The U.S. Army’s Ghosts in the Machine Series
By Cynthia Chung
It is clear that science-fiction was not just some playful notion that the writers of From PSYOP to MindWar were proposing (a now declassified document authored by Lieutenant Colonel Michael Aquino and Colonel Paul E. Vallely). Rather, that only through the universe of science-fiction could one find the “key” that would open all doors. The key to controlling billions, if not trillions, within a “Galactic Empire.”
One clear example of this mindset is contained within the symbol created by Lieutenant Colonel Aquino to represent MindWar PSYOPS.
The above image is the image used in From PSYOP to MindWar, along with the following description:[15]
“The crossed daggers, whose blades are in the Branch colors of Negative Green and Cerebral Grey, glow from hilt to tip, signifying MindWar’s radiant power, and end in lightning bolts symbolic of MindWar’s control of the electromagnetic spectrum. The chess piece knight is portrayed as a swirling ghost, representing the hidden yet dynamic nature of MindWar. Its image alternates between complete existence (black) and nonexistence (clear), conveying not only its illusionary presence but the chess knight’s ability to move and strike mysteriously. The horse’s eye is red, as he is a horse of war. The base of the chess piece is struck with the Greek letters psi (the powers of the mind) and phi (the universal symbol of perfection/the “Golden Ratio”). Thus, combined they convey the power of the human consciousness raised to perfection. MWB unit members wear the grey beret with all uniforms except the dress blue.”
However, what is not directly stated in this description by Aquino (who created this symbol to represent his MindWar philosophy) is that its Greek letters are also a play on words, where Ψ (Psi) – Φ (Phi) can also be understood as “Sci-Fi.”
So, this concept of the MindWar Branch (MDB) is nothing short of the “powers of the mind” combined with “perfection.” In fact, the U.S. Army has explicitly referred to themselves as a sort of Jedi Knight.
Before we get into this Jedi Knight business, it should be noted that the wearing of berets in the U.S. Army began with the Green Berets, who were not a Kennedy creation but a revamped creation by CIA asset Edward Lansdale.[16] The original Green Berets came about during WWII as a mirror to the British Special Forces – Special Air Service (SAS) who also wore berets (sand-colored), founded in 1941 and reconstituted as a corps in 1950, which is still active today.
In Aquino’s From PSYOP to MindWar he is proposing a revamping of the U.S. Army Special Operations. Thus, the Grey Berets can be seen as the newly evolved form of the U.S. Special Forces’ Green Berets. It should be noted that the Green Berets were also tasked as “managers” after a war theatre was stabilised, their mandate including not only that of warfare but of overseeing economic, political and even cultural policy.[17] In short, the Green Berets’ mandate directly overlapped with Civil Affairs. In fact, Aquino would work under the umbrella of PSYOP with Edward Lansdale and the Green Berets in his Operation Phoenix during the Vietnam War, the relevance of which will be discussed later in this paper.
In his From PSYOP to MindWar, Aquino proposes the restructuring of the Army’s three traditional special operations capabilities: Psychological Operations (PSYOP), Special Forces (SF), and Civil Affairs (CA) into standalone branches:
· Green Berets as the MetaForce Branch (MFB), his proposed evolution of traditional Special Forces kinetic, unconventional warfare.
· White Berets as the ParaPolitics Branch (PPB), his proposed evolution of Civil Affairs.
· Grey Berets as the MindWar Branch (MWB).
Thus, Aquino’s MindWar document can be seen as an upgrade, or evolution towards a super soldier force, where the work of the Green Berets is now further specialised into three branches, green, white, and grey.
On matters of geopolitics, counterintelligence, revisionist history and cultural warfare.
Now back to Jedi Knights…
Project Jedi is an actual U.S. Army Special Forces project launched in 1984 as part of a 5-month experiment.[18] Named after the Star Wars movie’s Jedi Knights who were able to perform exotic mental/magical feats. Project Jedi focused on accelerated physical training using neurolinguistic programming (NLP).[19]
Project Jedi was not a creation of Aquino’s MWB, however the two concepts for an evolved super Special Forces stem from the same source – the First Earth Battalion.
The official, declassified document originally titled the “Task Force Delta Concept Paper: The First Earth Battalion” was an official U.S. Army research initiative created in 1979 by Lieutenant Colonel Jim Channon. Its goal was to reinvent the military by blending traditional martial arts, New Age philosophy, holistic health and psychological warfare.
You can view the document here which is stylised as an actual fantasy comic book… Here are some examples:
This document believe it or not has heavily influenced military intelligence thinking. One of its core philosophy and principle is the “Jedi Warrior” ideal, where soldiers are taught to develop intense intuition, master their bodies through yoga and martial arts, and study advanced communication techniques such as NLP. In fact, this training has a lot of similarity to Jesuit training.[20]
Ignatius Loyola founded the Society of Jesus in Paris in 1534. His profound religious experience included supposed visions that revealed to him the mysteries of the Catholic dogma. For these visions he was seen as a great mystic, who was now capable of an incredible ability in the “distortion of the will.”
“He never doubted the reality of these revelations. He chased Satan with a stick as he would have done a mad dog; he talked to the Holy Spirit as one does to another person actually; he asked for the approval of God, the Trinity and the Madonna on all his projects and would burst into tears of joy when they appeared to him. On those occasions, he had a foretaste of celestial bliss; the heavens were open to him, and the Godhead was visible and perceptible to him.”[21]
Loyola would produce a small book titled “Spiritual Exercises,” it is the textbook of the Jesuits as well as the selected biography of Loyola in laying out the highlights of what shaped his long inner development before reaching the level of master.
“Ignatius understood more clearly than any other leader of men who preceded him that the best way to raise a man to a certain ideal is to become master of his imagination. We ‘imbue into him spiritual forces which he would find very difficult to eliminate later’, forces more lasting than all the best principles and doctrines; these forces can come up again to the surface, sometimes after years of not even mentioning them, and become so imperative that the will finds itself unable to oppose any obstacle, and has to follow their irresistible impulse”.[22]
Edgar Quinet wrote in his book Des Jésuites (Of the Jesuits), published in 1843:
“Do you know what distinguishes him [Loyola] from all the ascetics of the past? The fact that he could observe and analyse himself logically and coldly in that state of rapture, while for all the others even the idea of reflection was impossible.
Imposing on his disciples actions which, to him, were spontaneous, he needed just thirty days to break, with this method, the will and reasoning, in the manner in which a rider breaks his horse. He only needed thirty days ‘triginta dies’, to subdue a soul. Note that Jesuitism expanded together with modern inquisition: while the inquisition dislocated the body, the spiritual Exercises broke up the thoughts under Loyola’s machine.”
Edmund Paris in his book The Secret History of the Jesuits (1983) adds to this, “It is understandable that after four weeks devoted to these intensive Exercises, with a director as his only companion, the candidate would be ripe for the subsequent training and breaking.”[23]
In Tavistock and MKUltra pioneer, William Sargant’s work The Battle for the Mind (1957), he explicitly refers to the Jesuits as a model for creating the blueprint for mass conditioning and behaviourism. The Jesuits as the experts in breaking and rebuilding the “mind.”
In Bertrand Russell’s The Scientific Outlook (1931), he compares the educational design of a future scientific society to the historical method of the Jesuits:
“Education in a scientific society may, I think, be best conceived after the analogy of the education provided by the Jesuits. The Jesuits provided one sort of education for the boys who were to become ordinary men of the world, and another for those who were to become members of the Society of Jesus.”
Russell is referring to an outer and inner teaching. For schools with degrees of initiation, which the Jesuit Order most certainly was, it is a teaching for the “listener” and a separate teaching for the “elect.”
William Sargant and Aldous Huxley were actually in close communication on this very subject of “the battle for the mind” and Sargant references Aldous Huxley’s work, particularly that of The Devils of Loudun directly as an insightful piece towards these ends in his book The Battle for the Mind. Many view this to in fact be Huxley’s greatest work. In 1971 the film version The Devils was made based off of Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun.
Note that the philosophy of Jedi Knights is the “will of the Force” – a belief that the Force is not just a passive energy tool, but a conscious, sentient entity that possesses its own agenda, direction, and desire for ultimate balance. To the Jedi, the highest spiritual calling is to completely surrender their personal ego, desires, and attachments so that they can act as clear instruments of this cosmic will.[24] The Jedi Code physically trains a Padawan to silence their mind to hear the Force.
Very Jesuitical if you ask me.
Interestingly, in Lucas’ very first 1973 rough synopsis for Star Wars, he explicitly refers to the Jedi’s as “Jedi-Templer.”[25] A reference to Templar Knights.
In fact, the Templars and the Jesuits have a striking similarity, most notably from the stance of their formations as Corporations, the Jesuit Company having formed with the right to deal in commerce and banking. The Templars were the first Corporation, and their Temple Church built in London in 1185 would serve as London’s first bank, which would also pretty much be the first bank of the Vatican as well, you could say.
The Templars would later be reabsorbed into the Knights Hospitaller which would later be known as the Knights of Malta.
Interestingly, the Crusader insignia for the Knights of Malta bears heavy resemblance to the SAS and Gladio insignias…
There is also the matter where many CIA members were also Knights of Malta. James Angleton though not a direct member himself worked closely with these networks and the Vatican.
Lastly, we have the insightful quote from Albert Pike, founder of the Scottish Rite Freemasonry, who wrote in his Morals and Dogma (1871) that “The Templars were unintelligent and therefore unsuccessful Jesuits.”[26]
Whether Jedi Knights were a direct inspiration of the infamous Jesuit techniques remains to be seen. However, another incredibly influential work of science-fiction, Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965), does make a direct reference to the Jesuits.
In an interview with Timothy O’Reilly in 1981[27] when asked how he evolved his concept of the Bene Gesserits, Herbert responded with the short answer “Female Jesuits.”
It is clear that the Jesuits have a remarkable presence in science-fiction lore.
In another interview, Frank Herbert described how his main protagonist Paul as a messiah figure was inspired by the Arthurian legend.[28]
And it just so happens that Michael Aquino makes a direct reference to the sword Excalibur in his From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory (1980):
To this end MindWar must be strategic in emphasis, with tactical applications playing a reinforcing, supplementary role. In its strategic context, MindWar must reach out to friends, enemies, and neutrals alike across the globe – neither through primitive “battlefield” leaflets and loudspeakers of PSYOP nor through the weak, imprecise, and narrow effort of psychotronics – but through the media possessed by the United States which have the capabilities to reach virtually all people on the face of the Earth.
These media are, of course, the electronic media – television and radio. State of the art developments in satellite communication, video recording techniques, and laser and optical transmission of broadcasts make possible a penetration of the minds of the world such as would have been inconceivable just a few years ago.
Like the sword Excalibur, we have but to reach out and seize this tool; and it can transform the world for us if we have the courage and the integrity to enhance civilization with it. If we do not accept Excalibur, then we relinquish our ability to inspire foreign cultures with our morality. If they then desire moralities unsatisfactory to us, we have no choice but to fight them on a more brutish level.
Thus, Aquino is very much equating media, not only television and radio, but clearly also the world of science-fiction in the form of books and films as an almost supernatural tool, the Excalibur that will allow for ultimate victory. In many ways, media is viewed as a form of “magick” by Aquino that will allow any one who wields its power to achieve world domination.
It should be noted here that Aquino’s From PSYOP to MindWar is openly acknowledged as an occult document. In fact, Aquino while a high-ranking member of the US Army, eventually reaching Lieutenant Colonel, had started his own church, the Temple of Set, after leaving Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan.
Thus, Aquino was openly practising satanism while a high-ranking member of the U.S. Army and leading specialist in PSYOPs (more on this shortly).
Unlike the term “magic” which typically refers to stage performances and tricks, the term “magick” refers to the esoteric practice. Aleister Crowley defined magick as “the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.”[29]
Sounds very MindWar-like doesn’t it?
The information space in all of its forms is the plane on which MindWar is active. Hence, the short stint of the U.S. Army attempting to rebrand their PSYOPs branch (that clearly has negative connotations to its name) to the more neutral and banal MISO (Military Information Support Operations). However, they have recently decided to return to the name PSYOP. Thus, the U.S. Army PSYOP sees its mandate as controlling and managing literally the entire information space, just like the CIA PSYOP which as we will see, are not really separate from each other, especially since the Vietnam War.
One of the most successful global examples of this is Netflix, which was not so coincidentally founded by the legendary public relations pioneer Edward Bernay’s great-nephew Marc Randolph. Rather interestingly, Marc Randolph is also the great-grand-nephew of Sigmund Freud.
Netflix is now not only viewed all over the world but has a massive budget for original films and tv shows made all across the world, through a diverse cultural lens be it European, Asian, Middle Eastern or American. However, for the vast majority the formula is disturbingly the same despite the veneer of diversity – with the same opinions, the same philosophies and the same solutions promoted over and over and over again in all the languages of the world.
One mass initiation to the worldview that is deemed “acceptable.”
Under this mandate, what you think is very much considered the affairs of the U.S. Army’s PSYOP in a very direct way – in the name of national security. And most of what you are watching is a form of MindWar, that incessant nudge towards an acceptable mass behavioural pattern and away from that intolerable land of “otherness.”
This was a section from a longer essay I published this past week titled “The CIA, MindWar PsyOps And How the World Was Driven Mad: Where Science-Fiction Meets Foreign Policy,” which you can read in full below:
The CIA, MindWar PsyOps And How the World Was Driven Mad: Where Science-Fiction Meets Foreign Policy
“The concept of MindWar (MW) represents a holistic and pro-active approach to Psychological Operations (PSYOP), rather than the traditional reactionary role to which it’s been relegated. MindWar focuses on emerging and anticipating problems, situations, and conditions affecting the Information Environment (IE) not only to
Cynthia Chung is the President of the Rising Tide Foundation and author of the books “The Shaping of a World Religion” & “The Empire on Which the Black Sun Never Set,” consider supporting her work by making a donation and subscribing to her substack page Through A Glass Darkly.
Also make sure to watch our RTF and CP films and documentaries here.
On matters of geopolitics, counterintelligence, revisionist history and cultural warfare.
Footnotes:
[15] From PSYOP to MindWar
[16] Fore more on this refer here: https://cynthiachung.substack.com/p/the-enemy-within-a-story-of-the-take
[17] https://cynthiachung.substack.com/p/the-enemy-within-a-story-of-the-take
[18] From PSYOP to MindWar
[19] From PSYOP to MindWar
[20] For more on this refer to my paper here: https://cynthiachung.substack.com/p/the-shaping-of-a-world-religion-from
[21] H. Boehmer, Les Jesuites (1910), pg. 14
[22] Ibid, pg. 34-35
[23] Edmund Paris, Secret History of the Jesuits (1983), pg. 21-23
[24] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781119038092.ch2
[26] Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma (1871), pg. 1177
[27] https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Bene_Gesserit
[28] Rare DUNE Interview with Frank Herbert (video). Archived from the original on August 29, 2020.
[29] Aleister Crowley described the core purpose of “magick” as spiritual evolution, manifestation, and understanding the deeper nature of reality or the self. It utilizes ritual, meditation, symbolism, and focused willpower to interact with unseen or spiritual energies. The extra “k” was intentionally added by Crowley to distance his spiritual practices from parlor tricks and stage magicians. Examples: Rituals found in Wicca, Thelema, Hermeticism, or chaos magic.