Media theorist and documentarian Douglas Rushkoff weaves a mind-bending tale of iconography and mysticism against the backdrop of a battle-torn Europe. In a story spanning generations, and featuring some of the most notable and notorious idealists of the 20th century, legendary occultist Aleister Crowley develops a powerful and dangerous new weapon to defend the world against Adolf Hitler's own war machine spawning an unconventional new form of warfare that is fought not with steel, but with symbols and ideas. Unfortunately, these intangible arsenals are much more insidious and perhaps much more dangerous than their creators could have ever conceived. "Rushkoff is a cultural treasure and an eccentric author of big, strange ideas, never less than fascinating and always entertaining." -Warren Ellis, author of Gun Machine, Red, Trees, and Transmetropolitan "Douglas has been one of my personal heroes, and I've been a most attentive reader of anything he cares to put between covers, knowing that his combination of a cold eye and a warm heart is guaranteed to astonish and embolden my own thinking about what's possible in the world--about what's possible to enact in the space between one human being and another. He occupies the ground of our most immediate perplexities, and his reports of what he finds are breaking news." -Jonathan Lethem, author of The Best American Comics and The Fortress of Solitude

Media theorist and documentarian Douglas Rushkoff weaves a mind-bending tale of iconography and mysticism against the backdrop of a battle-torn Europe. In a story spanning generations, and featuring some of the most notable and notorious idealists of the 20th century, legendary occultist Aleister Crowley develops a powerful and dangerous new weapon to defend the world against Adolf Hitler's own war machine spawning an unconventional new form of warfare that is fought not with steel, but with symbols and ideas. Unfortunately, these intangible arsenals are much more insidious and perhaps much more dangerous than their creators could have ever conceived. "Rushkoff is a cultural treasure and an eccentric author of big, strange ideas, never less than fascinating and always entertaining." -Warren Ellis, author of Gun Machine, Red, Trees, and Transmetropolitan "Douglas has been one of my personal heroes, and I've been a most attentive reader of anything he cares to put between covers, knowing that his combination of a cold eye and a warm heart is guaranteed to astonish and embolden my own thinking about what's possible in the world--about what's possible to enact in the space between one human being and another. He occupies the ground of our most immediate perplexities, and his reports of what he finds are breaking news." -Jonathan Lethem, author of The Best American Comics and The Fortress of Solitude

A perception-altering narrative from media maverick Douglas Rushkoff! Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff weaves a mind-bending tale of iconography and mysticism. During the Second World War, the legendary occultist Aleister Crowley develops a powerful and dangerous new weapon in the conflict against the Axis powers. But this unconventional new form of warfare could cast the world into Armageddon! * Beautifully rendered by Michael Avon Oeming (Powers)! * Foreword by Grant Morrison!

“A dense and scholarly book about . . . the relationship between the Nazi party and the occult . . . reveals stranger-than-fiction truths on every page.”—Daily Telegraph The Nazi fascination with the occult is legendary, yet today it is often dismissed as Himmler’s personal obsession or wildly overstated for its novelty. Preposterous though it was, however, supernatural thinking was inextricable from the Nazi project. The regime enlisted astrology and the paranormal, paganism, Indo-Aryan mythology, witchcraft, miracle weapons, and the lost kingdom of Atlantis in reimagining German politics and society and recasting German science and religion. In this eye-opening history, Eric Kurlander reveals how the Third Reich’s relationship to the supernatural was far from straightforward. Even as popular occultism and superstition were intermittently rooted out, suppressed, and outlawed, the Nazis drew upon a wide variety of occult practices and esoteric sciences to gain power, shape propaganda and policy, and pursue their dreams of racial utopia and empire. “[Kurlander] shows how swiftly irrational ideas can take hold, even in an age before social media.”—The Washington Post “Deeply researched, convincingly authenticated, this extraordinary study of the magical and supernatural at the highest levels of Nazi Germany will astonish.”—The Spectator “A trustworthy [book] on an extraordinary subject.”—The Times “A fascinating look at a little-understood aspect of fascism.”—Kirkus Reviews “Kurlander provides a careful, clear-headed, and exhaustive examination of a subject so lurid that it has probably scared away some of the serious research it merits.”—National Review

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) is one of the most famous and significant authors in the history of western esotericism. Crowley has been long ignored by scholars of religion whilst the stories of magical and sexual practice which circulate about him continue to attract popular interest. "Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics" looks at the man behind the myth - by setting him firmly within the politics of his time - and the development of his ideas through his extensive and extraordinarily varied writings. Crowley was a rationalist, sympathetic to the values of the Enlightenment, but also a romantic and a reactionary. His search for an alternative way to express his religious feelings led him to elaborate his own vision of social and political change. Crowley's complex politics led to his involvement with many key individuals, organisations and groups of his day - the secret service of various countries, the German Nazi party, Russian political activists, journalists and politicians of various persuasions, as well as other writers - both in Europe and America. "Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics" presents a life of ideas, an examination of a man shaped by and shaping the politics of his times.

'No one can deny Paul Roland is a complete master of his subject.' Colin Wilson, author of The Occult and A Criminal History of Mankind Why did the country which produced Goethe, Beethoven, Bach, Schiller, Einstein, Kant and Hegel allow itself to be led to the precipice of self-destruction by a ragged collective of criminals, misfits, sadists and petty bureaucrats? The Nazis and the Occult reveals the true nature of the Third Reich's link with arcane influences and of evil itself, as well as explaining how an illeducated, psychologically unbalanced nonentity succeeded in mesmerizing an entire nation. Forget what you have read, seen and heard. This is the real secret history of Nazi Germany and its dark Messiah - Adolf Hitler.

A biographical history of Aleister Crowley’s activities in Berlin from 1930 to 1932 as Hitler was rising to power • Examines Crowley’s focus on his art, his work as a spy for British Intelligence, his colorful love life and sex magick exploits, and his contacts with magical orders • Explores Crowley’s relationships with Berlin’s artists, filmmakers, writers, and performers such as Christopher Isherwood, Jean Ross, and Aldous Huxley • Recounts the fates of Crowley’s friends and colleagues under the Nazis as well as what happened to Crowley’s lost art exhibition Gnostic poet, painter, writer, and magician Aleister Crowley arrived in Berlin on April 18, 1930. As prophet of his syncretic religion “Thelema,” he wanted to be among the leaders of art and thought, and Berlin, the liberated future-gazing metropolis, wanted him. There he would live, until his hurried departure on June 22, 1932, as Hitler was rapidly rising to power and the black curtain of intolerance came down upon the city. Known to his friends affectionately as “The Beast,” Crowley saw the closing lights of Berlin’s artistic renaissance of the Weimar period when Berlin played host to many of the world’s most outstanding artists, writers, filmmakers, performers, composers, architects, philosophers, and scientists, including Albert Einstein, Bertolt Brecht, Ethel Mannin, Otto Dix, Aldous Huxley, Jean Ross, Christopher Isherwood, and many other luminaries of a glittering world soon to be trampled into the mud by the global bloodbath of World War II. Drawing on previously unpublished letters and diary material by Crowley, Tobias Churton examines Crowley’s years in Berlin and his intense focus on his art, his work as a spy for British Intelligence, his colorful love life and sex magick exploits, and his contacts with German Theosophy, Freemasonry, and magical orders. He recounts the fates of Crowley’s colleagues under the Nazis as well as what happened to Crowley’s lost art exhibition--six crates of paintings left behind in Germany as the Gestapo was closing in. Revealing the real Crowley long hidden from the historical record, Churton presents “the Beast” anew in all his ambiguous and, for some, terrifying glory, at a blazing, seminal moment in the history of the world.