The Orgone Energy Blanket – Part I

Wilhelm Reich
Discoverer of Orgone Energy

They put Wilhelm Reich in jail… So he must have been pretty bad, a scientist put in prison, for his science; now that is a mark of distinction! Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary, 1957: The discoverer of “The Force” is behind bars. It was no flash in the pan; it was a career of effort that landed Reich in the can.

First, there was that Orgone Box – naked people getting into that thing, it didn’t even plug into the wall; some sort of sex machine or orgasm device that was supposed to produce “orgiastic potency.” Or cure everything from colds to cancer – a cure all as it were. Well, it didn’t take the authorities long to put a stop to that sort of nonsense; we can’t have people running around curing cancer now can we?

Then, if that wasn’t bad enough, there was this business shooting down flying saucers… That’s right, flying saucers! Clearly the man was insane and for his own good – and to protect the public from further depredations of this sort of charlatanism… Well, to make a long story short, Wilhelm Reich MD was sent to prison and there he died.

Today the name of Wilhelm Reich is used much to tote the efficacy of various West coast therapies: “Reichian” breathing, “Reichian” emotional release, “Neo-Reichian” body work. Sexual freedom revolutions, various degenerations of all kinds can find succor under the banner of Reich. Witness a recent leaflet seen in Berkeley, CA. near a popular new age watering hole (Fat Apples): “Marathon Anger Workshop – For Lesbians Only. Use Reichian Breathing And Discharge To Touch The Rage Within Us”. But surely the discoverer of the primordial energy called “The Force” in the Star Wars movie, surely his crime was greater than to teach angry young women in undershirts to pound on pillows with tennis rackets.

The crime committed by the criminal was serious, thought crime as it were – and to magnify the gravity of the offense, the criminal taught others to follow his example. Reich was a man of substance, successful; he had a following, and his followers were medical doctors. It was unprecedented for a group of so highly placed men to collectively break the unwritten rules that govern our Judeo/Christian culture. The criminal was leading members of the herd out of the corral of sexual taboo established by the chosen ones of the Old Testament. Reich was shining the light of truth upon the fetters of sexual repression as established in the origins of Christianity. The crime of Reich was to lead others to the laws of Nature; the crime of Reich was to point the way out of the trap established by the heritage of circumcision, of guilt, and of shame.

A lonely solitary inventor, a crackpot in a basement Reich was not. With a modern well equipped laboratory on a 320 acre farm in Western Maine, Wilhelm Reich set up shop for the final act of a lifelong drama that was to lead to actual and literal Contact With Space.

Wilhelm Reich was a German Army combat veteran from the Great War. He grew up on a farm that was destroyed by the invading Russians and was left with little choice but to join the army. Four years later Reich found himself as a veteran in a defeated army of a defeated nation. He went to Vienna and enrolled in the University under the veteran’s benefit program. Switching from Law to Medicine, Reich gravitated to the- group of students gathered around Sigmund Freud.

So the background of Reich was forged in a hard school: first in war, then as a medical doctor. A scientist by training and profession – in the Western tradition of medical science, perhaps the most rigorous single course of study offered, that of a medical doctor (not a new age “healer” by a long shot). Chemistry, calculus, Latin, anatomy; the full medical training and degree from Vienna in 1922.

Wilhelm Reich M.D. very simply discovered… “The Force” !

Wilhelm Reich first observed this universally present mass free energy as human sexuality. As a student of Freud, he had ample opportunity to observe and work with patients from all social classes in Europe. In the Communist party, Reich introduced ideas of sexual hygiene to alleviate working class neurotic suffering. Reich observed that a sexual dysfunction was present in every case of mental illness. As a student of Freud, Reich realized that the id, the libido, the unconscious force that motivates our lives; Reich realized from his observations that this energy was human sexuality. If we can span the breadth of Reich’s career from our vantage point in more distant time, we realize that Reich’s first discovery was the specific nature of the energy so eagerly sought by present day free energy enthusiasts such as Eric Dollard.

In the Function of the Orgasm (1927), Reich published his discovery that the sexual embrace between male and female is an involuntary convulsion that regulates the living energy metabolism of the organism. Thus: specific knowledge of the living energy that is our life is of an emotional nature and not cognitive; it is not intellectual. This means that the energy popularized as “the force” in the Star Wars movie; this energy was discovered by Wilhelm Reich MD as human sexuality. The way that people specifically relate (“know God”) to this mass free energy is through the genital embrace of the reproductive function – the creation of Life.

Reich developed a new kind of therapy to address the repression that society puts upon the sexuality of people. The energetic metabolism of nearly everyone has the freely pulsating four beat’ rhythm replaced by a rigid condition that Reich called “armoring”. Children are born and almost immediately the processes of circumcision, of toilet training, of learning shame produce a condition that carries into adulthood whereby the person is unable to express emotion, unable to feel sensations strongly. Reich noticed that this condition of chronic muscular tension blocks the feelings of pleasurable sensations within the body. This continual tension of the organism was successful in repressing the original sexual feelings but it gave rise to the secondary drives: the twisted feelings that had to find an outlet through the rigidity of the armor. Reich’s new method of therapy differed from the Freudians in that he attacked the resistances directly: with breathing, with manipulation of the body, with discharge of the held in secondary drive energies of anger and rage.

While Reich and his colleagues were successful in developing a new kind of therapy described in Character Analysis (1933); it is hopelessly inefficient to have every member of society undergo lengthy energetic therapy to restore a naturally present condition. The armoring process, once the person passes puberty, is essentially an irreversible condition. On the bright side, children are born unarmored and have a fair chance of growing up as Nature intended if they are not circumcised and traumatized first (not to mention aborted !).

Reich noticed that a loosening of conventional, Puritanical mores and taboos did not result in a natural expression of love. Rather, a loosening of the traditional norms of patriarchy resulted in all sorts of just awful secondary drives being released such as sadism, homosexuality, masochism, & perversion such as we may witness today in New York, San Francisco or in Hollywood movies. Reich observed these secondary drives in Russia & Germany and described them in The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933).

Quite simply, Reich discovered that it will be a slow process to learn to live with knowledge of the Life Energy. As adults, we can endeavor to free ourselves somewhat from the ties that bind us to the old way of original sin. Our best and only practical chance is to try to raise our children without the yoke of the Judeo-Christian heritage of the Old Testament. If we follow the fashion of the liberals and practice birth control and kill our children through abortion, then even that chance of moving into the new age will be lost to us.

Reich’s career spanned three periods: the first period in Europe where he started his discoveries as a medical doctor working with the new science of psychoanalysis that was being led by Sigmund Freud; the second period in Scandinavia where he discovered the electrical aspects of this sexual energy in his experiments investigating the antithesis between pleasure and anxiety at the University of Oslo (1934-1936). In Scandinavia Reich also observed that biological preparations of organic matter would exhibit the now familiar four beat rhythm of tension, charge, discharge, and relaxation. This four beat pattern was first observed in the orgasm, now it was observed in laboratory preparations under microscopes of high power.

In these experiments, published as The Bions (1938), Reich would take organic matter such as coal dust or fine sand or rust and heat it to incandescence in a gas flame; then the incandescent organic material would be put into a sterile nutritive solution. In other experiments, Reich would take organic material such as dry moss or dry grass and soak it in water after it had been sterilized. In both series of experiments, the organic matter that had been sterilized began to organize itself into vesicles and the vesicles of this sterilized organic matter would organize themselves into groups and the groups would surround themselves with membranes and begin to behave as protozoa. Reich named these laboratory-made life forms, “bions”.

One day an accident occurred with a preparation of bions made from sand. Reich left a pair of rubber gloves next to some test tubes full of sand bions. He was amazed when the rubber gloves were placed on the stand of an electroscope and the leaves of the electroscope parted as if a strong electrostatic charge were present. It was true, the rubber gloves had been charged by the radiations emanating from the sand packet (SAPA) bions. Furthermore, the SAPA bions would fog photographic plates and Reich noticed that a large number of them would produce a sun-tan effect upon the human skin.

The third period of Reich’s career was in the United States. Each discovery was based on and grew out of the previous work. Reich often delayed publication of a discovery until it had led to a new discovery based on the previous one. Each period of Reich’s career was based on the work that preceded it. Today, we can look upon all of the different aspects of Reich’s work and see a unity: that of the discovery of the Life Energy. In America, Reich invented a device to concentrate the ever present atmospheric life energy first observed in humans as sexuality, then observed in the laboratory preparations called bions. In a continuation of this article we will investigate the path of discovery more fully; for now we will discuss how to make and use the ORGONE ENERGY BLANKET:

The materials to make the Orgone Energy Blanket are 100% wool and galvanized steel screen. Wool is the organic material and it is one of the very best organic materials due to its high relative surface area and its position on the food chain; only fur is better than wool for making Orgone Accumulators. The metallic material in the Orgone Accumulator Blanket may be any form of iron. Galvanized steel screen is the material of choice, though steel wool will work but it tends to be lumpy and the fibers can work their way through the organic layer and scratch the user. Aluminum and copper are poor materials to use for the metallic layers and should not be used because they produce “DORish” effects, (more about DOR in Part II)

Here is how the accumulator of Life Energy works: the organic layer (100% wool) attracts and holds the energy from the atmosphere; the metallic layer (galvanized steel screen) attracts, then repels the energy in both directions at once. The energy that is passed back to the organic layer stays there to be re-attracted back to the metallic layer. The inside metallic layer of the Orgone charging device continuously radiates this energy. One layer of organic material and one layer of metallic material constitute one layer of Orgone Energy Accumulator. This invention may be considered to be a component of “the force”. As a resistor or a capacitor is a component of the energy called electricity, the Orgone Accumulator is a component of the sea of energy in which we live.

In use, the experimental subject lays beneath the Orgone Energy Blanket for a period of twenty to thirty minutes each day. The function of this device is to charge the organism with the atmospheric life energy. The device is dependent upon the energetic level of the user and the level and quality of charge of life energy in the atmosphere.

At this point it becomes necessary to state that the Orgone Energy Blanket must NEVER BE USED FOR HEALING OR MEDICAL PURPOSES! There are two reasons for this: first – healing or medical use of this device is definitely illegal, second – healing or medical use of this device may give someone false hope and prevent them from receiving proper attention and care from a physician. Thus, only for experimental purposes, only for investigative purposes are these devices offered to individuals who wish to pursue this new knowledge.

A clear fresh blue sunny day is ideal weather to use the Orgone Energy Blanket. Deep free breathing on a cold mountain morning invigorates the body and freshens the spirit. Feeling the streaming and the tingling of pleasure. Warmth, relaxation, reddening in the face, a tension of building charge – these are some of the subjective impressions that are felt, these are the feelings (not thoughts!) that users of the Orgone Blanket have reported. Sleeping under the Orgone Blanket is not recommended; when the subject falls asleep under this charging device, an overcharge results which prevents one from going back to sleep. The length of time of use depends upon the person and the conditions; when the user feels a certain irritability, when the subject becomes restless laying under the Orgone Blanket, then it is time to stop. Restlessness, irritability – these are symptoms of overcharge and indicate that the person has reached their saturation point. Thus the length of time beneath the Orgone Blanket will vary between different people depending upon individual levels of initial charge and atmospheric conditions.

The Orgone Accumulator Blanket not only concentrates the Life Energy from the atmosphere upon the experimental subject, it reflects back the living energy of the subject. Of the two energetic systems, the Orgone Accumulator and the human organism, the human organism is the stronger of the two. Life energy, like gravity, flows from the weaker to the stronger source. Thus the energy flows from the accumulator to the body of the subject. This orgonomic potential is opposite from that of heat or mechanical energy, which flows from the stronger to weaker.

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It is too much to present the career of Wilhelm Reich in one article. Briefly, the discoverer of the Life Energy started out his career as a student of Freud in Vienna after the First World War. The second period of Reich’s work was in Scandinavia where he discovered the bioelectrical aspects of human sexuality. This led to work with single celled organisms called bions that were observed to radiate this living energy. The final period of Reich’s career of discovery was in America where he invented the Orgone Accumulator, discovered the relationship between Life Energy and nuclear radioactivity (The Oranur Experiment), invented the cloudbuster, and finally turned his attention towards a new phenomenon: the UFO’s.

To be continued …