an unacknowledged daily reality", 1986
• "The Metaindustrial Village: A possible future encapsulates history...and moves beyond", 1983

Poems

• "Still Travels" Wild River Review, 2007
• Canticum, Turicum, 2006
• "Cambridge Rant"
• [permanent dead link] "The Lessons of History" a poem-essay
• [permanent dead link] "Sunset at Point Lobos", 1964
• "The Death of Neda", 2009
• "Vade-Mecum Angelon", 2010

About Thompson

• The Gaian Politics of Lindisfarne’s William Irwin Thompson by Ralph Peters, 2002
• "Wiliam Irwin Thompson" by Grant Schuyler
• "Coming Into Being: A Reader's Journal" by Bobby Matherne, 1997
• [permanent dead link] Booklist review of Coming into Being by Patricia Monaghan
• Union of Int'l Associations' Global Strategies Project "Patterns of alternation: toward an enantiomorphic policy"
• NYT review of The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, January 22, 1981
• Encyclopedia Barfieldiana entry on Thompson
• Lindisfarne Cafe Memoir:
o LINDISFARNE CAFE - MEMOIR - Building a Dream - PART ONE: Lindisfarne in Crestone, Colorado, 1979-1997
o LINDISFARNE CAFE - MEMOIR - Building a Dream/The Shadow Side PART TWO: Lindisfarne in Crestone, Colorado, 1979-1997
o LINDISFARNE CAFE - MEMOIR - Building a Dream/The Cathedral PART THREE: Lindisfarne in Crestone, Colorado, 1979-1997
o LINDISARNE CAFE - MEMOIR - Conclusion: The Economic Relevance of Lindisfarne

Citations

• Google Scholar
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