Thanks to the_real_simon_iff...

And yet another interesting publication: Satan - Jünger, Jäger und Justiz by Andreas Huettl and Peter-Robert König.

Unfortunately for some this book is in German, but for those who understand this language, it's a highly interesting read. Andreas Huettl takes a look at "Ritual Murder" accusations, providing lots of legal material and showing once more that all those claims have no or nearly no basis. This makes up the first 100 pages of the book. Since Aleister Crowley and a lot of occult groups associated with Crowley's legacy are usually named in those cases, the following 300 pages is a "conversation" of Mr.Huettl with the famous/infamous expert on all things O.T.O. and related: Peter-Robert Koenig. Especially interesting is the fact that Mr.Koenig this time is not simply "hiding" behind his huge collection of documents, but actually "speaks" in his own words. Well, actually sometimes there are a little too much copy-pastes from König's website contained in their "conversation".


From the publisher's blurp: "Andreas Huettl provides an historical and legal overview of decades of ritual murder accusations. These accusations are typically raised without concrete proof, but nevertheless commonly pursued against occult sects in general.

This summary overview is enhanced with 30 years of findings from police authorities, public prosecutor's offices and legal cases. Information from all state police agencies, the Federal Criminal Investigation Office and the Federal Information Service are considered as well as judicial rulings since the early 1970's involving the wave of Satanic Panic over alleged Satanic crimes committed by occult orders.

The roots of these accusations are traced historically over the centuries through the blood-soaked accusations of ritual murder legends, including the most spectacular cases of diabolical crimes, including infamous allegations against Jews; each case is highlighted by a legal evaluation. The recurring pattern of child murder allegations shows that virtually the same content and nearly identical phraseology occurs no matter which group is accused.

Following this historical survey, occult order expert P.R. Koenig, who has collected and published for over 20 years detailed material and information on these orders, reveals background facts, numbers and information to prove that typically occult groups, although routinely condemned by the media and so-called cult experts, on closer inspection do not appear to have committed these sensational Satanic crimes nor be the masterminds of a worldwide conspiracy.

This book is an interdisciplinary view of Satanism, its intimate relationship with the mass media and its legal rights in relation to the police and before the Courts of Justice, with an exploration of the social meaning of the new religion Thelema and its protagonists."


To me, the most interesting part of the book was the "conversation" with Peter-R. König. He once again shows how much stupidity, rivalry, envy, ridiculous behaviour, pompous-title-collecting, oath-breakings etc. can be found among occultists in various orders during the last century until today, but this time I had the impression that Mr.König reveals that he is a) not the really objective researcher he claims to be but that he simply doesn't like Crowley (to put it mildly) and b) in my opinion doesn't understand Thelema as well as he thinks and c) seems to think that every occultist is - well, psychically at least instable. For example: If all one has to say about the Thoth Tarot deck is, that it is the cOTO's biggest source of income (thús concentrating on the evil money aspect and showing how evil the cOTO is) and never even ask why it is such a terrific deck to millions of people, you leave out something important. Also, if one thinks that "official" documents related to Thelema can only be understood correctly by picking little dirty quotes from the unpublished diaries of a dirty old man (as interesting and revealing as those are) one misses again a lot that hundreds or thousand others experience. And I have to admit, this concentration on Spermo-Gnosis begins to become boring, in the end it is already Mr.König's merit that an aspirant to Thelemic orders probably has suspicions what is awaiting him. Funnily he and Mr.Huettl show how easily (and equally unjustified) you could "prove" a "Jewish, Muslim or Christian Ritual Murder Conspiracy" by picking what you need from their Holy books or the published and unpublished descriptions of their representatives' behaviour, and of course creating a "Satanic Panic" (that's what the book is about" or a "Look-How-Ludicrous-Occultists-Are-Argument" (that's what the book sometimes seem to imply) is equaslly easy. Well, it was not my intention to review the book here, I just wanted to show why I thought it was a very interesting read.

If you are a member of Lashtal.com you can check out the visual of the book here: http://www.lashtal.com/nuke/module-pnMediaLibrary-display-id-480.phtml

Or you can visit: http://homepage.hispeed.ch/O.T.O./english.html