[MH] Vile Vortices and Supernatural Threats

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

The book The Morning of the Magicians was written by a Frenchman and he was a leftist. Occult and mystical ideas, within certain limits, are respected in France. There are occult groups in France that talk about forms of spiritual democracy. A type of Freemasonry that could be described as political, progressive, and spiritual/occultist, is part of French culture and is strong among scholars and professionals.

So France as a nation aware of the occult and dealing with it intelligently is a sound choice.

It seems Freemasonry in France is a field of study appropriately as broad and dense as Catholic dogmatic theology or English literature. The more I research, the more research I discover is needed.

Very briefly and simply, which type of Freemasonry is it that you consider particularily suitable for me to use as a factor in the secret French response to the emergence of real occult threats?

Of course, I do not intend for 'France as a nation' to be aware of the occult. As in every other country, most people are either completely unaware of the existence of anything supernatural or actively in denial, due to the mental block of the Facade. By France having an unusually unified policy in occult matter I simply mean that a fair part of those few people who are aware of the true state of affairs have managed to coordinate themselves in some way and have some degree of behind-the-scenes influence over French policy.

So, a number of intelligence and security officials are aware of some of the truth and along with occult-aware military officers, they shape the policy of mundane politicians in order to better safeguard French interests from uncanny threats. In legal terms, the French response to the emergence of occult threats is an illegal conspiracy, a state within the state of unelected intelligence, security and military officials conspiring to collect secret data, make policy and even arrange the use of force while deliberately keeping elected officials in the dark.

In my setting, any number of small-scale military interventions France has undertaken in Africa since the 1990s (significantly more numerous in my setting than reality, but often secret) have had supernatural implications, but the politicians who ordered them mostly believed in 'more sensible' explanations of terrorism, ethnic or sectarian violence, political rioting, etc. Some key officers of the Legion and the SDECE or other relevant intelligence or security service responsible for writing official reports on the situation may be aware of much more than makes it into the official record, but make a conscious choice to preserve the illusions of the ignorant and instead act in secret to protect La Patrie.

I'm actually rather struck by the neatness of having the informal network of those in the know spread through mundane social clubs, such as various Masonic lodges. Especially as the PCs' Patron spent 1939-1954 in the French Foreign Legion and in my mental, unwritten background, he specifically joined several fraternal organisations at that point in his life. Some because they provided social benefits and useful contacts, others because he was genuinely hoping for mystical revelations or access to secret knowledge.

The Patron, J.R. Kessler, was interested in occult and esoteric matters, which at the time were merely curiosities, as magic didn't actually exist, any more than in our real world, and befriended a number of the kind of people who believed in Theosophy, Grail mythology or other popular ideas in WWII and post-WWII Francophone society, especially among those who supported the Free French and/or were interested in French colonies in North Africa.

Kessler would have known a lot of people whose occult fancies touched on Egypt, Morocco or other areas where his Legion service or occasional periods of leave took him. In fact, Kessler supplemented his military pay with a thriving smuggling and black market business, with one of his specialties being acquiring and smuggling art or objects with historical or archeological value, for example in wartime Italy, North Africa and France, but also from Egypt. I imagine that his customers were quite often believers in the occult qualities of the artifacts they sought, even if none of these objects had any magical value, magic, at that time in my setting's history, being exactly as real as it is in our world.

Furthermore, Kessler kept in touch not only with fellow enlisted Legionnaires after he left the Legion, he also had friends, customers and acquintances who had been French officers, intelligence or security people, civil servants or perhaps merely rich collectors in the colonies. In the 60s, 70s and 80s, Kessler had good access to privileged information from France and its former and current colonies, as well as surprising influence when it came to acquiring mining concessions, getting political favours in dealing with Francophone governments in post-colonial Africa and even getting what looked suspiciously like favourable treatment when it came to deploying French troops to ensure the safety of citizens in areas where civil wwars or sectarian violence threatened them.*

In the modern day, most of his old friends and acquintances from his WWII and Indochina days are dead or at least long retired. Nevertheless, Kessler might retain some connections, through the children of old friends or their professional protegés, into the murkier aspects of French intelligence, security and military matters. He certainly had some confidants who were close enough, in the early 1990s, for Kessler to tell them about his discoveries about the supernatural.

So, might any Masonic organisation plausibly be the vehicle through which early knowledge of the supernatural spread among influential Frenchmen and perhaps even the cover for their cooperation in guding French policy against this threat that most people would not believe in even if they encountered it personally?

*Kessler received French citizenship through service in the FFL and owns companies headquartered in France and various former or current French possessions, as well as ones registered in the US and independent Caribbean nations.