"Civilisation is disintegrating" Dennis Wheatley: Forces of darkness & light, warring powers
This interview was inexplicably and inexcusably removed by the
BBC from its permanent web page about
Dennis Wheatley
With the War over and the
Cold War getting underway,
Wheatley published
The Haunting of Toby Jugg in 1948.
Featuring a
Satanic school, this was inspired by Wheatley's inside knowledge of
MI5's investigation of
Dartington Hall, a liberal arts-based school in
Devon. It was in Jugg that Wheatley broached his great Cold War theme, suggesting that
Communism was actually a cover for Satanism, and vice versa.
As a Satanist explains,
Satan "mocks those who no longer believe in his existence by having them demonstrate in favour of rule by the Proletariat on the first of May. Have you never realised that it is his anniversary, and that it is born of May-day Eve --
Walpurgis Nacht -- on which we celebrate his festival?"
Walpurgis Night or
St.Walburga's Eve should be familiar to Wheatley readers from
The Devil Rides Out, while
May Day, the old pagan festival and more recently international workers' day, was the occasion of a massive military
parade of troops, tanks and missiles through
Moscow, once a familiar annual sight on
British television.
http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/2623/the_devil_rides_out
.html
Dennis Wheatley
Library of the
Occult
Back in the early-1970s Dennis Wheatley was a big name. Now, as far as I can tell, he's pretty much forgotten and books that used to be best-sellers, like To
The Devil A
Daughter and The Devil Rides Out, go entirely unread. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, since Wheatley was a writer of no great talent, and his books were clunky, lumpy slabs of indigestible narrative, shot through with lashings of black magic and satanism. At the time this was dangerous, edgy stuff, but - largely through Wheatley's own efforts - there's now so much more awareness of magic rituals that his version of it isn't exactly shocking anymore.
The Hammer movies of his novels (particularly The Devil Rides Out, adapted by
Richard Matheson) are worth seeing - the books aren't worth reading.
However, for all his faults, Wheatley was a genuine student of the occult and he regularly used his high profile to try to educate and inform the general public. His finest moment, in my opinion, was this series of books in 1974-77.
Somehow he persuaded
Sphere to publish dozens of books - both fiction and non-fiction - on all aspects of the occult, relying solely on his name to sell the things to a mass market.
1
Dracula -
Bram Stoker
2
The Werewolf of Paris -
Guy Endore
3
Moonchild -
Aleister Crowley
4 Studies in Occultism -
Helena Blavatsky
5
Carnacki the Ghost-Finder -
William Hope Hodgson
6 The
Sorcery Review -
Elliott O'Donnell
7
Harry Price: The
Biography of a Ghost-Hunter -
Paul Tabori
8
The Witch of
Prague - F
Marion Crawford
9
Uncanny Tales 1 - selected by Dennis Wheatley
10
The Prisoner in the Opal -
AEW Mason
11
The Devil's Mistress - JW Brodie-Innes
12
You and Your Hand -
Cheiro
13
Black Magic -
Marjorie Bowen
14
Real Magic -
Philip Bonewits
15
Faust -
Goethe
16 Uncanny Tales 2 - selected by Dennis Wheatley
17
The Gap in the Curtain -
John Buchan
18
The Interpretation of Dreams - Zolar
19
Voodoo -
Alfred Metraux
20 The Necromancers - RH
Benson
21 Satanism and
Witches - essays & stories selected by Dennis Wheatley
22 The
Winged Pharaoh -
Joan Grant
23
Down There - JK Huysmans
24
The Monk -
Matthew Lewis
25
Horror at Fontenay -
Alexandre Dumas
26 The
Hell-Fire Club -
Donald McCormick
27
The Mighty Atom -
Marie Corelli
28
The Affair of the Poisons -
Frances Mossiker
29 The Witch and the
Priest -
Hilda Lewis
30
Death by
Enchantment -
Julian Franklyn
31
Fortune Telling by Cards - Ida Prangley
32
Dark Ways to Death -
Peter Saxon
33
The Ghost Pirates - William Hope Hodgson
34
The Phantom of the Opera -
Gaston Leroux
35 The
Greater Trumps -
Charles Williams
36
The Return of the
Magi -
Maurice Magre
37 Uncanny Tales 3 - selected by Dennis Wheatley
38
King Is A
Witch -
Evelyn Eaton
39
Frankenstein -
Mary Shelley
40
Curse of the
Wise Woman -
Lord Dunsany
41
Brood of the Witch Queen -
Sax Rohmer
42 Brazilian
Magic: Is It
The Answer? -
Pedro McGregor
43
Darker Than You Think -
Jack Williamson
44 War
In Heaven - Charles Williams
45
Morwyn -
John Cowper Powys
http://www.trashfiction.co.uk/wheatley_00.html