Crowley's references to his wars with the Black Lodge are scattered throughout his

writings and bear further study. From these writings, one can come to understand
that the form of the attack upon the magician can range from political repression
to seduction. The great magicians, Theosophists and other Western sources have
devoted even more testimony to the other side of the coin -- the "Great White
Brotherhood" or "The Secret Chiefs" or "The Masters." In the early days of the
magical revival, the existence of an inner order was taken for granted. This was
followed by a long epoch of expose, disillusionment and world weariness. But now,
revisionist historians are finding evidence that these groups, usually described in
mythic terms, are as material as they are archetypal. They are, in very Truth, the
"Inner Order" -- in communication with and overlapping with Ultraterrestrial
Sources. The Reality of the Secret Chiefs The mythology of the secret masters or
chiefs and the myth of the black lodge form an archetypal substratum of modern
magical lore which is almost a necessity if magick is not to drift into a kind of
bland parapsychological secular humanism or offbeat psychology on the one hand, or
a religious fundamentalism grounded in a new faith substituted for Christianity.
But one should at least allow that the legend of secret chiefs may have some rather
literal basis in fact; that there are high masters of the art scattered around the
world, that they are in communication with one another, and that how they use their
illumination depends upon their character and predisposition. This is all that one
must grant to consider the great brotherhood, or secret chiefs, as well as their
opposition plausible. In medieval Tibet, this was known as the "whispered
succession." It is an open part of the literature of Tantric Yoga, and the often-
invoked Tibetan connection of adepts and publicists comes quickly to mind. It was
the Hidden Church of Karl von Eckartshausen that brought Aleister Crowley to the
path, and small wonder; von Eckartshausen wrote in the 18th century of "...the
society of the Elect, which has continued from the first day of creation to the
present time; its members, it is true, are scattered all over the world, but they
have always been united in the spirit and in one truth ... "It is from her that all
truths penetrate into the world, she is the School of the Prophets, and of all who
search for wisdom, and it is in this community alone that truth and the explanation
of all mystery is to be found. It is the most hidden of communities yet possesses
members from many circles; of such is this School ...From all time, therefore,
there has been a hidden assembly, a society of the Elect, of those who sought for
and had capacity for light, and this interior society was called the interior
Sanctuary or Church." In medieval European graal mythology, we find a strain of
accomplished Graal Templars going out in secret to govern and protect far-flung
populations, but (as in von Eschenbach's Parzival), "...writing was seen on the
Gral to the effect that any Templar whom God should bestow on a distant people for
their lord must forbid them to ask his name or lineage, but must help them gain
their rights ...members of the Gral Company are now forever averse to questioning,
they do not wish to be asked about themselves..."

As magical mythologist Aleister Crowley has a wonderful time with both friend and
foe in the fictional _Moonchild_, but his nonfictional recounting of the same
period comes uncomfortably close to the metaphor of the war between the Great White
Brotherhood and the Black Lodge. Then we find the matter of fact (if remarkable)
essay on sexual magick, "Energized Enthusiasm," interrupted, as it were, in
midcourse by an anecdotal accounting worthy of _Moonchild_. "Thus far had I written
when the distinguished poet, whose conversation with me upon the Mysteries had
incited me to jot down these few rough notes, knocked at my door ...'If you come
with me now, we will finish your essay.' Glad enough of any excuse to stop working,
the more plausible the better, I hastened to take down my coat and hat. 'By the
way,' he remarked in the automobile, 'I take it that you do not mind giving me the
Word of Rose Croix.' I exchanged the secrets of I.N.R.I. with him..." What followed
was an account of a close encounter of a Most Peculiar Kind, best read in the
original. Crowley, ever both rationalist and mystic, was aware of the superficial
difficulties in the idea of secret chiefs. Yet he tended to be rather unambiguous
on this matter. "Yes; this involves a theory of the powers of the Secret Chiefs so
romantic and unreasonable that it seems hardly worth a smile of contempt...I
propose to quote it here in order to show that the most ordinary events, apparently
disconnected, are in fact only intelligible by postulating some such people as the
Secret Chiefs..." He remarks in this manner in his autobiography, but is still
quite convinced 20 or so years later when he notes, in _Magick Without Tears_:
"They can induce a girl to embroider a tapestry, or initiate a political movement
to culminate in a world-war; all in pursuit of some plan wholly beyond the purview
or the comprehension of the deepest and subtlest thinkers...But are They men, in
the usual sense of the word? They may be incarnate or discarnate: it is a matter of
Their convenience..." We should take note of Paul Johnson's recent trailblazing
study of the theosophical masters. The essence may be boiled down to this: secret
chiefs or hidden masters may have good reason to mythologize themselves, and
encourage those in direct contact with them to follow suit on the border where
magical philosophy meets with its political implications, the need for secrecy
assumes a more practical rationale. The Secret Chiefs may be secret not because
they are myths or immortals, but because they are neither. Do the Gods Leave
Footprints? The recent revisionist histories, especially Paul Johnson's _The
Masters_, Joscelyn Godwin's "hidden hand" articles, and our own work with the
"ciphers of the Secret Chiefs" (identical with that of the UFOnauts) have begun to
restore the political component to historical understandings of the magical revival
of the late 19th century. For Westerners, especially in America, the separation of
Church and State has been sufficient to make it difficult even to think in terms of
spirituality and political philosophy as a continuous sphere. Even hardcore Bible-
belters are unable to truly imagine an established religion in the European sense,
let alone in the Asiatic. I believe most of us have virtually no idea of what makes
Islamic Republicanism tick, and we stand appalled not only at the atrocities of
Islamic Government, but at its sheer zeal. The idea of Pat Robertson driving a
truck filled with explosives into an enemy military compound shouting "Jesus is
Lord!" is ludicrous in our imaginations. Put Billy Graham behind the wheel ... but
you get the point. Yet, it has been shown that the founders of speculative
freemasonry in the 18th century, especially in its continental version, were
upholders of a radical spiritual, sometimes republican political vision that
captured the imagination of many, including early socialists on the one hand and
occultists on the other. These tendencies meet and overlap, and explain much about
the nature of Masonic and occult secrecy, the cell structure common to political
radicals and occultists, and the hostility of the established State and Church to
both. The Secret Chiefs of Theosophy, the Golden Dawn and the OTO may be able to,
as Crowley said, "initiate a political movement to culminate in a world-war" (or
prevent one), but if Paul Johnson's thesis is correct, one should not conclude from
this that they are immune to arrest, torture and execution. Alessandro di
Cagliostro, almost certainly a (rather more public than would seem judicious)
Secret Chief, was arrested and condemned by the Inquisition, dying in a Roman
prison. Johnson observes of some of his successors: "They were all committed to an
international effort to combat religious dogmatism, extend the range of democratic
government, and direct public attention to the values of liberty, equality and
fraternity ...Sotheran's acquaintance with HPB began in Europe among the disciples
of Mazzini. Sotheran's account of Cagliostro makes it clear that he regarded the
work of Mazzini and the Carbonari to be direct continuation of Cagliostro's
mission..." Johnson's cast of characters in early Theosophical history overlaps
with occultist-magical history considerably. The great Magi Papus, P.B. Randolph
and John Yarker all come under consideration by Johnson. But before we inaugurate
Karl Marx or Anarchist Emma Goldman as "Secret Chiefs," we do need to avoid losing
sight of the fact that those who professedly encountered these hidden beings were
apt to describe them in terms of, at the least, superbeings in human form. Consider
Henry Steel Olcott's account of an encounter at Lahore with the legendary "K.H.":
"I was sleeping in my tent, the night of the 19th, when I rushed back towards
external consciousness on feeling a hand laid on me. The camp being on the open
plain, and beyond the protection of the Lahore police, my first animal instinct was
to protect myself ...'Do you not know me? Do you not remember me?' It was the voice
of the Master K.H. A swift revulsion of feeling came over me, I relaxed my hold on
his arms, joined my palms in reverential salutation, and wanted to jump out of bed
to show him respect. But his hand and voice stayed me, and after a few sentences
had been exchanged, he took my left hand in his, gathered the fingers of his right
into the palm, and stood quiet beside my cot, from which I could see his divinely
benignant face by the light of the lamp ...Presently, I could feel some soft
substance forming in my hand, and the next minute the Master laid his kind hand on
my forehead, uttered a blessing, and left ...I found myself holding in my left hand
a folded paper enwrapped in a silken cloth..." The letter, as it turned out,
predicted the death of two enemies of the Theosophical Society, which swiftly came
to pass. The actual identity of "Master K.H." seems to be one Thakar Singh, an
enlightened radical Sikh leader, in contact with the worldwide network of radicals
of the 19th century. Contrast Olcott's encounter with S.L. MacGregor Mathers'
account of his relations with the Secret Chiefs: "It was found absolutely and
imperatively necessary that there should be some eminent Member especially chosen
to act as the link between the Secret Chiefs and the more external forms of the
Order. It was requisite that such a member should be me who, while having the
necessary and peculiar educational basis of critical and profound Occult
Archaeological Knowledge, should at the same time not only be ready and willing to
devote himself in every sense to a blind and unreasoning obedience to those Secret
Chiefs..." Israel Regardie described Mathers' fateful encounter in this way: "While
walking in the Bois de Bologne one day, meditating ... Mathers claimed triumphantly
that he was approached by three men. He asserted that these were Adepts belonging
to the hidden or Secret Third Order, and therefore belonged to that category of men
described in The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary. Apparently, so he claims, they had
materialized themselves, and in that tense emotional and spiritual atmosphere of
Psychical phenomena, confirmed him in the sole rulership of the Order." Mathers
observed that, for his part, "I believe they are human beings living on this Earth,
but possessed of terrible and super- human powers." As outre as these tales are,
they coincide remarkably with close encounter accounts from as early as St. Paul's
fateful experience on the road to Damascus, to Albert K. Bender's three Men in
Black. The most intelligent discussion of what is delusion, dishonesty and
deception in all this, and what is not, is in Crowley's _Magick Without Tears_.
That it is scattered through the work and written under an implicit assumption that
the proofs of a residue of concrete reality, however bizarre, are readily obvious
to the reader is unfortunate, in today's (properly) more wary magical and
UFOlogical circles. All that we attempt to demonstrate here is that a plausible
case can be made for historical revision at this time. Johnson's tentative
identification of Theosophical Masters both demythologizes them and adds to the
credibility of their existence. If Johnson is correct, the Secret Chiefs are not
only real but they probably have phone numbers -- doubtless unlisted. Crowley
observed dryly in a postscript: "A visitor's story has just reminded me of the
possibility that I am a Secret Chief myself without knowing it: for I have
sometimes been recognized by other people as having acted as such, though I was not
aware of the fact at the time." Brad Steiger observed in 1988, that, apparently,
"...Space Beings have placed themselves in the role of messengers of God, or that
we, in our desperation for cosmic messiahs who can remove us from the foul
situation we have made on this planet, hope that there are
such messengers who can extricate us from the plight we have brought on
ourselves." Only with the coming of cipher knowledge can we decode the Pretended
Saviors from Authentic Benefactors or, better Allies. Taking into consideration
that UFO contactee George King and his Aetherius Society are earnestly engaged in
the war being waged by the (Great White) Brotherhood against the Black Magicians, a
group they feel seeks to enslave the human race," as Steiger puts it, the UFOlogy
mythos and the magical mythos are shown clearly to be cut from the same cloth. The
nature of that cloth, in the hands of Crowley or King, is now no longer obscure.
P:.P:. on the M:.I:.B:.