The Nine Quotes

“Jack Parsons was born Marvel Whiteside Parsons on October 2, 1914 in Los Angeles, California. His father was a captain in the US Army. His name was also Marvel Parsons. That’s right: his father was Captain Marvel.”
― Jim Hougan Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces—The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft

“terrorism is nothing more than a form of psy­chological warfare, as acts of terrorism have no intrinsic military value aside from their effects on the psyches of the target populations.”
― Jim Hougan Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces—The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft

“And if there is great spiritual solace to be had in close proximity to the remains of a saint, what contagion should be feared from the blood and bones of Heinrich Himmler, Josef Stalin… Ted Bundy?”
― Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces—The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft

“And if the relics of the saints are necessary in order to form a supernatural link between present-day worshippers and the great chain of transformation that can be traced directly back to Christ, then what of relics of murderers, violent criminals, satanists, rapists?”
― Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces—The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft

“It is better to rely on one’s self alone. In my cat-life, all our training is founded on suspicion. I can see that it is just the same in the life of men. Those who confide in others are only betrayed. It is better to keep silent and to be treacherous one’s self.”
― Jim Hougan Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces—The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft

“Perception like a Gestapo boot in the middle of a crystal night. He saw a”
― Jim Hougan Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces—The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft

“Levenda’s study is broad and deep, a life’s work that runs to volumes. What distinguishes it from other efforts, such as those of Pasolini, is not merely its comprehensiveness. Rather, it is Levenda’s realization that a matrix of politics and violence is incapable of explaining the demented century that shuddered to an end in Manhattan, not so long ago. What’s needed is a third dimension, and that dimension, he tells us, is “the occult.” By this, Levenda means something broader than a mix of magic and religion. When he writes of the occult, he means to include whatever is secret, hidden, or unknown. Add this dimension to those of politics and violence, and the century shivers into focus. Sinister Forces is about evil in what is now the digital age: Evil 2.0.”
― Jim Hougan Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces—The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft

“Halloween (known among European pagans as Samhain, pronounced “sa-wen”) is traditionally the day when the dead return to visit the living, similar to the Asian “Wandering Souls” festival mentioned above. It is the day when the gate between the living and the dead is open, a favorite day for evocations of spirits and demons. Candlemas, on the other hand, is the day of “quickening,” when the earth begins to wake from its slumber, a day of promise for the future, of the celebration of fertility, of anticipation for the bounty of the coming year. One could say, therefore, that the first rocket launch on Halloween was an evocation of the daimon of flight, or perhaps in a darker context a breaching of the barrier between this world and the next, an initiatic rending of the veil of the Temple: space being seen as the domain of both the dead and the higher spiritual forces. The actual birth of the American space program on Candlemas is, of course, also an auspicious event, ripe with mythical connotations. It is not the intention of this author to suggest that the selection of these dates was deliberate on the part of von Karman, Parsons, von Braun or the other space engineers. Indeed, by the time of the Explorer I launch in 1958 Parsons himself had already been dead six years. It is the intention, however, to point out these synchronicities as they occur, because they are evidence of deeper, more sinister, forces at work,”
― Jim Hougan Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces—The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft

“It was Lippmann who gave us the concept of the “stereotype” (1922), which was basically a continuation of the Jungian concept of the archetype (1919) by other means. To Lippmann, the world outside our borders exists in a different space, consciously, from our own. We develop notions about life in those countries, their cultures, attitudes, and values, without ever go­ing there. Yet, their political situation affects our own; they exert a political influence—either through trade, communications, or transportation—on life in our own country even though we live in a constant state of unawareness of those countries, cultures, politics. The effect of these forces on us is invis­ible, but real. We then develop mental images—stereotypes—of the citizens of these countries, and it is upon the stereotypes that we act. The stereotypes determine our actions and reactions; like the stereotypes of the Islamic fun­damentalist, the Vietcong revolutionary, the Red Peril, they are easy targets, and the stereotype communicates a specific message, is, in terms familiar to the deconstructionism of Derrida, a text. Stereotypes can be created, and manipulated, by the gurus of mass com­munication and psychological warfare. Stereotypes are culturally-loaded and therefore not “value neutral.” We make snap judgments based on the nature of the stereotype; in the hands of the psy-war expert, a stereotype does not contain much complexity or depth. The idea is not to make the target think too clearly or too profoundly about the “text” but instead to react, in a Pav­lovian manner, to the stimulus it provides.”
― Jim Hougan Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces—The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft

“The involvement of intelligence agents in the field of Egyptian archaeology, the UFO phenomenon, and other odd pursuits will be discussed in a later chapter. For now, it suffices to point out that psychological warfare, literature, archaeology, and the paranormal not only make for strange bedfellows: in the war years of the last century it was positively an orgy.”
― Jim Hougan Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces—The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft

“The physical world has its boundaries; only the psychic is ‘oceanic,’ as the author of Civilization and its Discontents puts it. That is why mankind’s next bold step must be the materializa­tion of the psychic.” — “General von Greehahn” (General Reinhard Gehlen) in Agent of the Devil by Hans Habe 23”
― Jim Hougan Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces—The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft

“Elizabethan magician and spy, Dee also became convinced that a Welsh prince had “discovered” America centuries before Columbus.24”
― Jim Hougan Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces—The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft

“one of the famous shew stones of the Elizabethan magician and spy, John Dee, was of Aztec obsidian brought back from the New World by Spanish conquistadores. The Aztecs used the obsidian shew stone in an identical fashion to that used by Dee (and, later, Joseph Smith), as a kind of crystal ball.”
― Jim Hougan Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces—The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft

“Using selective evidence out of context and ignoring evidence that doesn’t fit in with basic assumptions, it is possible to attack virtually everything and sound knowledgeable doing it.”
― Jim Hougan Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces—The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft

“Is science a “candle in the dark”?… Or is it simply whistling in the dark?”
― Jim Hougan Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces—The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft

“And, finally, what about the reality of spiritual experience? Are saints and madmen equally deluded? Are witches’ sabbats the same as alien abductions? Is exorcism merely a form of psychotherapy, or is it something more? Some­thing… other? What is evil? Can everything we experience as human beings be explained away by a tranquil, Carl Sagan-like belief in science? Was Carl comforted in his final moments by reciting the Second Law of Thermody­namics… or by a remembered prayer of childhood? Is science a “candle in the dark”?… Or is it simply whistling in the dark?”
― Jim Hougan Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces—The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft