Prologue: Birth of a New Aeon

Aleister Crowley was many things…British high society, ceremonial mage, artist, writer, lover, dreamer, creator…

And spy for the British Empire. Agent 666, they called him…he claimed to love England, but he honestly loved Albion, not the Queen and Churchill. And as the world fell down around him, Hitler marching over the Rhine and threatening the world, defacing all that the Master Therion had fought for over the last forty years, as American power gained that backward nation a foothold in world politics (saviors, hah! Not even their Manhattan Project could equal the exploits of Fortune, Achad and others at the Battle of Britain!) and threatened his way of life even further…he knew the time was now. All the preparations he had made over the last half of his life were coming to a head.

Moonchild…open the seventh seal…

He stood before the Stele of Revealing, in the silent chamber where he did most of his ritual work. Smiling, he nodded at the Stele, then looked up over his head, as if gazing toward his lover Nuit and inviting her to join him as the world began…

I am the warrior lord of the forties…

Cefalú was a stronghold, a center of the rapidly spreading Thelemic ways since the early 1900s. It had evidently not been Mussolini’s Will to remove them from his country…rumors held that he had been visited by demons in his bed at night, and that these demons still hampered his ability to make effective decisions. For example, the North African campaign had gone ridiculously wrong…this had made things harder on the Soviet Union, unfortunately. Balance was essential. But also, Mussolini had been a softening influence on Hitler…through him, Glasya-Labolas and others had been able to minimize the suffering of the people who had once developed the Qabalah. According to readings taken with the original Thoth Tarot deck in this very room, what would have been six million Jews murdered by the end of the war was only three million, roughly. Things were proceeding apace, and Aleister Crowley was proud of his Work.

The radio tower on the island had produced Allied propaganda for some time…now it was time for a different programming schedule. For eleven days, starting on the 93rd minute of every day, the Scarlet Woman read the Book of the Law over the radio tower, broadcast to all the nations of Europe. Meanwhile, Crowley invoked Ra-Hoor-Khuit and prepared for war.

The O.T.O. had significant leverage with banks and industry all over the world – this was no secret, having been revealed in publicly available letters at least once in the past, and stated clearly as a positive aspect of the organization. But who would believe a bunch of crazy Ceremonial Mages, prancing about in robes and waving swords at smoke in a triangle? As war materiel production stopped, as supply lines were cut off and the governments of both Allies and Axis crippled, Aleister Crowley mused from his position in the Stele Chamber at Cefalú that people would believe what they wanted to anyway…

I will give you a war-engine. With it ye shall smite the peoples; and none shall stand before you.

At a specialized Army Air Force base in Pasadena, California, Thelemite agent Jack Parsons looked at the silver disk-shaped craft before him and smiled impishly. Liberated from Nazis, designed by Horus only knew who, the War Engine was a very special craft. She could turn on a dime, she had beam weapons of a sort that even Tesla couldn’t explain, and she could hover in mid-air for hours. And by god did she ever shine…it was workings like the one he’d just done that made him believe in magic anew. Sure, he’d seen it work…but a joint invocation of Ra-Hoor-Khuit, with Crowley himself at the focal point and Thelemites en masse from Pasadena to Japan involved, the intent being to cause Ra-Hoor-Khuit to deliver the war engine he’d promised in 1904, and then having it right here in the very base he’d been employed at for the duration of the war?

That kind of stuff made him giddy like a kid on Christmas morning. And now he was going to take her up for a test flight…the Allies had been fighting a losing war for three years since the D-Day invasion, as for some unexplained reason the governments of Earth lost their support for the war, their weapons, their food, their morale…it was Aeonics done right, what a test pilot would call “textbook”. And so he’d quite happily been helping the Army Air Force prepare their ace in the hole, using a combination of glamors, stronger magic and a little good old-fashioned hard work to get in the pilot seat for the maiden run, straight over Germany to blow the living hell out of Berlin, or so they thought.

No…Jack Parsons had other plans. The craft rose into the air over California, stealth circuits engaged…he flew higher and higher. He was deeper in ecstasy than he’d ever been, literally one with the craft in a way beyond what any airplane felt like. Jack smiled, looking at the Earth laid out below him like a blue jewel, a Pantacle of Human Freedom…and then his reverie was interrupted by a warning buzzer.

The craft’s navigation circuit – a doohickey similar to COLOSSUS, only a thousand times more advanced (at least) – indicated that they were located over Roswell, New Mexico. He hadn’t gotten that far after all, had he? Or had he gone around the world already? Hot damn…this baby was incredible. But he was flying her too hard, and she’d re-entered the atmosphere. A collision was eminent…but a confidently spoken request to Raphael, visualization of an invoking pentagram of Air, and he was off again, a disastrous crash, the revelation of his flying saucer, and the death of a New Aeon narrowly avoided.

Bahlasti! Ompehda! I spit on your crapulous creeds.

In Washington, D.C., a demonstration of the beam cannons on the Washington Monument was sufficient enough to gain an audience with the President of the United States. His obelisk of power burned, and Roosevelt wheeled his chair out onto the White House lawn, where for exactly 93 minutes, the Earth Stood Still…he welcomed his new overlords, almost as if he’d known it was coming all along.  Meanwhile, in a Berlin bunker, apparitions of Horus in full battle regalia, Hadit blazing like a nuclear sun as part of the Trinity, and Nuit darkening the room and the Fuhrer’s own heart to praeternatural levels were sufficient to induce him to commit suicide.

World War II was finished…but there was a price to pay. At Cefalú, in the Stele Chamber, Crowley’s head overloaded with visions of chaos, visions of wonder, visions of madness, Shapes of Things To Come, and he died of a stroke. The last words he spoke to the Scarlet Woman at the time, Dion Fortune, were remembered for another 40 years as a clarion cry of the humble sage he appeared to be to his followers, to the public who didn’t know the great lengths that the Thelemite orders had gone to to save them from “Themselves”, such an enemy as it was…

I am perplexed.