A former MI6 officer, one of the few to have risen to become ‘C’ or Chief of the Service, takes pleasure in recounting a story. Framed by a collection of John le Carré’s novels on the bookshelves behind him, he tells it with a boyish smile and a playful twinkle in the eye which suggests a mischievousness not entirely lost to age. The story concerns a young officer making his...
Aleister Crowley is, few would argue, the father of modern occultism, neopaganism, and New Age spirituality. Today’s Thelemites (avowed followers of Crowley and his spiritual doctrine of Thelema) far outnumber the small cadre he recruited in his lifetime. His motto “Do What Thou Wilt” has had a subtle and profound influence on modern culture. While some still fear and loathe him, Aleister Crowley inspires fascination, even admiration, in others. Crowley’s...
The British enjoy deceiving their enemies. When the Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz defined war in 1833 as ‘those acts of force to compel our enemy to do our will’, he missed out the dimension that the British political philosopher Thomas Hobbes had spotted nearly two centuries earlier: ‘Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.’ ‘The British like to pretend,’ observes a former US Ambassador, Raymond Seitz....
A backstory on Reinhard Gehlen and the fear of his “Now it can be told”-bookReinhard Gehlen, founder and head of Germany’s Bundesnachrichtendienst or BND, the Federal intelligence service in the days of the cold war, has enjoyed a publicity remarkable for one who, ostensibly (not to say ostentatiously), has fled the limelight. For in the days of his power he always moved in the shadows. He invariably wore dark glasses...
At 3 o’clock Sunday morning, November 4, 1956, I returned to the hotel in Vienna where I had been staying for three days. I paused to leave a call and exchange a few idle words with the hall porter. Nostalgic early morning music from the radio behind the telephone switchboard echoed through the empty lobby. I went to my room, and within a few minutes after getting into bed, was...
Herbert Osborn Yardley (April 13, 1889 – August 7, 1958) was an American cryptologist. He founded and led the cryptographic organization the Black Chamber. Under Yardley, the cryptanalysts of The American Black Chamber broke Japanese diplomatic codes and were able to furnish American negotiators with significant information during the Washington Naval Conference of 1921-1922. Recipient of the Distinguished Service Medal. He wrote The American Black Chamber (1931) about his experiences...
This article is part of an ongoing investigation into the occult and intelligence networks that operated across national boundaries during and after the Second World War. It follows our recent pieces on Rudolf von Sebottendorf and the Thule Society. It should be read alongside our existing articles on Rudolf Hess and British intelligence’s documented use of occult operatives. There is a phrase that appears in a British intelligence memo dated...








