An Empire of Magick: Occultism & the British Empire

By Justin Geoffrey

In the popular mind, occultism is synonymous with diabolism. Thanks to decades of horror films, as well as the popularity of paranormal television programs like Ghost Hunters or Paranormal Adventures, the occult conjures forth ideas about black magick, demonic possession, and legions of other infernal activities. Those who dabble in the occult are deemed either wicked or ignorant of the ramifications. Most importantly, popular culture tends to see occultism as the purview of individuals, or the plaything of small, highly secretive cults.

However, since 2016, the rise in popularity of Q-Anon, an Internet-based theory that broadly sees Satanic and pedophilic elites as the core engine driving economic globalism and social progressivism, has rekindled interest in another theme of occultism—the role of occultism and occult practices in the exercise of state power. While adherents to Q-Anon are wantonly cast aside as cranks and “conspiracy theorists,” a scholar such as Ioan Couliano cannot be. In his work Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, Couliano argues that the Renaissance and the Early Modern Period formed the “magician State.” A subtle and flexible state with the “capacity to change, to adapt to all circumstances, to improve,” Couliano positively identifies the magician State as preferable to its supposed opposite, the police State. [1] Couliano’s magician State is one built upon eros, which he claims “represents the starting point of all magic.” [2] Erotic images and ideas are cultivated by the magician State in order to secure its power via widespread acceptance of the desirability of state-cultivated eroticism. The clearest example of this in practice comes from the world of advertising. Advertisers use the “magic” inherent in media and images to sell their products to the mass of consumers. Often, the magic that proves the most effective is emotional, with eroticism traditionally predominating (although “sex sells” does not appear as prevalent as it was in the late 1990s and early 2000s). 

The magician State, which began when Europe’s many rulers, especially those in Northern Italy, brought into their courts alchemists and sorcerers, rules by thought control. A magician State uses its power of manipulation to convince its subjects that they are free, or that they are living in the preferred state of socio-political being. When these opinions or desires change, the magician State uses its subtle power to misdirect or redirect these energies back towards those states of being that do not challenge the magician State. For Couliano, the magician State’s primary weakness is the ever-present possibility of devolving into what he terms the sorcerer-State, wherein the magicians in control of the state become too enamored with their own power. [3] Tellingly, the police State is the opposite of the magician State but does not ultimately threaten it. Rather, according to one of Couliano’s students, writer and magician John Michael Greer, the magician State is most threatened by chaos magick in the form of antediluvian democracy. [4] The cybernetic and often real war between the magician State and chaos magick has characterized much of American socio-political life since 2016, with the supporters of President Donald Trump and adjacent right-wing movements (including Q-Anon) cast in the role of chaos agents seeking to thoroughly undermine America’s magician State.

The relationship between magic, occultism, and the state may be older than recorded history. Hunter-gatherer tribes had secret societies complete with ritual associations and esoteric knowledge that members guarded with extreme violence. [5] These primordial cults often had a biological character, with the social elite, whether heroic or deformed, originating in these highly occult bodies. As such, it can be stated with pervasive evidence that occult practices are integral to state formation and state power, and always have been. The difference between states, therefore, is a matter of magic.
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In the 20th century, no state better exemplified black magic than the Third Reich. Historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, who was one of the first scholars to seriously study the occult roots and practices of German National Socialism, characterized the Third Reich as “the embodiment of evil…a monstrous pagan relapse in the Christian community of Europe.” [6] The Third Reich’s quest for German lebensraum, as well as its many investigations into Theosophy, pagan rites, etc., continue to mark it is as an abhorrent state that made magick both integral and visible. Other states, most notably in Africa and the Caribbean, had similar state occultism. Most of them were characterized by strongman dictators who used religion (François Duvalier in Haiti) or their own eccentric ideas (Eric Gairy with UFOs in Grenada) and secret police forces to control the public and private lives of their citizens. Others, such as Idi Amin in Uganda, resorted to the vilest practices of black magick such as cannibalism in order to maintain their power. Such brutal and unsubtle magician States contribute to sensationalism while also obscuring other states which used magick and occultism to pursue their own geopolitical goals. Chief among these states was the Kingdom of England during its first age of imperialism.

Under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) and King James I (1603-1625), the Kingdom of England saw its status as a naval power increase thanks not only to its thwarting of a planned Spanish invasion, but also its creation of colonies (called “plantations”) in Ireland and the New World. Many of these imperial ventures were undertaken by private individuals using their own ships (“privateers”). Many of these men had interests in alchemy. For instance, Sir Walter Raleigh used his many travels in the New World to not only search for the fabled golden city of El Dorado, but he also took samples of American flora and fauna back to England to be used in his many alchemical experiments. The other great seafarer of the age, Sir Francis Drake, codenamed Water by the Virgin Queen, was rumored to have occult powers. The rumor proved so strong that both English and Spanish prisoners told stories about the admiral’s prowess. [7] Indeed, the entirety of the original English goals in the New World conformed to an esoteric premise, i.e. the creation of a new civilization. The English expeditions under Raleigh and others frequently allied with colonies of escaped slaves, both African and Mesoamerican, in Central America in order to plunder the Spanish treasure ships. Serious plans were afoot too that would have seen these former captives brought to English colonies in North America as free settlers. [8]

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John Dee: Scholar, Spy, and Summoner of Angels

But in regards to occultism and the English Empire (later to become the globe-spanning British Empire), no figure is more important than John Dee. Dee (1527-1608) was a natural philosopher, mathematician, and occultist. He was also the private and highly secretive intelligence agent for Queen Elizabeth I’s court. He began his studies at St. John’s College, Cambridge in 1542, where he earned a bachelor’s degree and a graduate degree. From there, Dee was named a fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge upon its founding in 1546. Between 1547 and 1551, Dee traveled throughout Europe, with special attention paid to the Low Countries. Dee studied under many notable alchemists and philosophers, including the Flemish cartographers Abraham Ortelius and Gerardus Mercator, as well as other well-known mathematicians.

Following his return to England, Dee became a professor of mathematics at Oxford. It was his knowledge of mathematicians and cartography that earned him entrance into the royal court as a teacher. Dee specialized in instructing mathematics to naval captains, the chief conquerors of the English people. Dee’s proficiency in mathematics and science (he was an early proponent of heliocentrism) earned him the ear of Queen Elizabeth. The scholar was tapped as a resource in the war between England and Spain.

In the late 16th century, the enormity of Spain’s power could not be fully measured. The Catholic kingdom controlled not only one of the richest empires in Europe, which included the Low Countries and hereditary states in Italy, but also commanded the vast resources of Mexico, Peru, and the Caribbean. Spanish treasure ships regularly crossed the Atlantic with fabulous hordes of gold and silver. Only England, the chief Protestant power in Europe, could disrupt Spanish imperium. For the most part, these disruptions amounted to privateering raids on Spanish possessions and robberies on the high seas. By 1588, Spain decided to destroy England and her navy once and for all. In May of that year, Spanish King Philip II sent 125 of his best ships to the English Channel. His goal was to destroy English ships and claim the Channel as a Spanish protectorate. Awaiting him were the best English sailors of the age, and John Dee.

Eight years previously, Dee had spent time in Central Europe as the guest of the Polish nobleman Count Adalbert Laski. Dee eventually found his way to Prague, a city then reputed to be the epicenter of Catholic intrigues against Protestants. [9] Given Dee’s later position as the chief spymaster for Queen Elizabeth, it is possible that the court magician used his time in Prague to learn more about Spanish machinations against England. Whatever the case, it was Dee who made the fateful decision to advise the Queen to keep her ships at bay. While many among the Spanish believed that the English wizard had conjured up the dreadful storm himself, it is more likely that Dee utilized his knowledge of meteorology to accurately predict the tremendous storm that doomed the Spanish Armada.

Throughout his years of loyal service to Queen Elizabeth, Dee consistently proved himself to be an exponent of English expansionism. The court magician sought this ideal in multi-faceted ways. For one, as previously noted, Dee became one of England’s first spymasters—an intelligence agent who used his wide learning and many connections to discover the secrets of England’s adversaries. Few of Dee’s exploits are known. For instance, while touring the University of Louvain in Belgium, Dee purloined cutting-edge astronomical instruments and two globes that were then the most accurate in the world. [10] Such items would be put to good use by the Royal Navy or by English privateers. Dee’s other exploits on the Continent are not as well known to history, but one can be sure that the magician did many deeds, possibly even nefarious ones, in order to increase the power and prestige of the English crown. Of note is the fact that Dee designed his own secret cipher for all his communications back to London. “For your eyes only” was his designation for all communications to Queen Elizabeth, while the alchemist used the magically important number seven and two eyes to create his unique signature—007. [11] Thus, long before Ian Fleming—himself an officer in naval intelligence during World War II—created James Bond, John Dee played the role of England’s chief spy and charmer.

Dee’s espionage and government work cannot and should not be decoupled with his other interests. Occult practices formed the core mission of Dee’s work, from underhanded diplomacy to his attempts to communicate with angels. In his last years, Dee became obsessed with the possibility of directly communicating with celestial beings. For thirty years, Dee used his knowledge of optics (including the reported use of a magical Aztec obsidian mirror) and scrying (the act of looking into polished stones like crystal balls in order to tell the future) to discover and document the so-called Enochian language of the angels. This era of Dee’s life included a rather shady character by the name of Edward Kelley, a twentysomething alcoholic with deformed ears thanks to a previous conviction for counterfeiting coins. [12] Together, Dee and Kelley kept so-called “spirit diaries” that detailed their communications with spirits. These experiments lasted for ten years or more. During that time, Dee gave the Enochian language its own grammar and syntax, thus making it a fully formed, albeit artificial language. Is Enochian a real glimpse at Heaven’s tongue, or, as 17th century scientist Robert Hooke argued, was it a series of codes that Dee used for his intelligence work? Again, answers are not mutually exclusive, as Dee’s occultism and intelligence work cannot be separated. [13]

Sadly, during Dee’s sojourn in Central Europe in the 1580s, his majestic home in Mortlake, which reputedly contained the largest library in Europe at the time, was ransacked. Many of Dee’s priceless books and papers were fed to fires. Such was the double-headed nature of empowering occultists within a Christian kingdom—Dee was as feared as he was respected. Those proud Englishman who cheered his contributions to England’s victories over Spain later blamed him for a plague that ravaged the land, claiming Dee’s wife and four of his eight children. [14] Dee’s final years saw him shunned from the court of King James I (more on him later) because of the Scottish monarch’s distaste for occultism and witchcraft. Dee passed away at the old age of eighty-two in 1608. Tragically, the once powerful court magician died alone and in poverty.

Of all of Dee’s conjurations, from his sage advice during the Spanish Armada to his many experiments with angels, his most important was his full-throated endorsement of an English Empire across the Atlantic Ocean. Dee’s imperial vision first found publication in 1577 with General & Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation. In this book, Dee argued for the English crown to seize power in the New World by first creating a first-class navy (Dee is in many ways one of the intellectual fathers of the large and modern Royal Navy). Dee’s book also argues for England’s legitimacy as the sole ruler of the New World, thanks to the medieval explorations of the Welsh prince Madog Ab Owain Gwynedd. According to legend, Prince Madog (sometimes called Madoc), left the Kingdom of Gwynedd in northern Wales in the 12th century to undertake a fantastic exploration of the open sea. During this voyage, Prince Madog supposedly found bountiful land somewhere far to the west of Europe. This land, which many today cite as the Southeastern part of the United States, became a home for Welsh settlers. The settlers became so ingrained in their new environment that they intermarried with local tribes, thus forming the nexus of what today are called Welsh Indians. [15] Dee’s assertions, which were supported by the Anglican priest and imperialist visionary Richard Haklyut, were meant not only to undercut Spain’s claims of sovereignty in the New World, but were also meant to appeal to Queen Elizabeth directly, as she came from the ethnically Welsh House of Tudor. [16] Ultimately, Queen Elizabeth only took up parts of Dee’s recommendations in General & Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation. Rather than enhance the still new Royal Navy, the Queen made do with privateers. Still, the general thrust of Dee’s argument, which called for the settling of Englishmen in the New World, went forward, although the first full flowering of this idea occurred under the Queen’s successor, James I.

Dee also institutionalized the court-astrologer role in the English kingdom. His figure proved so grand in the English imagination that one of his contemporaries, William Shakespeare, allegedly used Dee as a template for the character of Prospero in The Tempest. [17] Dee was also not the last occultist-spy for the English crown, nor would he be the last alchemist and master of the dark arts to pen words in favor of English imperialism. [18] In fact, although King James I banished Dee and other occultists from the court at London, the king himself was a devoted student of demonology. In 1597, while reigning as King James VI of Scotland, the monarch published Daemonologie, a treatise that took seriously the threat of witchcraft. James believed sincerely that secret covens of witches used their diabolical powers to undermine the health and vitality of the Kingdom of Scotland, and when he ascended to the English throne, the new King James I quickly passed the Witchcraft Act. [19]
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During the Jacobean Age (1603-1625), witchcraft trials and persecutions bloomed in Scotland and England; simultaneously, the English crown expanded its holdings in the New World with settlements at Jamestown (1607), Newfoundland (1610), and Plymouth (1620). Officially, King James’s court was anti-occultist. In fact, the new king used the secret service created by his predecessor to hunt down suspected witches. Most notably, King James employed his secret agents to arrest the Earl of Bothwell for allegedly using a coven of Scottish witches to weaken the throne. This proved to be a real departure from the older English model first used by Dee’s fellow royal agent, Sir Francis Walsingham, who reportedly employed witches as intelligence agents on the Continent. [20]

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The Legacy of British Occult Imperialism

Shadows of the occult and such practices never left the British Isles. During the English Civil War, witchcraft hunts became a fixture, with the infamous “Witchfinder General” Matthew Hopkins responsible for the execution of some 100 suspected witches between 1644 and 1646. One hundred years later, the Order of the Friars of St. Francis of Wycombe was founded by Sir Francis Dashwood, the future Chancellor of the Exchequer under King George III. This group is better known to history as the infamous Hellfire Club—a debauched society of noblemen that included the American polymath and diplomat Benjamin Franklin. As a young man, Dashwood toured Europe and reportedly joined a Freemason lodge in France. It was also well-known that Dashwood had a deep prejudice against the Roman Catholic Church and an interest in antiquity. These two strands would meet along the River Thames at the headquarters of the Hellfire Club. Not long after the lodge’s formation, rumors of orgies and black masses swirled around the group. Gossip-prone Londoners filled their local coffee shops with stories about prostitutes dressed like nuns and other blasphemies. Some of these debaucheries may have occurred. However, according to several sources, the Hellfire Club’s primary religious purpose was the revival of the Ancient Greek Eleusinian Mysteries within a British context. [21] Dashwood was likely a closet pagan inspired by the Enlightenment to seek out new religious vistas for the British realm. It is also just as likely that the Hellfire Club engaged in espionage, particularly in the underhanded practice of using blackmail to control the actions of influential people. Not only did the club include several key political figures such as the Lord Mayor of London, Paymaster General Thomas Potter, and John Montagu, the First Lord of the Admiralty, but Dashwood himself engaged in espionage when he spied on the royal court of Russia and on Jacobite agents exiled in Italy. [22] It is also believed that Dashwood and Franklin worked closely on the eve of the American Revolution in order to prevent hostilities from breaking out.

​The British Hellfire Club found imitators throughout Europe. Many of these organizations combined intrigue with Satanism and espionage. A century later, during the apex of British power abroad, another occultist began partaking in espionage work. Born Edward Alexander Crowley in 1875 in a spa town in Warwickshire, Aleister Crowley, aka the “Great Beast 666” and the “Wickedest Man in the World,” became the occult superstar of the electric age. Crowley matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied the then novel discipline of English Literature. At college, Crowley abandoned his family’s Christianity for occult studies. He also changed his name to Aleister and took up his many hobbies, including mountain climbing and chess. Crowley left Trinity College, the former employer of Dee, without graduating. From there, Crowley used his sizable inheritance to live the life of a bon vivant. His first volume of poetry, published in 1898, displayed an obsession with magic, debauchery, and shocking imagery. As a mountaineer, Crowley showed great skill (he took part in two climbs to surmount K2 and Kanchenjunga) and lots of misfortune (four of his fellow climbers died during the Kanchenjunga expedition, and some accused Crowley of ignoring the cries of the doomed men). [23]

But, of all his many endeavors, Crowley is best remembered as a practitioner of magick, especially black and sexual magick. In 1898, Crowley joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a powerful occult society that included such luminaries as weird fiction writer Algernon Blackwood, Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Draculaauthor Bram Stoker, and Irish poet W.B. Yeats. The group, which had ties to equally secretive groups like the Rosicrucians and Freemasons, had as its leader during Crowley’s time a mysterious individual by the name of Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers. Mathers, a member of the Freemasons, came from a family of Jacobite stalwarts. In the 1890s, Mathers established a Golden Dawn temple in Paris while simultaneously pursuing Jacobite activities, including possible intelligence work. Indeed, under Mathers, the Golden Dawn created a division within the group called the “Secret Chiefs”, which Crowley himself compared to an intelligence service. [24] Mathers and the Secret Chiefs oversaw the expansion of the Golden Dawn throughout Europe, thus, by the time Crowley began his revolt within the organization, Golden Dawn lodges could be found in France, the U.K., and Germany.

By 1904, following a religious experience while in Egypt, Crowley composed The Book of the Law, a long prose poem supposedly dictated to him by an Egyptian entity called Aiwass. This book became the foundational text for Crowley’s new religion, Thelema. [25] Crowley’s new occult religion had as its doctrinal slogan, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” This philosophical statement, which originated in the 16th century courtesy of French playwright Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel, first saw occult use with the Hellfire Club. However, Crowley and his adherents took it much further. Thelema became a secretive yet popular religion among members of the Anglo-American elite. Noticeably, many Thelemites, including those who followed Crowley’s to his debased “abbey” in Sicily during the 1920s, had positions of prestige and power within the fields of technology and military science. [26] One of Crowley’s British adherents was Major-General John Frederick Charles (J.F.C.) Fuller, the British Empire’s chief strategist of armored warfare and one of the earliest supporters of British Fascism. Crowley’s most notable American disciple, Jack Parsons, not only helped to found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but was also one of the first engineers to successfully design and test a rocket engine. Crowley himself named Parsons as the head of the California branch of the Ordo Templis Orientis (O.T.O.), the primary magical lodge for Thelema. [27]

As for Crowley himself, circumstantial evidence suggests that he enjoyed privileges as a secret agent in the employ of the British government. As noted by author Richard B. Spence, Crowley lived in America during World War I and in Germany prior to World War II. During the Great War, Crowley penned strident pro-German articles, which drew the ire of the American Secret Service. According to Spence, Crowley’s pro-German stance was more ruse than reality, as the famous occultist worked as an informer. How else can one explain the fact that the vocally pro-German Crowley continued to live in America after the war, and even had the ear of Henry Ford during discussions about the proper response to the Bolshevik Revolution? [28] Then, during the interwar period, Crowley spent a great deal of time in Germany. Nominally, he focused on strengthening Thelema and the O.T.O. in the Weimar Republic, where a significant portion of the German intelligentsia had an interest in the occult. Again, Spence sees Crowley’s time in Germany as part of a wider operation by London to keep tabs on the extreme political movements within Germany, especially the occult-centered National Socialists. No less of an authority than Ian Fleming recorded that Crowley maintained links with British intelligence during World War II, as the infamous “Great Beast 666” reportedly interviewed Rudolf Hess, himself an ardent student of the occult, following his crash landing in Scotland in 1941. [29] Six years later, in December 1947, Crowley died alone and penniless like his precursor, John Dee.

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Occultism & the Intelligence State

We must now turn once again to where we started—the magician State. In a literal sense, the earliest days of the English Empire can be defined as a magician State, with Queen Elizabeth I listening attentively to the ideas and dreams of occultists like Dee and occult-adjacent spies like Walsingham. Elizabeth I’s successor, James I, believed in magic and the infernal so much that he used the power of the state to crush suspected witches and their enablers. Tellingly, James I often saw witchcraft as a political tool used by those seeking to dethrone him. Thus, magic and politics have long been closely associated with one another in the English, later British, context. More specifically, there has long existed cooperation between the worlds of occultism and intelligence. Dee, Dashwood, and Crowley likely did both as government agents and practitioners of secret rites. And, if some evidence is to be believed, such individuals and organizations exist to this day. 

​Following World War II, especially following the intentional destruction of British hegemony during the Cold War, America took up the mantle of the British Empire. As the Third British Empire, or more properly the Third Anglo Empire, the United States today performs many of the same duties as London’s old thalassocracy—protection of the sea lanes for international trade, expansion of liberal economic and social ideas abroad, and “policing” restive but economically vital areas like the Middle East and East Asia. [30] Also, it is possible that the United States has succeeded Great Britain as the premiere practitioner of occult-based intelligence work. According to author David McGowan in his book Programmed to Kill, there exists disturbing links between the CIA, FBI, and suspected Satanic and pedophilic organizations since at least the 1960s. McGowan’s book, which primarily examines the popular myths of serial killers, argues for the notion that the CIA’s MKULTRA program, which is a common name for a whole host of programs all designed to study mind control, used occultists and black magick practices, such as the ritualistic abuse of children, to experiment on the American population as a whole. For McGowan, the CIA has “played key roles in the creation of underground satanic cults engaged in violent criminal enterprises,” because the MKULTRA experiments taught them that the more people there are who are prone to dissociative states (i.e., people who have suffered chronic abuse, especially as children), the more likely it is to control people through fear. [31] Hence, the creation of a powerful central state within the United States is possible thanks to magic in the form of media manipulation, widespread abuse of the vulnerable, and sensationalist news stories designed to make the citizenry forfeit some of their civil liberties. Such talk has always been considered outlandish and the purview of “conspiracy theorists.” Then again, in the wake of COVID-19, which saw an unprecedented centralization of economic power under the guise of protecting public health, more and more Westerners are beginning to see just how manipulative the state can be once it turns the volume on its magical operations up to eleven.

Ultimately, links between magick and the state are well-documented. Great Britain produced warlock-spies like John Dee and Aleister Crowley, who often used their standing as occultists to engage in intelligence gathering or, in Dee’s case, international theft. As for the United States, several members of the military-industrial complex, from Jack Parsons to Michael A. Aquino, were active members of various occult groups. [32] Occultism and intelligence work are spiritually related anyway, as both deal in the unknown and in practices of deception, fabrication, and ad hoc creation. More bluntly, intelligence work is the work of magick, which John Michael Greer simply defines as: “the art and science of causing changes in consciousness in accordance with will.” [33] And, as the post-industrial economy has given way to the so-called “knowledge economy,” magick has risen to greater importance within state operations. The control of consciousness has long been the primary focus of the magician State, but now, in anno domini 2022, the magician State often feels itself losing control thanks to the widespread use of a de-centralized Internet. The Internet causes chaos and disruptions within the magician State, and as a result, the current goal of the ruling class is to use their powers of persuasion and force to centralize the Internet. This is the contemporary “psych war,” which includes manifold intelligence operations. It is occultism all the way down, from using “Fed” online forum users to creating fake profiles designed to convince dissidents to toe the official line (or push some of the more anti-social personalities past the boundaries of acceptable behavior). 

So, while many may snicker at Q-Anon and other such groups who sincerely believe that globalism is the political face of an elite strata who actively engage in Satanism and pedophilia, it can and should never be denied that the modern state engages in occult practices regularly. Often these practices are visible and barely concealed, such as propaganda and media manipulation. Other practices, such as blackmail operations of the kind likely engaged in by billionaire Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, are only now coming into focus within the public consciousness. Such operations have existed for a long time—at least since the Elizabethan Age. If they are more prevalent today, it is because the modern magician State requires a greater degree of control over such a complex and interconnected system of politics, entertainment, war, and trade. But the occult practices remain, and the progeny of John Dee have plenty of tricks left to perform.

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This essay was included in Volume I of The Dissident Review, available in paperback on Amazon.

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Endnotes

​1.      Ioan P. Couliano, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987): 105.
2.      Ibid, 103. 
3.      Ibid, 105. 
4.      John Michael Greer, The King in Orange: The Magical and Occult Roots of Political Power (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2021): 98-101.
5.      Stone Age Herbalist, Berserkers, Cannibals & Shamans: Essays in Dissident Anthropology (Self-published, 2022): 92-93.
6.      Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity (London/New York: I.B. Tauris, 2003): 107.
7.      University of California, Los Angeles Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Sir Francis Drake Commission, Sir Francis Drake and the Famous Voyage, 1577-1580(Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1984): 120.
8.      Alan Gallay, Walter Ralegh: Architect of Empire (New York: Basic Books, 2019): 33.
9.      Peter Gentle, “Dr. John Dee – The Original 007,” The World of English, February 2001, Web.
10.    Ibid.
11.    Jason Louv, John Dee and the Empire of Angels: Enochian Magick and the Occult Roots of the Modern World (Rochester, VT/Toronto: Inner Traditions, 2018): 88.
12.    “John Dee: Elizabethan 007, scientist, magician, and spy,” History Extra, 8 Oct. 2021, Web.
13.    Albin Grau, the producer and set designer for the 1922 horror film Nosferatu, was a serious student of the occult and belonged to a magical order in Germany. Grau used Enochian symbols in the correspondence between Count Orlok the vampire (played by Max Schreck) and the insane real estate agent Knock (played by Alexander Granach).
14.     “John Dee: Elizabethan 007, scientist, magician, and spy.”
15.    Thanks to the “woke” revolution in American life, the story of Prince Madog and the Welsh Indians has been cast aside as “racist.” For adherents to puritanical racial Marxism, the story of Prince Madog is “racist” not only because it undercuts Spanish, and therefore Hispanic, claims to the New World, but it also argues that white Europeans have been on the North American continent for much longer than accepted. For more information on the “woke” perspective, see James Griffiths’ article “The racist origins of the myth a Welsh prince beat Columbus to America” published by CNN.com.
16.    Dee did not dedicate his book to the Queen, however. Instead, he dedicated it to Sir Christopher Hatton, the Lord Chancellor and the Queen’s favorite at court.
17.    The Tempest is also Shakespeare’s only play that deals with the New World. Although technically set on an island in the Mediterranean, The Tempest has long been read as a reference to English plantations in the New World, with the savage character of Caliban being a stand-in for the native tribes of America.
18.    Glyn Parry, “John Dee and the Elizabethan British Empire in its European Context,” The Historical Journal, 49, 3 (2006):643-675.
19.    Mary Sharatt, “King James I: Demonologist,” Wonders & Marvels, 14 Apr. 2010, Web.
20.    Michael Howard, “The British Occult Secret Service, The Untold Story,” New Dawn 107 (Mar-Apr. 2008).
21.    Sabina Magliocco, Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010): 35.
22.    Howard, “The British Occult Secret Service.”
23.    Editors, “Aleister Crowley,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 8 Oct. 2022, Web.
24.    Richard B. Spence, Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence and the Occult (Port Townsend, WA: Feral House, 2008): 24.
25.    Thelema takes its name from the Greek word for “will.”
26.    Crowley’s Abbey of Thelema did not last long and was forcibly shut down by the government of Benito Mussolini. The reason for this eviction came a year earlier when British disciple Raoul Loveday died from typhoid fever whilst living with Crowley. Following the closure of the abbey, local villagers discovered evidence of black magick rituals and walls decorated with demonic and sexual imagery.
27.    Parsons died in a mysterious explosion in 1952. Some consider his death a suicide owing to Parsons’s history of depression, as well as being under scrutiny because of his former allegiance to communism. Others have argued for murder, with the motivation being connected to internal warfare within the O.T.O.
28.    Spence, Secret Agent 666, 166.
29.    Micah Hanks, “Ian Fleming, Aleister Crowley, and How the Occultists Won the War,” Seven Ages, 18 Dec. 2017, Web.
30.    The first was the Kingdom of England’s many colonial holdings until 1707, followed by the British Empire that came into being after the Acts of Union.
31.    David McGowan, Programmed to Kill: The Politics of Serial Murder (New York/Lincoln/Shanghai: iUniverse, Inc., 2004): xviii.
32.    Aquino joined Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan in the late 1960s. Eventually, after refuting many of LaVey’s doctrines, Aquino established the Temple of Set in San Francisco in 1975. Throughout this time, Aquino performed his duties as a high-ranking officer in the United States Army. Aquino specialized in psychological warfare, and McGowan indicates in Programed to Kill that Aquino was associated with the CIA’s infamous Phoenix Program during his two tours of duty in South Vietnam. Aquino and others were accused of ritually abusing children at a daycare center located on the Presidio military base in the 1980s.
33.    Greer, The King in Orange, 4.