Rosicrucian Road Trip: The AMORC Takeover of San Jose, OTO, Secret Societies as Spy Cover in WWI, & Crowley's Occult Sexpionage (Pt. I)

We first unpack the mythic & historical antecedents of Bryan Johnson's alchemical vampirism & elite pursuit of the Elixir of Life, including an examination of the Rosicrucian Royal Society & Robert Boyle's involvement in the very first blood transfusions, the Epic of Gilgamesh, & examples from Ancient China, Hindu scriptures, etc.; from there, we discuss Richard & Isabella Ingalese, a husband-wife duo of New Thought gurus (as well as a corporate mining lawyer & psychic) who authored numerous Kybalion-esque self-help texts and then relocated to Southern California to attempt the Great Work, eventually attesting in an interview w/ the Occult Review that they'd succeeded in attaining the Red & White Stones of the Philosophers, also claiming that they personally knew alchemists living in SoCal that were 600, 400, & 200 years old; the Ingalese's pyramid scheme "Renewal Club"—which may have been a coven of alchemical vampires—that mirrors AMORC & future New Age-y California cults; we continue exploring Stavish's history of American alchemy, which serves as an introduction to AMORC & AMORC's non-accredited Rose + Croix University; we discuss founder H. Spencer Lewis's publicity stunt where he performed the "transmutation" of zinc into gold in front of an audience of AMORC grandmasters & newspaper journalists, which supposedly gave him 2nd & 3rd degree burns on his hands; we mention the California magus Frater Albertus, an AMORC lab alchemy graduate who would go on to proselytize the "life-enriching" aspects of alchemy, briefly playing a clip of a presentation he gave at UC Davis on alchemy at the exact same time that Timothy Leary was signing autographs in another hall on campus; from there, we transition to working our way through the first few chapters in Richard Spence's Secret Agent 666, investigating the evidence of Crowley's espionage work, his early recruitment through the Primrose League & a "gunners" cadet corps in Worcestershire, spying interpretations of his varied & globetrotting travels in the late 1890s & early 1900s, his involvement in securing oil in Mexico & initiation into a Mexican Scottish Rite Masonic order, the possibility that Crowley met Rasputin (and may have been in Russia at the same time as Gurdjieff), the likelihood that sexpionage & sexual blackmailing may have made up a significant part of Crowley's toolkit, the strong possibility that Crowley was assigned to infiltrate both the Golden Dawn & OTO to surveil enemy elements of the Crown & British Empire establishment in both orders, the fact that German agent Theodore Reuss was likely trying to turn Crowley by recruiting him into the OTO, the numerous intelligence officers that were members in Crowley's own order Astrum Argenteum, and finally, the cover & motives of Crowley's arrival in NYC aboard the Lusitania at the onset of World War I (a British armament or finance business deal, surveillance of German occultists, and the tracking of Irish republican Sir Roger Casement).

Pt. I of II. The second is dropping momentarily.

Songs:

| Randy Newman - "Spies" |

| Henry Mancini - "Peter Gunn Theme" OST |