Original Magic: The Rituals and Initiations of the Persian Magi - Michael M. Hughes 2018

Occultists versus Nazis
Witches and Occultists versus Kings and Nazis

In the summer of 1940, with France defeated, Britain’s war with the Nazis was ramping up into what became known as the Battle of Britain. The United Kingdom was on high alert against a German invasion, with sentries posted along the coasts scanning the seas and skies for the expected onslaught of aircraft and ships. The country, having just watched the Miracle at Dunkirk, was prepared for the worst.

Also preparing for the invasion, according to the story told by one of their recent initiates, Gerald Gardner, was a group of witches known as the New Forest Coven. Gardner, who is now credited as the founder of modern Wicca, told the story of a magical working that became famously known as Operation Cone of Power.

As told in his 1954 book, Witchcraft Today, the witches of the New Forest Coven gathered on midnight on Lammas Eve 1940 to perform the ritual to cloud the minds of Hitler and the Nazi High Command and prevent them from crossing the English Channel and invading England. They danced naked (skyclad) in a forest clearing in Highcliff-by-the-Sea, raising a cone of magical energy that, when it reached its peak, was directed into the mind of Hitler along with the thoughts “You cannot cross the sea” and “Not able to come.” ¹⁴

“I am not saying they stopped Hitler,” Gardner writes. “All I can say is that I saw a very interesting ceremony performed with the intention of putting a certain idea into his mind, and this was repeated several times afterwards; and though all the invasion barges were ready, the fact was that Hitler never even tried to come.” ¹⁵ He claimed the witches were replicating the spell their ancestors had used to repel Napoleon and Sir Francis Drake.

According to Gardner, the rite was so powerful that several of the older and more frail participants died of exhaustion in the ensuing days.¹⁶ Some have suggested those who died knew the ritual would kill them, but sacrificed themselves for the good of their country.

Although the veracity of the story has been questioned by some scholars, many feel that it is at least partially true. But a year earlier, another act of magical resistance targeted the Nazis. Although less famous than Gardner’s story, it was extensively documented. That working came to be called the Magical Battle of Britain and was led by the occultist Violet Firth, better known by her magical name, Dion Fortune.

In the aftermath of Britain’s declaration of war against Germany, Dion Fortune, the leader of the occult Fraternity of the Inner Light (an order that sprang from the legendary Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn), found that many of her members could no longer travel to take part in the group’s training and rituals. She began mailing out regular dispatches to her order with instructions on how to protect the country from Hitler’s invasion and support the Allied forces. According to The Magical Battle of Britain, Fortune removed the order’s rules of secrecy and opened the fraternity to anyone who wanted to join them, teaching formerly hidden techniques to create a “nucleus of trained minds” to resist Nazi Germany. ¹⁷

Letters were sent out every Wednesday with instructions for a meditation to be performed at 12:15 each Sunday, and every weekday thereafter. Subjects of these meditations included:

• Realization of the function of the Tide of Destruction in clearing the ground

• To assert the rule of law, absolute and inescapable

• The drawing down of spiritual power into the war effort

• The attack on the cloud of astral evil over Germany

Fortune’s method of resistance was to channel the will of the British people through powerful rituals, mantras, and meditations, as well as calling upon inner guides, angelic forces, and the spirits of Merlin, King Arthur, St. George, and Saint Michael. As she wrote in one of her dispatches: “Let us meditate upon angelic Presences, red-robed and armed, patrolling the length and breadth of our land. Visualise a map of Great Britain, and picture these great Presences moving as a vast shadowy form along the coasts, and backwards and forwards from north to south and east to west, keeping watch and ward so that nothing alien can move unobserved.” ¹⁸

Fortune’s group—separated in time and space, as many are today, and connected through their own postal social network—persisted in their magical resistance even as bombs rained down on London. She continued to teach and initiate members into her fraternity and died a few months after Churchill declared victory in Europe.