Blood on the Altar: The Secret History of the World's Most Dangerous Secret Society [Paperback]

Craig Heimbichner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 3, 2005

What's beyond Freemasonry? That's the question investigators have pondered for decades and Craig Heimbichner furnishes fascinating answers as he probes deeply into the sooty arcana of the Ordo Templi Orientis --or "OTO" -- the higher secret society to which elite Freemasons emigrate as part of a process of occult succession.

"Blood on the Altar" pursues the shape-shifting trail of this successor group, on the Left as the pillar of a libertarian ethos, avant-garde drug culture and radical hedonism; on the Right, as the pillar of aristocratic preference for authoritarian rule and classical culture.

Heimbichner has deconstructed not just a Janus-faced secret society but a method of operation so deceptive, the reader can hardly believe that such audacious and far-flung duplicity and misdirection could possibly succeed for so long without exposure. But succeed it has, until now.

The head-spinning trail of the OTO leads from the US government to the NASA rocket program, from the Hollywood film industry to Right-wing "patriot" groups, from the New Age craze for the Kabbalah, to an attempt to control the conservative enthusiasm for traditional liturgy.

The OTO has marched from triumph after triumph, as the spectre of its "Great Beast", British Intelligence officer Aleister Crowley, cast its Thelemic spell over a double-minded populace alternately seeking freedom-and-contraint, sex-and-repression, magick-and-Christendom, science-and-superstition. "Blood on the Altar" shows the OTO to be the signature secret society behind the most dazzling--and puzzling-- charades of the modern Cryptocracy.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Craig Heimbichner has a master's degree in education. He is a former high school principal and a freelance writer, lecturer and researcher.

Product Details

• Paperback: 170 pages
• Publisher: Independent History and Research; First edition. edition (January 3, 2005)
• ISBN-10: 0970378432
• ISBN-13: 978-0970378439
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #624,996 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Craig Heimbichner has contributed to Secret and Suppressed II (Feral House), and Paranoia: The Conspiracy Reader (Volume 1). He recently appeared on Brad Meltzer's Decoded (History Channel) explaining the Bohemian Grove. "Secret society historian Craig Heimbichner follows the Middle Path to wisdom. He stays awake when we are all asleep. He works the graveyard shift in the secret lodge. He break-dances with the skeletons in the closet. He does the hokey-pokey with his whole body in. He shakes it all about. He turns himself around. And he tells us what "IT" is all about." - Joan d'Arc, Paranoia The Conspiracy Reader

Author's statement regarding "Blood on the Altar," which originally lacked the colorful subtitle (the original title was a line taken from a document by Aleister Crowley--"and blood shall cover the altar"--with a different meaning):

I once attempted a book on the OTO with a humorous touch in many places, a non-religious tone, and an avoidance of exaggeration. The publisher, unbeknownst to me, ghost wrote whole sections and published the tremendously altered version without my prior knowledge or consent. The result was a mish-mash of his and my writing and ideas, completely changing the book, which adopted a sensationalized tone, many religious ideas (of his), and strong points of view from the publisher mixed throughout the work. The book then took on a life of its own, with many of his passages appearing on other websites under my name. It is time to set the record straight. I am moving past it to release in the next year a book which truly reflects the entertaining approach I have regretted was left behind in the wake of the prior book. Get ready for Ritual America, co-authored with Adam Parfrey. It will be humorous, fascinating, and free of bias. I hope you enjoy it! - Craig Heimbichner

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent; Well Written; Important!, September 24, 2006

By 

Michael Tozer (San Antonio, Texas United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood on the Altar: The Secret History of the World's Most Dangerous Secret Society (Paperback)

Craig Heimbichner's book is extraordinarily well done. A previous reviewer mentioned that it could well be seen in tandem with Michael A. Hoffman's important "Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare". In fact, Heimbichner's book is published by Independent History and Research, which is Hoffman's company. And Mr. Hoffman was also kind and generous enough to offer a review here recorded by Amazon. Moreover, readers of Hoffman will recognize the unmistakable influence of Hoffman in Heimbichner's style.

The preceding notwithstanding, "Blood on the Alter" is well written and important on its own account. Heimbichner shares with his readers herein the benefit of his evident serious and far reaching study of the cryptocracy, together with a well organized and excellent presentation. Those reviewers who have crudely criticized both style and content of this book clearly have another axe to grind.

Perhaps the greatest relevance of Heimblichner's account occurs toward the end of the corpus of his book. There, the author contrasts the moral and intellecutal bankruptcy of "judeo-christianity" with the small but growing movement of those who seek out the truth fearlessly. This is perhaps the most important dichotomy in today's world, and we are rightly grateful to Mr. Heimbichner for so clearly elaborating this terribly important dynamic. Read this very important book, and be both richly blessed and well informed.

37 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not the Usual Crowley Book, October 23, 2006

By 

Adam Parfrey "Feral House Publisher" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood on the Altar: The Secret History of the World's Most Dangerous Secret Society (Paperback)

You may not agree with the supposition that the OTO is an elite ranking of Freemasonry, though several 32 degree Masons I know of are Crowleyites. I don't suspect that many military or governmental freemasons go to practice sodomy sex magick after drinking with their buddies at National Sojourners' gatherings.

That said, Craig Heimbichner's book is well-sourced and has a great amount of intriguing information not found elsewhere, both in scare books by Fundamentalist Xtians and hagiographies by Thelemites.

Well worth a read!

40 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A well-researched wake-up call for us all, February 5, 2005

By 

J. L. Mortimer - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood on the Altar: The Secret History of the World's Most Dangerous Secret Society (Paperback)

Conspiracy books are fun to read because they are usually so out of touch with reality that they almost amount to comic relief from the grimness of the world around us. This is not one of those books. "Blood on the Altar" is a work that shows the results of many years of serious research into an area that, easy as it is to ignore, is a real and sinister factor in the way we have fallen under the control of forces that are far from benign.

Heimbichner traces the many tentacles of secret organizations--many of whom are careful, like Scottish Rite Masonry, to "put a happy face" on for public view, while concealing even from the lower ranks in their lodges what the upper echelons are actually involved in.

What is so extraordinary about this book is not just the range and scope of citations from the "secret" documents of the organizations themselves (though that is mightily impressive), or the rogue's gallery of scoundrels and criminals to which we are introduced, but the way the book traces the genealogy of the occult currents that stretch back over millenia and keep recurring in new forms over the centuries. Not only does this book expose the underlying aims and methodologies of these nefarious cultlike groups, in particular the OTO, which Heimbichner credibly portrays as the controlling central group today, but he demonstrates the ways in which the Cryptocracy controls and manipulates the populace, all the while chipping away at the cultural values that once defined the West as a civilization.

All this is presented in lively and often sardonically witty prose, and to have crammed this much history and information into a mere 170 pages is an impressive achievement. There is something in this book to provide a shock and a wake-up call to everybody, and it deserves to be widely read. One can only hope (and the book does end on a note of hope) that it will contribute to a breaking of the hypnotic trance that seems to envelop our society like a black cloud.