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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Norere with you,

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Speaker 2: Doctor Rick Spence with US Professor Emeritus of History. His

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Speaker 2: works include Secret Agent six sixty six, Alistair Curley, British

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Speaker 2: Intelligence and the Occult, and Wall Street in the Russian Revolution.

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Speaker 2: Now he's created three incredible video series, including the Real

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Speaker 2: History of Secret Societies, Crimes of the Century and Secrets

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Speaker 2: of the Occult. Doctor Rick Spence back on Coast to

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Speaker 2: Coast spent seven years, Rick, welcome back to the show.

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Speaker 3: Well, thanks for having me on Time Flies it does.

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Speaker 4: How did you get interested in the occult?

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Speaker 3: Well, the way I usually I get asked that question

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Speaker 3: a lot, So the way I usually ask that to say,

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Speaker 3: one thing leads you to another. You become interested in

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Speaker 3: one thing that you elsewhere. So I say, probably my

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Speaker 3: unhealthy obsession with a lot of things began with my

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Speaker 3: interest in things like modern Russian history. And when you

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Speaker 3: dealt into modern Russian history you encounter inevitably the Russian Revolution,

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Speaker 3: which is just well, you can't have revolutions without conspiracies,

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Speaker 3: and you can't have those without secret societies and usually

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Speaker 3: somewhere the occult sneaks in along with espionage. So that's

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Speaker 3: how all of my interests have accumulated.

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Speaker 4: Fascinating.

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Speaker 2: Did you bring any of that into the professorship when

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Speaker 2: you were teaching the history?

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Speaker 3: I did teach a course at the University of Idaho.

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Speaker 3: I taught courses on Russian history, Middle Eastern history, and

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Speaker 3: military history. But I have to say that one of

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Speaker 3: my favorite courses to teach, and probably one of the

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Speaker 3: more popular ones, was a course called Conspiracies and Secret

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Speaker 3: Societies and History. So and yes, I actually got away

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Speaker 3: with teaching that, and it was you know, I would

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Speaker 3: tell students at the beginning of this is that what

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Speaker 3: we're really looking at in this course is sort of

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Speaker 3: the nature of historical reality. How do we know what

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Speaker 3: we know? And one of the reasons why you end

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Speaker 3: up with that there are plenty of real conspiracies, by

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Speaker 3: the way, but one of the reasons you, in addition

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Speaker 3: to that, ended with conspiracy theories is that their efforts

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Speaker 3: to explain something. I mean, they may be right, they

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Speaker 3: may be wrong, they may be a little bit of each,

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Speaker 3: but usually they exist in the absence of any kind

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Speaker 3: of definite information, and you know we always like answers,

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Speaker 3: even when we make them up.

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Speaker 2: Alisair Crawley was born in eighteen seventy five died in

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Speaker 2: nineteen forty seven.

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Speaker 4: Tell us about.

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Speaker 3: Him, well, Alistair Crawley is probably because some of it's

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Speaker 3: he's the most notorious occultist of the twentieth century.

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Speaker 4: Or of the modern era by far, by far.

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Speaker 3: Yes, And some people would go so far as he's

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Speaker 3: the most notorious Satanist of the twentieth century or the

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Speaker 3: modern era. Now occultist, he most definitely was what he

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Speaker 3: would identify himself as being Satanist, He would not, Okay,

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Speaker 3: And this is let me start out here by saying,

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Speaker 3: is that I'm not here as a conspicuous advocate or

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Speaker 3: for Alistair Crowley. First of all, he doesn't need me

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Speaker 3: or anybody else to defend him. I think he's dead

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Speaker 3: and I'm not a follower of him, So just in

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Speaker 3: case anyone is interested, I don't approach this whole thing

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Speaker 3: by worshiping the man like a god or holding him.

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Speaker 3: And I find him a very interesting character. I find

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Speaker 3: him an interesting but also at the same time very

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Speaker 3: flawed human being. There were lots of He was a

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Speaker 3: difficult person in a lot of ways. Was he the

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Speaker 3: emblem of evil that he sometimes pictured as today? Probably not.

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Speaker 4: Was he overrated or underrated?

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Speaker 3: Well, probably a bit of both as a diabolical genius.

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Speaker 3: Again as the emblem of evil, he's probably overrated. In

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Speaker 3: terms of his influence, not so much anymore, I say,

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Speaker 3: in terms of his cultural influence, he's I think underrated

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Speaker 3: in some ways. I mean, he's much better known today

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Speaker 3: than he was during his lifetime. When Crowley died in

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Speaker 3: nineteen forty seven, he was an obscure figure. I mean,

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Speaker 3: there were relatively there were small pockets of people scattered

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Speaker 3: around the world who would even have known who he was.

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Speaker 3: His books were not widely written. His name was if

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Speaker 3: it showed up in the press at all, it was

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Speaker 3: generally in some form of scandal, but still almost forgotten

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Speaker 3: by the time that he died in forty seven. But

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Speaker 3: he has had a renaissance, I think, beginning of the

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Speaker 3: nineteen sixties and continuing today.

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Speaker 4: I mean, how did he make money? I mean how

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Speaker 4: a cultists don't make a lot of money.

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Speaker 3: Oh no, no, well that's it, and he didn't make

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Speaker 3: a lot of money. So there's an interesting question about

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Speaker 3: his life. He inherited. He came from a reasonably wealthy family, huh.

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Speaker 3: And not not rich, but his well, his the Crowley

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Speaker 3: family had made money in brewing. There's still a line

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Speaker 3: called Crowley Ales, so they were brewers. So his father

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Speaker 3: had some money from the family brewing interest. But then

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Speaker 3: I think he also dabbled in what we now call

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Speaker 3: real estate and had enough money to quit working in

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Speaker 3: any business and become a And this is interesting. His

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Speaker 3: father became a lay minister of the Christian Gospel. Oh,

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Speaker 3: he was developed because you see Crowley Alistair Crowley, or actually,

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Speaker 3: let's give him his real name. So this is a

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Speaker 3: This I think is an interesting point which is often

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Speaker 3: a like that Alistair Crowley is not his actual.

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Speaker 4: Name, Edward Alexander.

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Speaker 3: Edward Alexander Croley is named after his father and Edward

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Speaker 3: Alexander Eddie to some people, that's his legal name. As

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Speaker 3: far as I can tell, he never I mean, Alistair

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Speaker 3: Crowley became his his his nom de plume, the name

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Speaker 3: that he wrote under. It became the kind of public persona,

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Speaker 3: It became the character that he played in public in

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Speaker 3: some ways, and I think of it a way of

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Speaker 3: an actor assuming a name other than their own. But

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Speaker 3: and but the point is is that those two croleys

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Speaker 3: exist in the same person. They're always around at the

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Speaker 3: same time. We don't know the Alistair Kaer, the the flamboyant,

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Speaker 3: either inspiring or terrifying occultist Alistair Crowley, that's the guy

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Speaker 3: who gets all the public attention. That's what the world sees.

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Speaker 2: Why does he seem to be so relevant today? His

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Speaker 2: name comes up on this show quite often.

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Speaker 3: Well, it's starting in the nineteen sixties, and thanks in

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Speaker 3: part to the sixties counterculture, which was looking for was

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Speaker 3: looking for heroes in the non traditional places. Crowley appeared

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Speaker 3: to be a symbol of defiance. He was unconventional, he

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Speaker 3: was iconoclastic. He was also extingly difficult person in anyways,

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Speaker 3: but he was He was seen as someone who in

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Speaker 3: his lifetime, because he was ignored or even persecuted or denigrated,

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Speaker 3: was then given credit for being some kind of hero

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Speaker 3: or anti hero. He's gone on to have a lot

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Speaker 3: of influence in modern I mean in modern occultism of

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Speaker 3: their organizations and many groups of people who do follow

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Speaker 3: whose works, who consider themselves to be prolean magicians or

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Speaker 3: practitioners of prole and magic, and yet his name is

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Speaker 3: known to other people just generally. Again usually some sort

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Speaker 3: of satanist weirdo is the way he's often presented. I

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Speaker 3: give you an example of that, and it's a way

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Speaker 3: of I'm talking about his influence in the sixties. So

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Speaker 3: one of the most famous public portrayals of Proli Maybe

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Speaker 3: I would argue his most famous public appearance posthumously was

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Speaker 3: when his face a portrait of him, shows up in

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Speaker 3: nineteen sixty seven on the cover of the Beatles Sergeant

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Speaker 3: Pepper's Hearts Club Band album. A lot of people had

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Speaker 3: that album. I had that album, and I have to

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Speaker 3: say that when I bought it in nineteen sixty seven,

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Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty eight, I knew that there are the

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Speaker 3: faces of lots of people on the album, but that

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Speaker 3: wasn't what I was interested in. And I had no

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Speaker 3: idea at the time that Alistair Crowley was on it,

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Speaker 3: or if someone had mentioned he was on it, it

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Speaker 3: wouldn't have meant much of anything. But I've had people

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Speaker 3: come up today and one of the things off and said, well,

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Speaker 3: you know his pictures on the cover of Sergeant Pepper

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Speaker 3: and you know the Beatles liked him. They put his

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Speaker 3: picture on the cover of their album, and indeed they

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Speaker 3: did because but on that cover there are the pictures,

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Speaker 3: the portraits of at least fifty people. He's just one

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Speaker 3: of those which the Beatles simply described as people we

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Speaker 3: like or admire. So Alistair Crowley is there. On the

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Speaker 3: other hand, though, it is Marlon Brando, Lawrence of Arabia,

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Speaker 3: Fred Astaire, Marilyn Monroe, there's Bob Dylan, There's both Laurel

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Speaker 3: and Hardy. So think of it this way. Proley, the

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Speaker 3: arch magician of the twentieth century, shows up on a

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Speaker 3: Beatles album cover, but then so do Laurel and Hardy

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Speaker 3: and Marilyn Monroe, so you have to place him in

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Speaker 3: that kind of of context. But it's in today that

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Speaker 3: very few people will mention any of those other people

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Speaker 3: on the album. But the idea that seems to be

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Speaker 3: important in some way, Alistair Crowley is there.

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Speaker 4: I think he even had Laurel and Hardy on there.

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Speaker 3: Yes, yes, Laurel and Harneydy. So he's he and Laurel

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Speaker 3: and Hardy share the billing on Sergeant Peppers.

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Speaker 4: How did you get interested in Crawley?

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Speaker 3: Well, you know, you inevitably run across his name. He's

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Speaker 3: he's one of those croly in some ways, even if

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Speaker 3: you're not in a story, and it's like you know

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Speaker 3: that pair of shoes you're constantly tripping over every time

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Speaker 3: you turn around. I really took a particular interest in him.

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Speaker 3: I mean, I knew his reputation. I knew that he had,

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Speaker 3: at various times claimed to have worked for British intelligence.

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Speaker 3: Now I have to say that I didn't take that

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Speaker 3: claim particularly seriously. Didn't dismiss it, but I didn't cam

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Speaker 3: hadn't seen anything to support it. And even people who

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Speaker 3: otherwise were let's say, proley fans didn't seem to pay

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Speaker 3: much attention to it either. What I was doing is

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Speaker 3: that I was doing research on other spies in and

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Speaker 3: around New York City during World War One, and I

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Speaker 3: just sort of care. I was sending off to the

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Speaker 3: National Archives, who are different files. This is when you

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Speaker 3: had to do these things by mail, and I thought, well,

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Speaker 3: you know, I'll just ask whether or not in the

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Speaker 3: National Archives the files that I was looking at, which

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Speaker 3: were the files of a thing called the Military Intelligence Division.

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Speaker 3: It really no longer exists in that form, but it

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Speaker 3: was kind of the FBI of its day, and whether

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Speaker 3: or not the Military Intelligence Division, which kept track of

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Speaker 3: all kinds of subversity or suspicious characters during the First

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Speaker 3: World War, whether they had a file on Parley. And

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Speaker 3: they did, and it wasn't a very big file. In fact,

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Speaker 3: there's barely anything to it, and there's really only one

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Speaker 3: paragraph in that file that was of any particular interest

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Speaker 3: where he was concerned. But it was very interesting. So remember,

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Speaker 3: as I said, Crowley had later periodically claimed that while

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Speaker 3: in the United States during the First World War, not

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Speaker 3: in England, but in the United States, that he had

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Speaker 3: done secret work for the British government. They had been

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Speaker 3: in his Majesty's service, and that part of that service

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Speaker 3: included basically pretending to be a trader of actually writing

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Speaker 3: anti British propaganda for a German publication, a German American publication,

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Speaker 3: and he certainly did that. He certainly wrote anti British articles.

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Speaker 3: Those were published, you can find them, you can read them,

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Speaker 3: and they're really quite anti British. But the question was

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Speaker 3: was there anything to Proley's claim that he he had

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Speaker 3: done this somehow with the knowledge and approval of the

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Speaker 3: British government. Well, here's the interesting part. From that American

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Speaker 3: intelligence support. The Americans were suspicious of crole and they

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Speaker 3: were thinking about arresting him. So they went to the

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Speaker 3: British consulate in New York and they asked them about him,

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Speaker 3: and to quote from the mid report, it was determined

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Speaker 3: that Alister Crowley was an employee of the British government

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Speaker 3: at present in this country under official business, of which

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Speaker 3: the British Consul New York City has full cognizance.

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Speaker 4: Wow, so they backed him up.

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Speaker 3: Yes, So in that case he was telling the truth.

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Speaker 3: They also went on to note that it was found

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Speaker 3: that the British government was fully aware of the fact

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Speaker 3: that Croley was connected with German propaganda and had received

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Speaker 3: money for writing anti British articles.

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Speaker 4: Wasn't Hitler a follower of Crowley?

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Speaker 3: Uh No. There's a lot of efforts to try to

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Speaker 3: connect them together. And Croley was in Berlin. He was

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Speaker 3: he had a kind of front row seat for the Nazis'

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Speaker 3: rise and in the early nineteen thirties, but he left

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Speaker 3: before Hitler came to power. I think he tried to

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Speaker 3: communicate with him. You know. He sent letters to everybody,

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Speaker 3: sent letters to Stalin, anybody whose interest he thought he

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Speaker 3: could possibly brush up. But no. The one thing that

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Speaker 3: I have not been able to do, and I'd be

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Speaker 3: perfectly happy to do it if I could. It would

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Speaker 3: be cool if I could, is to put Crowley and

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Speaker 3: Adolf Hitler in the same room together, or any approximate

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Speaker 3: to each other other than being the same city at

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Speaker 3: any given time, which one of the two would get

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Speaker 3: out liede, you know, And I give Croly the edge

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Speaker 3: of the cron His heyday was quite athletic.

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Speaker 4: Was he a nice guy?

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Speaker 3: Well, that's the question that could be asked about all

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Speaker 3: of us by someone at some point. I think it

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Speaker 3: would depend very much on the situation he was. I

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Speaker 3: think it's it's fair to say that he was a

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Speaker 3: very difficult friend if you were friends with him. The

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Speaker 3: one thing that I certainly would never do would be

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Speaker 3: to loan him money. It goes back to the question

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Speaker 3: where did the money come from? A lot of it

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Speaker 3: was bummed off his friends.

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Speaker 4: When you lend money, you very rarely get it back anyway.

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Speaker 3: Reck you would if you lent money to Alistair Curley,

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Speaker 3: you would never see it again. So you had to

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Speaker 3: be that kind of a friend, and he would come

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Speaker 3: back and ask you for more, he had no talent

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Speaker 3: for managing money. He inherited a modest fortune which he

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Speaker 3: basically ignored and squandered. And essentially any money that, as

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Speaker 3: far as I can see, any money that came into

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Speaker 3: his hands, he simply spent on one thing or another.

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Speaker 2: Tell me about the title of your book, Agent six

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Speaker 2: sixty six, which is part of Curley.

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Speaker 3: Well, was he ever? Was he ever actually called Agents

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Speaker 3: sixty sixty six? No, but it makes a good title.

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Speaker 3: So he's so connected. Now. One of the things he

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Speaker 3: did embrace and one of the reasons why he gets this,

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Speaker 3: you know, satanic reputation, is that he liked to adopt nicknames.

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Speaker 3: Remember he renamed himself Alistair when he was a teenager.

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Speaker 3: He decided basically to adopt that name and kept it

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Speaker 3: name right. Yeah, Well that's just I describe it as

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Speaker 3: his stage name. That's his public stage name, that's his

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Speaker 3: public persona. That's how he restructured himself.

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Speaker 4: Like Hollywood actors changed their name. That's what he did,

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Speaker 4: just in the same way.

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Speaker 3: But behind the scenes. You know, the names on checks

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Speaker 3: and passports and census recordings is Edward Alexander Crowley. So

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Speaker 3: that person that is still the kind of legal identity

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Speaker 3: which he possesses, which I actually think is a kind

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Speaker 3: of alternate persona in a way. I think there were

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Speaker 3: always sort of two people there. There was Edward Crowley

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Speaker 3: and there was Alistair Crowley. They occupied the same body,

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Speaker 3: but I think they were there were slightly slightly uh

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Speaker 3: slightly different different personas.

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Speaker 4: Would you say he was a wicked person.

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Speaker 3: Oh, he could do things. He was capable of doing

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Speaker 3: things that the average person would probably find immoral and

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Speaker 3: perhaps even horrifying and occult is well. Croley's answer was

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Speaker 3: that in the in the pursuit of hidden knowledge and

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Speaker 3: the in the pursuit of a cult wisdom, you have

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Speaker 3: to be willing to cross boundaries. Uh. One of the

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Speaker 3: there's a principle one could argue, in a sense of

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Speaker 3: kind of a cult principle that the value of transcendence,

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Speaker 3: that is, and by this I don't mean transcendental meditation,

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Speaker 3: I mean transcending boundaries. The better way to put his

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Speaker 3: transgression with the value of transgression of deliberately breaking taboos.

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Speaker 3: And you can say that that's one of the things

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Speaker 3: that Proly in a way dedicated part of his life

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Speaker 3: to doing It was part of his old shit. I

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Speaker 3: suppose was breaking taboos, defying conventions, and you know that

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Speaker 3: can go from thumbing your nose at etiquette at dinner

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Speaker 3: parties to carrying out human sacrifice. It could corruct. It

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Speaker 3: depends upon where you went to place that boundary. So

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Speaker 3: Proley's boundaries of actions were probably wider than the average person.

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Speaker 3: There were things that he would do that that would

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Speaker 3: I would are shock. That was part of the purpose

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Speaker 3: of shock and horrified probably most people. I don't know

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Speaker 3: that that necessarily made him a horrible person. It made

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Speaker 3: him a person who, under certain circumstances, could do shocking, immoral,

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Speaker 3: and perhaps horrible things.

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