Rule Britannia: Magick in Service to The Crown

It was perhaps the high point for Germany in World War II. France lay prostrate under the boot of the German war machine. The mighty blitzkrieg coordinated under General Manstein had laid waste to the now obsolete Maginot Line of the French, built to fight the last war, not this war with its new lightning tactics.

The German Army entered Paris triumphant, on the date Hitler had predicted, and prepared a path for Hitler’s arrival along with his entourage. After touring Paris, Hitler gazed across the English Channel, and began preparations to launch Operation Sea Lion, the amphibious invasion of Britain. The only thing that stood between England and Germany’s envisioned onslaught of a wretchedly unprepared England was the Royal Air Force. Or so it seemed.

We know what traditional history books tell us. The Royal Air Force withstood the repeated savagery of the German Luftwaffe and Hitler grew increasingly restive with the idea of an amphibious assault. As the days progressed, slowly Operation Sea Lion and the invasion of England grew less appealing. Filled with increasing foreboding about the prospects of an amphibious landing, Hitler decided to turn and face Russia with the hope of eventually placating Britain into an alliance of need or necessity. Or so the story goes.

The reality, of course, is always more complex than what we may have been taught in school. For there were forces opposed to Hitler’s invasion of England that were not apparent to most people, except those within the depths of British intelligence. These were the forces of occult technology--of Magick--and it would not be the first time the English Crown had availed itself of the powers of its most infamous magicians.

In 1986, an interesting book appeared called “Lammas Night.” The thesis of the book, purported to be fictional, was that a group of witches and warlocks had gathered at sacred sites during England’s most desperate hours during WWII to perform ceremonial magick, with the object of keeping Hitler from invading England by filling his head with confusion and trepidation over the amphibious assault known as “Operation Sea Lion.”

Many people have congratulated the author (Katherine Kurtz) on her realistic portrayal of this “fictional” event. She was applauded for creating vibrant and finely drawn characters. Few suspect that the reason this “fictional” event had such a ring of truth is because such ceremonies actually did occur throughout England as Hitler stood poised to invade the British Isles.

According to author Gerald Suster, in his book “Hitler: The Occult Messiah”, quoting English magician Gerald Gardner, “Witches cast spells to stop Hitler from landing after France fell. They met, raised the great cone of power, and directed the thought at Hitler’s brain: ‘You cannot cross the sea. You cannot cross the sea. Not able to come. Not able to come.’   I am not saying they stopped Hitler from invading England. All I will say is that I saw a very interesting ceremony performed with the intention of putting a certain idea into his mind and this was repeated several times afterwards; and though all the invasion barges were ready, the fact was that Hitler never even tried to come.”

Gardner may have been referring to the work of Dion Fortune, author of the book “The Magical Battle of Britain.” Fortune was the head of The Society of The Inner Light. When Germany invaded and defeated Poland in a matter of days, Fortune, according to a reviewer of this book, “... initiated a series of magical programmes designed to thwart the expansionist intentions of the Third Reich.”

Whether or not these magickal workings had any effect on stopping Hitler’s invasion, it certainly was not the first time England enjoyed the direct intervention of applied magick to turn the tides of history in England’s favor.  Perhaps the first recorded event in this regard is to be found centuries earlier, when England faced the overwhelming force and superior numbers of the Great Spanish Armada.

In 1579, King Philip II of Spain, at the urging of the Vatican, began preparations to invade and plunder England, both for the glory of God, and the enlargement of his treasury.

The Great Spanish Armada, a fleet of cannon carrying sailing war ships, was to be launched against England’s much smaller fleet of warships, with the following aims: to destroy the English Navy, invade the English mainland, loot the English treasury, and restore Catholicism throughout England.

Unbeknownst to Philip II, however, The Queen of England, Elizabeth I, had employed two occult technicians (magicians) to continue and expand England’s reign on the high seas. These two magicians were Sir Edward Kelly and Dr. John Dee.

With the blessings and the facilities of the English Crown, Kelly and Dee performed numerous magickal workings, called skryings, which allowed Dee and Kelly direct communication with angelic beings. This process of drawing magickal sigils and talismans was accomplished by using a “shewstone.” Through this stone, said to have been given to Dr. Dee by the Angel Uriel, John Dee was able to construct an angelic language with its own alphabet, which he called Enochian. Through using this angelic symbolic language, Dee and Kelly, according to legend, were able to construct and consecrate talismans specifically designed to create a mighty storm to blast and sink the Spanish Armada, and scatter it into disarray.

It seems that Dee and Kelly succeeded more than most people might have imagined, for indeed, a mighty storm did sink or damage a large portion of the Spanish Armada in 1588 before the remainder made its way back to Spain. But what most historians and students of history do not know was that there were actually THREE attempts by Spain’s Armada to engage the English Navy and invade England, and each time, a huge storm unexpectedly arose, sank and scattered a significant number of the invading Spanish fleet. Rumors persist that Dr. John Dee and Sir Edward Kelly applied their Enochian ceremonial magick, and each time the forces of Nature arose at their command to save England from certain defeat.

Whether or not Dr. John Dee ever performed ceremonial magick to invoke the forces of Nature in service to the British Empire, there is sufficient factual evidence to show that Dr. Dee’s ability to formulate astrological nativity charts was so impressive that his advice was sought to decide the coronation date of Elizabeth I. Further, Dee predicted the coming of the Spanish Armada four years in advance . Moreover, Dee claimed to receive a spirit message which warned that Spain was going to attempt to burn The Forest of Dean, where England obtained much of her timber for the construction of her warships. Indeed, French saboteurs working for the Spanish were captured posing as vagrants, whose goal was to burn down the forest in order to cripple British ship building. This revelation further cemented Dr. Dee’s reputation for prophecy.

Dr. Dee and Sir Edward Kelly traveled extensively for the Crown, and Dr. Dee reported to Sir Francis Walsingham, spymaster to Elizabeth the First. Dee was also reputedly the original double O Seven (007), as Dee signed his reports to Walsingham with two circles, representing eyes, above which he drew the mathematical sign of the square root, which appeared to be the number 7, or together, 007! Yet there is even more to this story, for Aleister Crowley claimed, according to John Symmonds in his book, “The Great Beast”, that one of Crowley’s past incarnations was Sir Edward Kelley, the skryer of the “shew stone” who helped Dr. Dee formulate the powerful Enochian magickal language.

Approximately four hundred years later, Ian Fleming, future author of James Bond (007) who was in the employe of British Intelligence at the time, along with Aleister Crowley, were summoned by Winston Churchill to formulate a magickal strategy against Hitler and Germany (which raises an interesting question: If Crowley once incarnated as Sir Edward Kelly, could Ian Flemming have been Dr. John Dee in another life?)

In order to throw the Third Reich into a state of turmoil, (according to a March 4, 2008 article in the British newspaper, “The Telegraph”), Crowley decided to construct an occult ceremonial ritual in the Ashdown forests. This necessitated clearing a circle along with a path of trees leading to the circle. Ritual ceremonies were conducted designed to lure Rudolph Hess to England by leaking word of these ceremonies to the Romanian Embassy, and thence to Germany.

These ceremonies were designed to convince Hess that there was a genuine Peace Party in Britain, led by the Duke of Hamilton, reputed leader of the Cliveden Set, a loose assemblage of upper class nobility supposedly sympathetic to an alliance between England and Germany. It was into this strange milieu that Hess launched his solo peace mission. The result of this subterfuge was that England was able to flush out her Nazi sympathizers and neutralize them, while parading a captured Hess, the Number Two man of the Nazi Machine, as a military captive. According to the article: “The propitiousness of the 11th of May as a day for Hess to travel was carefully rehearsed into the rituals and Crowley made a genuine attempt to use them to ensnare their quarry by magic.”

Apparently, the was not the first time that Aleister Crowley had been asked to contribute his unique talents to the English war effort. According to author Gerald Suster, in his book, “The Legacy of the Beast”, Crowley was invited to meet the director of British Naval Intelligence at the very beginning of WWII. Suster states: “Crowley claimed that he advocated the use of two magickal signs which were to boost British morale and which were frequently used by Winston Churchill: the ‘V’ sign, which in magickal terms is the counter to the Swastika, and the ‘Thumbs Up’, the sign of the phallus and Victory, which was published in a pamphlet of Crowley poetry during the most desperate days of 1940 and whose use spread throughout the Nation.”

Crafting these magickal signs for the masses to be used against Hitler and the Third Reich may not have been Crowley’s only contributions to England’s WWII war effort, as British Intelligence may also have used Crowley as Churchill’s double on more than one occasion. In “The Legacy of the Beast” opposite page 131, we find a photograph of Crowley impersonating Winston Churchill. The resemblance is extraordinary.

Yet for all his theatrics, without a doubt Aleister Crowley’s greatest war time service to The English Crown occurred during World War I. Crowley was in New York, America had not yet entered the war, and the war was not going well for England and her allies. Various subterfuges had been tried and failed to lure America into the conflict.

Crowley decided to become a contributor to the English language German newspaper based in New York, called “The Fatherland” after convincing its editor, George Sylvester Viereck, that he (Crowley) was actually Irish and therefore a foe of England and friend of Germany.

Writing under various pen names, Crowley wrote the article that may have actually resulted in the sinking of the British passenger liner, ‘The Lusitania’ by a German submarine, when he promoted, in the most extreme and hyperbolic ravings, his case for Germany to conduct Unrestricted Submarine Warfare. In the book, “The Legend of Aleister Crowley” by P. R. Stephenson and Israel Regardie, they quote Crowley as stating: “ I advocated.... ‘Unrestricted Submarine Warfare,’ secretly calculating (rightly so, as time showed) that so outrageous a violation of all law and human decency would be the LAST STRAW and force America to come in on our side.”

There was no doubt in Crowley’s mind that his writing had been the deciding factor in the sinking of the Lusitania. He had written an earlier article in “The Fatherland” called “The Future of the Submarine” in which described this new underwater warship as the future of ocean warfare. Now, his article entitled “Unrestricted Submarine Warfare”, advocating the unrestrained use of such underwater warships, had been published in “The Fatherland” and undoubtedly read in Germany. As Crowley wrote in his autobiography, “The Confessions of Aleister Crowley” upon meeting secretly with a member of the British Embassy in New York, he waved a copy of the article and eagerly proclaimed: “The damned fools have printed it; and it’s going to turn the trick.”

On May 7, 1915, The Lusitania was struck by one torpedo from the German submarine U-20, and sank in 18 minutes, taking 1,198 of the 1,959 lives aboard with her. Her sinking caused an international furor, and because of the substantial loss of American lives, played a pivotal role in the entry of the United States on the side of England and her allies.

As a Satanist, the massive loss of life as a result of this act was of no apparent consequence to Crowley, who had so passionately advocated and now celebrated the result of his magickal Will upon the Earth.

The irony, of course, is that “The Great Beast” may very well have succeeded in convincing the German Navy, with his printed tirade advocating Unrestricted Submarine Warfare, to commit the very act which would seal the fate of the German Nation and lead it to defeat in World War I.


L C Vincent

lcvincent888@gmail.com





Copyright 2010, L C Vincent, all rights reserved.  No portion of this material may be reproduced in any media, in whole or in part, without the expressed written permission of the author.