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5 - Counter-initiation and conspiracy

Marco Pasi
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam
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Summary

An occult tactic guides, to a single end, the most decisive international conflicts; Jewish finance secretly arms militarism; while on the other hand the Jewish–Masonic ideology of liberalism and democracy prepares convenient battle arrays.

(Julius Evola, in his introduction to the 1938 Italian edition of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion)

But in a while suspicion grows.

“This fellow, now, by Jove, who knows?

Perhaps he too is in the Plot.

I like Scotch Whisky: he does not.

He prefers Job to Second Kings.

We disagree on many things.”

(Aleister Crowley, “The Suspicious Earl”, in Konx Om Pax)

In this chapter I will tackle a subject that has hitherto been almost completely ignored by scholars of Crowley: namely, the interest that conspiracy theorists and traditionalist circles took in him. I use the term “conspiracy theory” to indicate those theories that spread throughout Europe especially between the late eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, postulating the existence of an international conspiracy arranged by an unknown and mysterious elite, the purpose of which is to gain power over the whole world. As Joscelyn Godwin has pointed out, “conspiracy theory is anathema to the historian, but indispensable to the history of occultism”. This is undoubtedly true, given that conspiracy theories have so often germinated and developed in esoteric and occult circles.

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Publisher: Acumen Publishing
Print publication year: 2013

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