Dancing With The Devil: How Sigmund Freud Paved the Way for a Century of Ritual Abuse
Tue 11:48 am +00:00, 2 Dec 2025
Source: https://dfreality.substack.com/p/dancing-with-the-devil-how-sigmund-f83
“Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature such as self preservation?”
— CIA Document, Project ARTICHOKE, MORI ID 144686 (1952)
It is one thing to assault the body, it is another entirely to breach the citadel of the mind.
The first two entries in this series examined the intellectual scaffolding behind the moral inversion of the 20th century: Freud’s alchemical transmutation of society, Reich’s crusade to dissolve the family, and the enshrinement of said doctrines into public policy through Kinsey. Beneath the surface of academic theory and sexual politics lies a more unsettling continuity, however.
To reiterate, ritual abuse is defined as:
…the involvement of children, who cannot give consent, in physical, psychological, emotional, sexual and spiritual abuse which claim to relate the abuse to beliefs and settings of a religious, magical or supernatural kind. Total unquestioning obedience in thought, word or action is demanded of such a child, adolescent or adult under threat of punishment in this life and in an afterlife for themselves, their families, helpers or others.
— Epstein, et al., Ritual Abuse and Mind Control (2011)
Rachel Wingfield Schwartz, a psychotherapist with over two decades of clinical experience treating survivors of such abuse, notes that “the use and abuse of the attachment system by perpetrators” is at the heart of the traumatic experience. A child’s natural need for love, care, and affection is thus hijacked.
To contextualize the modern manifestation of a much more ancient practice, it is essential to recall the thesis first put forth in Black Ops and Black Magick: that occult praxis has always concerned itself with the domination of the human will. Occultic rituals — whether Egyptian, Babylonian, Gnostic, or Hermetic — are technologies of the mind, methods for collapsing the self into a form pliable to outside control. As we have addressed in prior entries as well, the overlap between occult technique and modern psychology is not incidental.
— Sidney Gottlieb (1918-1999), director of MK ULTRA.
In the 20th century, these traditions entered the clinical and military realms.
Under the flag of national security, a new priesthood of psychiatrists, hypnotists, and occultists went to work:
When Agency officials wanted to launch their massive effort for mind control, for instance, they got out the old OSS documents and went about their goal in many of the same ways the OSS had. OSS leaders enlisted outside scientists; Agency officials also went to the most prestigious ones in academia and industry…
— John D. Marks, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate (Pg. 11)
Between the 1950’s and 1970’s, the CIA conducted hundreds of sub-projects under the auspices of MK ULTRA. These programs explored psychological manipulation, memory suppression, and behavioral modification through trauma. The techniques were wide-ranging and frequently grotesque: electroshock, prolonged isolation, drug-induced psychosis, sleep deprivation, and sexual abuse — often without consent. The stated objective was to determine whether the mind could be broken into parts and those parts programmed independently of the host personality. While a proper treatment of this decades long (and arguably, ongoing) program is outside the scope of this series, it is nonetheless important to address given the subject at hand.
Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder, remains one of the most controversial diagnoses in psychiatry. Per the DSM-5, it is defined as “a disruption of identity characterized by two or more distinct personality states,” and is almost universally associated with chronic early trauma.
DID occupies the no-man’s land between psychiatry and spirituality. Survivors of ritual abuse frequently describe alters — or internal identities — designed for specific purposes. Symptoms — such as alters, internal voices, sudden shifts in perception or motor control — resemble, at times uncannily, demonic possession. Anthropologists have long noted the cross-cultural phenomenon of trance states, one which neatly maps onto the core behaviors associated with dissociation. What distinguishes DID from demonic possession, however, is the cause.
The overwhelming majority of patients diagnosed with DID report histories of early, chronic trauma — particularly childhood sexual abuse. Studies indicate that upwards of 90% of diagnosed individuals have experienced prolonged developmental trauma, often beginning before age five (Epstein, et al.). The clinical community has increasingly acknowledged that dissociation is an adaptive mechanism, what the mind does to protect itself when it cannot endure what is happening to the body.
Survivor accounts, both from court testimony and clinical casework, describe what appear to be systematic efforts to create dissociative identities programmed for specific tasks. Critics often dismiss this idea as fantasy, or outright delusion, but this dismissal ignores two key facts.
Firstly, these patterns have now been documented across thousands of survivors — patients with no contact, from different countries, socio-economic backgrounds, and age groups. Secondly, the declassified records of MK ULTRA corroborates the theoretical basis for this kind of psychological engineering. Subproject 136, for example, explicitly examined whether hypnotically induced states could be reinforced with trauma to create secondary personalities. Subproject 119 focused on methods of recording and manipulating brainwaves to alter consciousness. And Dr. Ewen Cameron’s notorious “psychic driving” experiments at Allan Memorial Institute involved drugging patients into regression, then bombarding them with recorded messages meant to install new identities and behaviors. The logic was cold and calculating: if trauma causes dissociation, and dissociation creates alter states, then trauma can be used to create alter states.
As Dr. Colin A. Ross details at the outset of his monumental work, The C.I.A. Doctors:
The major goal of the Cold War mind control programs was to create dissociative symptoms and disorders, including full multiple personality disorder. The Manchurian Candidate is fact, not fiction, and was created by the CIA in the 1950’s under BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE mind control programs. Experiments with LSD, sensory deprivation, electro-convulsive treatment, brain electrode implants and hypnosis were designed to create amnesia, depersonalization, changes in identity and altered states of consciousness.
— The C.I.A. Doctors, Introduction
Despite the doctor’s puzzling apologia for the Agency (he asserts the true villains are the psychiatrists), the association between the intelligence services and DID will prove to be quite significant. The diagnosis of DID remains rare, and those who treat it often find themselves, not unlike Freud, as professional pariahs. Therapists who accept the accounts of survivors are accused of “implanting memories.” As Dr. Ross details at length, that too is a coordinated misinformation campaign.
The result is institutional dissociation — one mirroring the psychic dissociation of the survivors themselves.
“To hell with Christianity, Rationalism, Buddhism and all the lumber of the centuries. I bring you a positive and primeval fact.
Black Magic by name; and with this I shall build a new Heaven and a new Earth.
I want none of your faint approval or faint dispraise. I want blasphemy, murder, rape, revolution – anything, bad or good, but strong.”
― Aleister Crowley (33°), Arch-occultist & Head of the O.T.O.
Any attempt to understand ritual abuse as a clinical and historical phenomenon must account for the consistent ritual architecture described by survivors. Spontaneous acts of depravity do not explain why children from California, the Netherlands, the UK, and rural Canada all describe the same symbols, the same rites, the same chants, the same “games,” and the same punishments. Patterns imply lineage, and lineage implies a source: in the modern era, that source is the Ordo Templi Orientis.
The Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) originated in the early 20th century as an esoteric fraternity drawing from Masonic tradition, Rosicrucianism, and ritual magick. The Order’s origins are generally traced to Carl Kellner (1851–1905), an Austrian industrialist who claimed to have traveled extensively in the Near East and India, studying Tantric and esoteric sexual practices. Whether Kellner’s autobiographical assertions were literal or merely aspirational, his influence is clear: he envisioned an Academia Masonica built upon sexual magick as the key to Masonic symbolism.
Kellner’s circle included Franz Hartmann, a prominent Theosophist, and Heinrich Klein, both of whom helped formalize the structure that would become the early O.T.O.. Theodor Reuss, a German occultist and former journalist, became the key architect of the Order’s organizational identity. Their system drew heavily from irregular Masonic rites such as the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light, itself an American offshoot of Paschal Beverly Randolph’s Rosicrucian Order. Crucially, the pre-Crowleyan O.T.O. already possessed the central elements Crowley would later amplify: the claim to hidden sexual teachings, the syncretism of Masonic and Eastern motifs, and the aspiration to function as a unifying “super-rite” for modern occultism.
From its inception, the O.T.O. distinguished itself from other occult and Masonic bodies by openly assigning a central role to sexual magick. As Tim Tate records in one of the quintessential works on the subject, Children for the Devil:
By the time Reuss met Crowley, the Order published a journal, Oriflamme, which made direct reference to the nature of its rituals and its connection with Freemasonry: ‘Our Order possesses the key which opens up all Masonic and Hermetic secrets, namely the teaching of sexual magic; and this teaching explains, without exception, all the secrets of Freemasonry and all systems of religion.’
Five years later, with Reuss completely under Crowley’s influence, the Order issued a manifesto:
This organization… is a Modern School of Magic. And, like the ancient schools of magic, it derived its knowledge from the East. This knowledge was never revealed to the profane because it gave immense power for either good or evil to its possessors…
The O.T.O. is a body of Initiates in whose hands are concentrated the secret knowledge of all Oriental Orders and existing Masonic Degrees. Its chiefs are initiates of the highest rank and recognized as such by all capable of such recognition in every country in the world.
The Order is international, and has existing connections in every civilized country. Every man or woman who becomes a member of the O.T.O. has an indefeasible right to the first three degrees of Masonry.
— Children for the Devil (Pg. 96)
This declaration provides the clearest articulation of the Order’s self-understanding: that sexual magick is central to occult praxis.
— The Abbey of Thelema in Cefalù, Italy — the former haunt of Aleister Crowley from 1920-1923.
After assuming leadership within the Order, Crowley rewrote many of its rituals and incorporated Thelemic theology into its initiatory process. Thelemic doctrine emphasizes the absolute primacy of the will (“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”), representing a significant shift in Satanism away from religious devotion to devotion of one’s self. In addition, Crowley’s published writings contain repeated, explicit references to child sacrifice:
Aleister Crowley echoes this sentiment in Book 4 – Magick stating, “the blood is the life.” …as we see again in Liber Stellæ Rubeæ sub figura LXVI 9 (emphasis mine):
18. Also the altar shall fume before the master with incense that hath no smoke.
19. That which is to be denied shall be denied; that which is to be trampled shall be trampled; that which is to be spat upon shall be spat upon.
20. These things shall be burnt in the outer fire.
21. Then again the master shall speak as he will soft words, and with music and what else he will bring forward the Victim.
22. Also he shall slay a young child upon the altar, and the blood shall cover the altar with perfume as of roses.
23. Then shall the master appear as He should appear—in His glory.
Similarly, in Magick in Theory and Practice, Crowley sets forth the criteria for the “most suitable victim” for magickal operations (emphasis mine):
For the highest spiritual working one must accordingly choose that victim which contains the greatest and purest force. A male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence is the most satisfactory and suitable victim. …
But the bloody sacrifice, though more dangerous, is more efficacious; and for nearly all purposes human sacrifice is the best. The truly great Magician will be able to use his own blood, or possibly that of a disciple, and that without sacrificing the physical life irrevocably.
Such details, however, may safely be left to the good sense of the Student. Experience here as elsewhere is the best teacher. In the Sacrifice during Invocation, however, it may be said without fear of contradiction that the death of the victim should coincide with the supreme invocation.
— Aleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice (Chapter XII.1)
Statements of this nature appear throughout Crowley’s published texts and reflect doctrinal positions he articulated repeatedly, including under oath.
Crowley’s sordid activities at the Abbey of Thelema only reinforce this pattern. The most serious allegation occurred in 1923, when a baby went missing from a nearby village. Tate notes:
Crowley was accused of abducting and killing [the child] during a ritual. On 23 April Crowley was summoned to the police station in Cefalu to be told that Mussolini had ordered his expulsion. On 1 May, closely guarded by local police, the ‘Great Beast’ was summarily ejected.
No charges were ever brought over the missing infant.
— Time Tate, Children for the Devil (Pg. 99)
The documented history of the O.T.O. leaves little room for those attempting to argue The Beast’s ritual proscriptions were merely symbolic in nature. Crowley’s works articulate the centrality of sexual magick to the Order, his liturgies describe the killing of children in explicit terms, and its organizational structure facilitated transnational dissemination. Indeed, Crowley’s connections to both British and American intelligence networks are well documented. In the lead up to the First World War, Crowley acted as a key informant for British intelligence by infiltrating German occult and nationalist organizations — in addition to playing a key role in the sinking of the Lusitania.
Taken cumulatively, the historical record establishes that the O.T.O.:
— Maintained an international lodge network;
— Centered its doctrine on sexual rituals;
— Integrated human sacrifice into their liturgies;
— Operated under a centralized hierarchical structure; and
— Engaged individuals with scientific, military, and intelligence backgrounds.
For the purposes of analyzing ritual abuse, these features are significant for two reasons. First, many ritual-abuse survivors describe ceremonies that correspond closely — sometimes identically — to rituals preserved in O.T.O. texts. Second, the O.T.O.’s documented interactions with individuals connected to the intelligence—military complex provide yet another concrete point of contact between these two realms. Whether or not the contemporary groups responsible for these practices maintain formal affiliation with the Order is beside the point.
What matters is that the O.T.O. provided the ritual architecture which later occultists would both adopt and adapt.
“The past hides many secrets, many crimes, many uncredited heroes, and many unsuspected villains.
Aleister Crowley knew more than his share of each.”
— Richard B. Spence, Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence, and the Occult
Esoteric orders in the early 20th century largely operated through overlapping networks of fraternal societies and transnational conferences. Members frequently held simultaneous affiliations within Masonic lodges, Hermetic societies, Golden Dawn successor groups, and various “orientalist” cults: the O.T.O. thrived in such an environment. Its degrees, symbols, and liturgies were exchanged, adapted, and reinterpreted across multiple occult subcultures in both Europe and North America. For decades, these systems largely operated in the shadows. Until the Pizzagate and Epstein scandals broke out on the national scene — confirming the depravity of our elites to even the most obtuse amongst us — such evils were largely beyond the imagination of the common man.
What becomes unavoidable at this stage is the recognition that none of the strands examined thus far — Freud & Kinsey’s sanitization of abuse, Crowley’s transgressive theology, or the documented ambitions of mind-control programs — exist as isolated curiosities. Any serious analysis of Crowleyan ritual magick demonstrates that the components of modern ritual abuse shares more than a striking similarity. The salient question then — the one that moves this intellectual inquiry from theory to praxis — is when, and where, those structures first forced their way into the public domain.
The initial reaction to such testimony was largely dismissive. That is, until the wrong people started talking: children. Children who had no idea who Aleister Crowley was, no exposure to esotericism, no access to CIA archives. Children who should have had vocabularies limited to cartoons and classroom activities — yet who described, with unnerving precision, ritual magick which occultists spend entire lifetimes learning.
Though, sadly, there are many such cases we could choose from, it is two investigations — in my estimation — that dominate this landscape and provide the most salient examples of this phenomenon: the Franklin scandal and the Presidio daycare investigation.
— Dancing with the Devil III, digital art, 2025.
Continued in Part IV…
