History is a Lie By Donald Michael Kraig When I was in elementary school I was thrilled to learn of the brave, revolutionary colonists who were united in their fight with the British for freedom. By the time I was in eighth grade I learned that only half of the colonists wanted to split with the British. In college I learned that only about ten per cent of the colonists wanted to split from Britain, and that was to a large extent to help maintain their personal wealth. I remember President Johnson telling the country that the reason we were sending soldiers to a far away country called Viet Nam was because they had fired on one of our ships without provocation. It was later revealed that the ship they fired on had steamed in and out of their waters in an attempt to get them to fire upon it so we could send in our forces. The military crowed over the success of our expensive weapons during the Gulf War. Contrary to the military's claims, however, only a small percentage of the smart bombs hit their targets; and the much-vaunted Patriot Anti-Missile Missiles were, according to the Israelis, highly overrated. So what is the truth of all these contradictory statements? We'll probably never know because history is a collection of lies and myths determined by the winners of conflicts. Does this sound a bit overstated? Jaded? I don't think it is. Imagine, for a second, what our history books would be like if the Axis powers had won World War II. Imagine what history books would say about the Druids if Julius Caesar had not fought the Celts. Think of what history would say about Christianity if the Renaissance had succeeded in bringing back both older wisdom and scientific attitudes. Recently I saw a TV show about the archaeological digs at Masada in Israel. This was where a few hundred Jewish zealots held off 15,000 Roman soldiers for two years and then committed suicide rather than face capture and slavery. The story was recorded in the works of the historian Flavius Josephus. The excavation, however, revealed a slightly different story. Evidence indicated that the zealot soldiers killed all the women and children. Then the soldiers drew lots and ten of them killed the rest of the soldiers. The ten drew lots and one killed the other nine. The last one killed himself. So why did Josephus lie? The answer was that he worked for the Romans. The Roman readers, as a result of their culture and upbringing, would not understand that a group of people could slaughter themselves by choice, but they would understand a mass suicide. Thus, the reason Josephus lied was to present the event in a literary fashion that a reader of the time would understand. Philosophically he told the truth, although the exact details were incorrect. These kinds of lies permeate our culture. In fact, they make up our culture. Washington never chopped down a cherry tree. It was a literary invention to show the kind of person he was. The famous World War II photo of soldiers raising the flag was not a photo of the actual event. It was a reenactment. Churchill never gave the Tears, sweat and blood speech (usually described with the nouns misplaced). A vocal double read it over the radio for him. These and many other myths have held to make up and define our cultures. Some readers may be surprised at the above statements while others of you are saying so what else is new? More to the point, what does all this have to do with the occult? The answer is that the history of the occult is simply a subset of the history of the world. It follows, therefore, that if history, as a general rule, is a lie, then the history of occultism is also a lie. I recently read two books that prove this to be true. The first is an anti-occult book called Raising Hell; An Encyclopedia of Devil Worship and Satanic Crime by Michael Newton. In it the author ignores well-known facts in order to present his thesis (yawn) that there is an international conspiracy of evil occultists who commit foul crimes. In one case he even quotes a story from a novel as being true and refers to a representative of the FBI as an apologist for the satanists who are killing thousands of people. Naturally, Newton presents little proof, save the fantasies of sick minds. Another book, At the Heart of Darkness; Witchcraft, Black Magic and Satanism Today, by John Parker, is about the contemporary occult world of England. His work in not anti-occult. In fact, it rather loudly protests the treatment of Chris Bray and his shops, The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Astonishing Books. Christian fanatics from the U.S. came over to England and began spreading their lies to people in England. Organizations were set up to save children and spread the gospel of a child-eating satanist under every bed. After such unsubstantiated claims of ritual child abuse were made in the media, and his shops were described as sources for supplies and books used by such people, one of his stores was broken into, vandalized and burned. Even so, the author repeats various stories which are untrue. For example, he describes how one of Crowley's students died after allegedly drinking animal blood as part of a ritual. He doesn't say that both Crowley and the poor man's wife both stated that the man died of dysentery as a result of drinking from contaminated well water. The man's wife, who did not like Crowley, admitted that Crowley had even warned her husband not to drink from such. I have yet to read one book tracing the history of the occult which does not have errors, mistakes and outright deceptions. The mistakes and errors come both from those who are and who are not occultists who write such histories. The deceptions come from writers who are members of occult groups and who wish to make their groups look better then they actually may be. We need myths. When we don't have them we create them. Such myths may be the ancient myths of the Greeks, Romans, Celts and Druids or the modern ones of Gardner, Sanders, world history and the pseudo-science of debunkers. There is nothing wrong with believing in myths unless we start to believe in the virtual reality of the myth instead of its meaning. Documenting the history of the occult is an important task. Many books have already attempted to do this. Many more will be written. Depending on the attitude and intent of the author the book will be a myth for occultists, anti-occultists, materialists or other groups. If you are truly interested in the history of the occult—the reality, not the myth—then I suggest that you read as many histories of the occult that you can find. Look for documentation. Try to find sources. Merely because somebody has published a book on the history of occultism does not mean that it is true. As I have said in my writings before, and as Dion Fortune wrote before me, There is no room for authority in occultism. And yes, that goes for what I write, too. 1994 Donald Michael Kraig | 
