Preface

Ch. 1: Paris in the 1920s and 1930s—
Aleister Crowley sitting behind Ernest Hemingway
and F. Scott Fitzgerald at a Paris Café

Ch. 2: Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn—
Hemingway meets William Butler Yeats at Shakespeare & Company and inquires about the secret society & its members,
especially Aleister Crowley and Allan Bennett

Ch. 3: Aleister Crowley goes to Swizerland and
consults Elisabeth Haich on symbolisms of Tarot Cards—
Between 1938-1943, Crowley with the design of Lady Frieda Harris created the Thoth Tarot Deck. He also wrote a 1944 book The Book of Thoth to be used with the deck. Elisabeth Haich was a Hungarian spiritual teacher who recalled her past life as an Egyptian Priestess. Her book The Wisdom of the Tarot (1983) is based on the Oswald Wirth deck's images (1889). Since The Book of Thoth is from ancient Egyptian texts, Crowley tried to gain insights from Elisabeth Haich's Egyptian experiences as well as her esoteric knowledge of Tarot cards.

Ch. 4: Hemingway journeys to Switzerland and
consults Elisabeth Haich on Black & White Magicians—
In her autobiographical book Initiation (1965), Haich describes her previous life as an Egyptian Priestess. In Chapter 43 "The Young Priest Appears" (pp. 352-358), she describes being invited to a friend's house to meet a journalist who studied in India with Ramana Maharishi. They meditated, and she saw "a strong yellow current of bright light flowing out of the yogi's solar plexus encompassing me like a circle, then encircling him again like a big figure eight." Half a year later, talking among friends, they wondered whether she put herself in the hands of a black magician. Later, when visiting her husband's old friend, he told them while leafing through an old book, he found a chapter on black and white magicians— "The white magician, when he wants to help one of his pupils onward, binds the pupil to himself in the form of an eight. In this way, he leaves his pupil his full independence." On the contary, the black magician takes away his pupil's independence by taking him into a circle with himself in such a way that the black magician is in the center and
the pupil inside the circumference like a satellite orbiting the sun. (Anthony Damini tells me "The Young Priest" is PB)

Ch. 5: Hitler's Mein Kamp and Interest in the Occult
Louis Pauwels & Jacques Bergier's The Morning of the Magicians (1960) has chapter on Hitler's use of astrology and the occult in Worl War II.

Ch. 6: Nazis Seeking Strategies for World War II
V-2 Rocket & Wernher von Braun, German Nuclear Weapons Program, Spear of Destiny & Spear of Longinus, German Antarctic Expedition (1938-1939), Golem, Zodiac & Swastika: How Astrology Guided Hitler's Germany, Rod to Destroy the World

Ch. 7: PB tells PC about his first spiritual mentor Allan Bennett, aka Ananda Metteyya "who created a rod that would destroy the world"
On my visit to Paul Brunton in Vevey, Switzerland (Aug. 31-Sept. 2, 1979), he had a portrait of Allan Bennett aka Ananda Metteyya on his desk. PB was quite reverent telling me about his first spiritual mentor at 19 in London. Bennett was a chemist and almost got the patent to cinema sound. Bennett invented a rod that could destroy the world.
I was skeptical, mentioning the Manhattan Project that produced
the A-Bomb that destroyed two cities but not the world. PB said Bennett's rod was more powerful, & told me to read fairy tales on magic wands, whose art has been lost to us.

Ch. 8: Fairy Tales on Magic Wands
Fairy Godmother turning pumpkin into stagecoach for Cinderella.
Blue Fairy transforms wooden puppet Pinocchio into a real boy.
Glinda, Good Witch of the North in the magic Land of Oz,
tapping Dorothy's ruby red slippers to send her home to Kansas.
Stepdaughter steals Witch's magic wand for shape-shifting for
herself and lover in Brothers Grimm's "Sweetheart Roland".
In film "Bright" (2017), Lucy Fry as Tikka, a Bright elf who possesses powerful magic wand that the police, federal agents, & Inferni wants.

Ch. 9: Magic Wands of Conductors, Painters, and Poets
How the conductor's baton, the artist's paintbrush, the poet's pen inspire us to heaven through music, art, and poetry.

Ch. 10: Meeting of Aleister Crowley & Adolf Hitler
Both boasting they are the most evil man in the world. Crowley has killed less than a dozen while Hitler killed tens of millions. Hitler will not trade his Spear of Destiny for Crowley's Rod that would destroy the world. Is Crowley bluffing or a British double-agent?

Ch. 11: The Rod of God
Dad's surgery removal of thyroid gland, symbolic of removing "i" (little ego) to experience Cosmic Self (Thy Rod). Wrote letter to Dad about PB's mentor Allan Bennett and his Rod that would destroy
the world. Light sabre in "Star Wars"— "May the Force be with you."

Ch. 12: Is the Rod within us?
The spinal column with 33 bones is a scientific fact
compared to 33 years life span of Jesus Christ used
as highest 33^o of the Freemasons. Crown Chakra.