Secret Agent 666

Internet Bookwatch, June, 2008

Secret Agent 666

Richard B. Spence

Feral House

PO Box 39910, Los Angeles, CA 90039

9781932595338, $22.95 www.feralhouse.com

Enhanced with a handful of black-and-white photographs, Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence and the Occult is a biography of Aleister Crowley, the founding father of modern-day occultism. Several other biographies have attempted to capture his life and personality; none of them have taken the in-depth look at his career as a British Intelligence agent that Secret Agent 666 has. Drawing upon documents garnered from British, American, French, and Italian archives, Secret Agent 666 reveals that Crowley played a role in the sinking of the Lusitania, a plan to overthrow the Spanish government, countermeasures against Irish and Indian nationalist conspiracies, and the 1941 flight of Rudolf Hess. Portraying Crowley as a patriotic Englishman who survived public vilification partly to conceal his purpose as a secret agent, Secret Agent 666 is a one-of-a-kind portrait, and worthy inclusion to shelves chronicling the history of occult practices.