I first encountered this book some years ago, after a chain of events that left all my previous notions of the world fractured and unreal.

I’d pored through dozens of ‘occult’ and spiritual books and had found only unhelpful obfuscation or worldviews that, to me, didn’t adequately address the complexity of the individual mind and how it is shaped by (and in turn impacts upon) modern society.

Then I came across this most unusual book. The cover alone, an image of a man staring down a rising serpent, speaks volumes about its content, and it is especially surprising when a book fulfils the promise of its own iconography.

Rebels and Devils: The Psychology of Liberation, edited by Christopher S. Hyatt for New Falcon Publications, represents as diverse and challenging a collection of writings that one is likely to find.

Stimulating and provocative, it encompasses magick and language, sex and death, authority and submission, and proclaims the inherent potential of the individual to create the world they wish to live in.

Many of the featured authors will be well-known to some, if only by name – figures such as William S. Burroughs and Timothy Leary, Aleister Crowley and Robert Anton Wilson – while others are clearly speaking from the undergrowth; from a world barely seen through the glass cages of the mainstream of life, but whose presence can nonetheless be felt in the discourse of modern imagery.

With authors such as the above (alongside Hyatt’s own contributions and those of significant Chaos Magickians such as Phil Hine and Genesis P-Orridge), and with a subtitle like ‘the psychology of liberation’, it is necessary to make clear that this is no dry psychological text.

In fact, it could be considered a manifesto of sorts, a clarion call from the exploded world of post-Nietzschean, post-quantum philosophy by a society of heretics and wilful malcontents whose message might seem alien but is nonetheless vitally important to humanity.

The aim, as stated by Joseph C. Lisiewski (quoting from the late alchemist Frater Albertus) in his contribution So You Want to Be Someone, is to “shock people from out of their insensibilities so they may wake from their sleep, and bring about a world of their own design.”

This sentiment, as may be apparent to those familiar with esoteric lore, has been a consistent mantra of all major spiritual leaders, from Christ to Guatama Buddha and Gurdjieff.

As the emphasis is on the liberty of the individual to shape perceived realities, the modes of expression on offer in Rebels and Devils vary dramatically.

There is fiction, poetry, a thirty page comic (Voodoo Man, an amateurish but powerful representation of the practice), as well as extended interviews and more ‘traditional’ essays.

Of the poetry, Harry Crosby’s Assassin is a crackling, chaotic revelation, while the interview with Francis Israel Regardie is an eye-opening talk with a widely recognised Western Master, who sparkles with erudition and charm.

Such variety of material may at first be considered a weakness – initially one might think that more ‘serious’ content along the lines of Wilson’s How Brain Software Programs Brain Hardware should be given greater coverage, rather than the creative mix that is present. But this eclecticism is what gives the book its vigour and strength: we see how the powerful ideas of rebellion and individualism have resulted in potent creative statements, we see the fruits borne by the application of critical individualist thought.

Lest anyone fall into the misconception, however, that such a philosophy leads only to wilful excess and abuses of power, the interview with Osho Rajneesh (Rebellion is the Biggest Yes Yet) and Hyatt’s essay Who Owns Planet Earth? Rebels, Devils, Or? stress the significance of personal responsibility and embrace the paradox of a community of individuals.

Extensive coverage is given within the pages of Rebels and Devils to Aleister Crowley, an ever-controversial figure. While there are valid reasons to question Crowley’s legacy, there is no denying his influence upon a generation of nascent artists and thinkers and his Liber Oz is as powerful a statement of first principles as has ever been formulated by man.

James Wasserman provides an interesting account of what led him to embrace the Law of Thelema in The Price of Freedom, while Jack Parsons’ Living Thelema is a clear exposition of the applied philosophy behind Crowley’s The Book of the Law, emphasising the creative will of the individual as being one “with the force that makes the birds sing and the flowers bloom; as inevitable as gravity… it informs alike atoms and men and suns.”

While this book emerged in the latter half of the nineties and is very much a product of its time, the latest edition builds upon the material with an additional forty pages or so of content, and in any case the central theme of Rebels and Devils is essentially timeless.

This review only touches upon the riches that are contained within, if one is of an open enough mind to evaluate the contents without the prejudices of an existing belief-set.

The Book of Lies: The Disinformation Guide to the Occult may deal more extensively with the subjects broached here, but there is no doubting that Rebels and Devils served as its model. It inspires and confronts in equal measure, and serves as an excellent path into wider reading for those not content to accept life and society at face value.

– Reviewed by Brendan McCallum in New Dawn No. 97